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Hardware AMD's 780G integrated graphics chipset

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Tim S, 4 Mar 2008.

  1. K20

    K20 What's a Dremel?

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    Am I the only one who likes slides?

    Now great review, nothing wrong with it but whenever AMD's released a product recently e.g. HD 2000, HD 3000, 780G I wish that they would just put their slideshow on their website, or that reviewers would just post ALL of the slides in their reviews. As it is I'm left collecting slides from all over the web and still being left with an incomplete collection (no I don't have an obsession with slides I merely find them a very efficient and accurate way of transferring information).

    Talking of slides as being an accurate way of transferring information I'm particularly interested by this one and although not a slide this is still rather interesting - somewhat conflicting with Bit-tech's (HD) HQV results aren't they :confused:

    Now for an efficient list of questions and complaints:

    Q1. Can the 780G support 2 TMDS/VGA outputs at the same time?
    Q2. What version of the UVD are we on now?
    Q3. Is the x16 PCIe link fused together? Just asking as although Bindibadgi (how did you ever come up with this name?) said it wasn't, Hothardware claimed it was in their review.
    Q4. What technology is the southbridge built with?
    Q5. Does the SB700 have an IR connection?
    Q6. What dies do AMD's northbridges use and for that matter how many are there (does the 740G exist)?

    780G complaints:
    C1. No DX 10.1 support, you might think this is irrelevant but considering that the HD 2000 series is probably DX 10.1 capable and that the GPU is named HD 3200, I can still complain.:p
    C2. I thought the HD 3000 series were named as such due to their DX 10.1 support, it turns out they earned their name change by being built with 55nm.:rolleyes:
    C3. No TV-out, SCART if AMD's listening.

    Motherboard complaints:
    C4. No Local Frame Buffer.
    C5. Unnecessarily pathetic NB heatsink.
    C6. Only 4 USB ports.
    C7. No SPDIF in.
    C8. Not DTX! (I thought this was supposed to be cheaper to manufacture?)

    Just thought I'd add this on at the end HyperTransport speed affecting 3DMark06 score
     
  2. Ownzyouall

    Ownzyouall What's a Dremel?

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    Dude i have used a ton of AMD processors in my life and i can tell you each and every single one of them are garbage. not matter how hard they try they will never beat intel. so what if intel are singles like you mentioned, they are still faster and better. This is a proven fact - the best quad AMD runs around 450 while an Intel is around 1,400 - i think theres a significant. even if there both overclocked the intel would still be better. You get what you pay for.................... dumbass, AMD SUCKS!!!!
     
  3. kenco_uk

    kenco_uk I unsuccessfully then tried again

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    I dunno, AMD64 X2 processors were the bomb compared to Pentium 4's. Not even adding Hyperthreading helped Intel stack up against AMD, the Pentium 4's were lumbering dinosaurs with jetpacks.

    Looking back further, Pentium 3 and the initial Athlon's were about level pegging, with the Athlon XP finally taking the baton. It wasn't until the Core marchitecture exploded onto the scene that Intel took the baton back and are still riding high.
     
  4. DougEdey

    DougEdey I pwn all your storage

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    I fink we shuld stop feedin duh troll...
     
  5. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    I had a completely different experience with HQV, I can't speak for the tech report because it's an interpretation system not a number thrown out like 3DMark. We had all sorts of trouble with the 780G and non with the G35 - I discussed it in depth with AMD.

    AMD can support one TDMS - it has to flick between either HDMI and DVI.

    It's the UVD version from the HD 3000 series.

    The PCI Express link is NOT fused together - I discussed this specifically with the product manager who confirmed it with a 780G engineer at AMD: they said you could do CrossFire if was wanted..

    Southbridge - tech? 55nm TSMC CMOS.

    Just one die exists afaik, then certain features are locked out on the 780V.

    C1 - no point, it's a non-feature-feature at the best of times, especially on integrated graphics which barely has enough power for anything DX10 anyway.

    TV out is HDMI - it's the HD series.

    C5 - I don't see how it's unnecessary

    C6 - yet a very mixed rear I/O and there's plenty of USB on board. 4-6 is standard, 4 especially in micro ATX.

    C8 - who cares? everything is micro and it's cheap enough already.
     
  6. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    Ownz just earnt himself a 72 hour cool off period.
     
  7. K20

    K20 What's a Dremel?

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    Thanks for the answers :thumb:.

    Is this the same one as the HD 2000 series?

    55nm:jawdrop:... well that's small.

    Maybe I wasn't specific enough I meant the all of the 7-series so I'm guessing:

    die a used for 790FX
    die b used for 790X and 770
    die c used for 780G and 780V

    Complaints! I didn't expect replies to complaints, I'm not complaining but still.

    C1 - I know, but it's not exactly a non-feature, in this case maybe (where DX 10 also is), but not in the best of times.

    I don't know enough to comment on the practical importance of DX 10.1 but I can say that R600 based hardware would probably cope better with DX 10.1 than with DX 10; look at the second table on this page (and remove a third of the GeForce's FLOPS), R6xx suddenly doesn't seem to have quite the texture deficit it once did (the second column uses Int8 - DX 10, the third uses Int16 - DX 10.1). DX 10.1 also adds Gather4 which I think is a DirectX implementation of Fetch4 (found in Radeon hardware only) and with support for cube map arrays etc. etc. DX 10.1 is probably more shader intensive than DX 10 which should all help bring a game closer to the R600, RV670 dream ratio of 4 shader ops for every texture op.

    C3 - True but the last time I checked the HD 3000 series still had VIVO and besides it's the the only thing keeping the 780G from being used with a SDTV (apart from the fact that it has 10x more processing power than necessary).

    C5 - I meant it's (unnecessarily) small, but agreed the NB heatsink is required, it should just be a bit bigger.

    C6- I know, it's a complaint, besides how much would it cost to add another 2 ports, there's only 12/2 to choose from.

    C8 - I'm guessing the people who like mini-ITX care, after all why does a computer need to be as big as even micro ATX? (Other than to fit in long graphic cards, I completely forgot about that.)

    I'll start posting my replies with less than a 25 hour interval from now on ;).
     
    Last edited: 8 Mar 2008
  8. fathazza

    fathazza Freed on Probation

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  9. K20

    K20 What's a Dremel?

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    I know but presumably the 690G will be phased out. Regardless of that it doesn't have the UVD (or TV-out) while the 780G has the UVD and although it might seem pointless to play HDTV on a SDTV if somebody wanted to (or output to a SDTV for any reason) they would have to buy another graphic card merely to output the signal. I just think it's the only thing letting the 780G down.

    About DTX... okay it's pointless. I was thinking DTX kept the distance between the back panel and the front of the board constant at 17 cm and varied the expansion slots between 2 (Mini-DTX) and 4 (DTX). Turns out the expansion slots are kept constant at 2 and the width of the board is varied between 24.4 cm (DTX) and 17 cm (Mini-DTX):duh:.
     
    Last edited: 8 Mar 2008
  10. pumpman

    pumpman Minimodder

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    do you work for Intel ?:rolleyes::D
     
  11. K20

    K20 What's a Dremel?

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    Who, me? Whatever could make you think that?
     
    Last edited: 10 Mar 2008
  12. Renoir

    Renoir What's a Dremel?

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    Bet you thought you'd escaped my pestering this time around hey Bindi :D:hehe::D

    First off awesome review!

    Few questions and my initial thoughts.

    It's a shame they've taken a step back by omitting a TV out & only allowing one digital out at a time which makes me wonder what else might have taken a step back. For example is the dvi connection still dual-link?

    Although the 780G northbridge has pcie2.0 the SB700 only has pcie1.1 according to techreport. It's nice to see that the sata controller in the sb700 seems to be improved over the one in the sb600. Would also have liked to have seen some usb transfer tests to see if that's been improved as well given that amd are selling that aspect as being better than the sb600.

    According to hothardware the UVD in the 780G is "enhanced" as it has silicon for accelerated mpeg2 whereas the previous gpus used their programmable shaders to do it. It's a shame you didn't test mpeg 2 to compare the UVD in the 690G to the enhanced UVD in the 780G.

    It was very nice to see that hardware acceleration also works for files played from the hard drive and not just from optical media. Nice tests Bindi.

    I looked at your respective test setups and turns out that while you guys used the 8.3RC3 drivers they used the 8.47 Beta drivers. Perhaps this might explain the differences? Having said that you both used the 15.7.3 intel drivers so somethings up. I appreciate your comment that it's subjective but the scores are VERY different.

    One thing I really liked about your 690G & 7050 reviews was that they tested the chipsets both using their built in gpu and a discrete gpu. I liked that because it showed what performance impact (non gaming) using UMA had over having a discrete gpu with a local frame buffer. The only issue was that those tests were done with XP and I was interested to see what impact the use of aero in vista has. Unfortunately this was not done this time around so perhaps it's something you could look at when you test the hybrid crossfire functionality. For example test the IGP, IGP+discrete GPU in Xfire and discrete GPU with IGP disabled.

    Finally some comments about Hypertransport 3. According to the techreport "HyperTransport bandwidth is apparently so important to the Radeon HD 3200 that AMD recommends a 1.8GHz link—currently available only with Phenom—to make the most of the graphics core. The 3200's post-processing engine for high-definition video playback actually requires the 1.8GHz HT link that Phenom provides." This opens up a can of worms as the only test I've seen that combines a phenom and the 780G is the 3DMARK06 test mentioned above by K20. Clearly post processing in EVERY current GPU is in some way dependent on horsepower namely shading power and memory bandwidth so some tests with a phenom to allow the 780G access to more memory bandwidth would be nice. The HD-HQV scores I've seen over the last year for a variety of gpus certainly shows the above to be true.

    Again fantastic review Bindi! Keep it up.
     
  13. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOES

    I'm actually not going to read it right now because I don't want work production to grind to a complete halt :p :lol: so I'll get back to you later.

    EDIT: FS, now I've just read half of it :p Thanks for the comments btw :):)

    Discrete versus IGP - yes, it will be done with Hybrid like you say. Thing is testing in XP only needed to be done once, testing in Vista requires 3+++ times to get accurate and consistent results. Double that for IGP and Discrete, and driver changes for a pre-production product and I'm well out of time.

    As much as I completely respect Scott, Geoff and TR for their awesome reviews I'd like to see where the Intel is failing and if ever possible sit down and HQV with them (not counting the fact we're opposite sides of a big pond and big land mass). Intel claim a perfect score and I got one - I can't say more than that. I sat down and did all three GPUs originally together and the G35 is absolutely better quality than the 780G. In both mine and Tim's opinion.

    The 690G is basic acceleration - and quite frankly no one uses MPEG-2 for HD anymore. Only a smattering of early disks do that. MPEG-2 DVD is what HQV *is* - it's 480p blown up to 1080p.

    SB700 - PCI-E x1's might be 1.1s, but the two connecting the nb-sb are 2.0's. I had that confirmed by a techie at AMD. Unfortunately I think TR has its wires crossed (or I do?) but I was told very explicitly when I asked that it was "2x2.0 which is equivalent to 4x1.1". I wanted to test USB and SATA but we've nothing really available to push both atm :(

    I didn't know that about HT3, although it sort of defeats the point of a low power system to drop a whopping great 4 core in there. I'll come back to it with Tri-Core I think.

    DVI is dual link.

    TV out, well, for £26 you can get a HD 3450 which has it or for £25-45 you could get a 690G which has it if SD is all you're going to use.
     
  14. Guest-23315

    Guest-23315 Guest

    Now all we need is a 780G chipset on a 775 Board witha 1,333 Fsb :p
     
  15. Renoir

    Renoir What's a Dremel?

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    Hehe that made my day!
    Excellent, can't wait!
    By all accounts vista does indeed add a lot of hassle. I guess future OSs are only gonna get harder to benchmark with unfortunately.

    I guess we'll just have to wait for new driver releases and for other sites to do the tests as well to give us a better picture of what is going on.

    Nice.

    Fair enough, I guess that's the nature of progress.

    Interesting. I'm inclined to believe that you're right given how long they've been working on it and that it is launched with a pcie2 northbridge.

    Well the winrar tests aren't a bad test of the sata controller (and show an improvement over the sb600) but the more benchies the better I suppose. As for USB not to worry I'm sure I can find some results elsewhere in the meantime.
    Indeed but I was only really referring to high bit rate HD Mpeg2 but as you say:
    You are of course correct and my curiosity of this "Enhanced" feature of the UVD in the 780G is more an academic one rather than having a lot of practical value. Therefore in hindsight scrap my previous request for testing this aspect as there are more important things to consider namely:
    You're quite right and my interest is merely to get a preview of what effect HT3 will have for when cheaper & lower power phenoms arrive. No harm in getting a preview right? I'm certainly happy to wait for you to get a tri core before you investigate this issue and I certainly look forward to it!
     
  16. Renoir

    Renoir What's a Dremel?

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    Hmm TechReport say the same but Extremetech claim that the SB700 is done on a 130nm process "The SB700 is built on a 130nm process. AMD tells us it's not especially large, nor does it consume much power or get hot, so a more advanced process is not needed.". 130nm seems too old even for a southbridge which traditionally get made on older processes than northbridges.

    At first I thought it was only post processing (HQV, HD-HQV) that was affected by the performance of the GPU (clock speed, shader power, memory bandwidth etc) but looking at the TechReport blu-ray tests it seems that the performance of the UVD might also be affected by those factors. Interesting tidbit I thought I'd share. Seems there may still be a few reasons to go for a discrete GPU for a HTPC instead of an IGP as the cpu use will be lower and post processing likely better. Obviously it would be nice to see some more tests in this regard in the future especially as new drivers come out and the 780G has access to more memory bandwidth courtesy of a phenom cpu's enabling of HT3.

    Found this tidbit in the comments section of the techreport by Geoff Gasior who says "AMD says the 780G can do DVI and HDMI at the same time, but also that Gigabyte's implementation in the GA-MA78GM-S2H doesn't allow for it." Great clear as mud!!!
     
    Last edited: 10 Mar 2008
  17. Renoir

    Renoir What's a Dremel?

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    QFT. This drives me nuts!
     
  18. K20

    K20 What's a Dremel?

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    Just nitpicking but the 770X doesn't exist as the die (770) is the same one used in the 790X (please confirm this), the only difference between the 770 and the 790(X) is auto Xpress (+25% speed boost for PCIe, HyperTransport and RAM?)

    Don't you mean a Core 2 in AM2+ :p :p.

    Lets examine the nature of progress shall we:
    690G
    VGA
    Single-link TDMS (HDMI) ----------\
    -----------------------------------Only one can use HDCP at a time
    Dual-Link TDMS (Dual-link DVI) ----/
    TV-out
    (and LVDS, used in laptops, but I'm not sure where that fits in)

    with any 2 of those 4 being used simultaneously.

    780G
    VGA
    DVI/HDMI
    (DisplayPort)

    With the VGA being used with one TDMS (I don't have a clue how DisplayPort fits in)

    So the 780G is almost certainly smaller and as such cheaper to produce and in return the customer loses the ability to use a DVI monitor while outputting to a HDTV and can no longer output to a SDTV. Oh and gets 2 more PCIe lanes and PCIe 2.0 support, that makes up for it then :rolleyes:.

    Well that doesn't make much sense. If everything in the southbridge (excluding the BIOS, Super IO, audio and any other 'small' links) was going full pelt then 2.19 GB/s would be sent to the NB requiring a x4 PCIe 2.0 link (which would fall short at 2 GB/s), or is the lack of RAID 5 (and SATA port multiplier?) a built in way to ensure this never happens.

    Just ask AMD:
    What is the NB-SB bandwidth each way?
    What does the RS in RS780 stands for? Radeon Squirrel?
    Does the SB700 have 2 EHCI (USB 2.0) controllers?
    Does the SB700 have 2 1.0 or 2 1.1 USB ports? (yes, I've seen the nice looking block diagram)
    Why is there an asterisk on the 780G block diagram (top left)?
     
    Last edited: 10 Mar 2008
  19. Renoir

    Renoir What's a Dremel?

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    K20, my comment about the nature of progress was mainly aimed at the lack of legacy connections (SD). As for supporting only 1 digital output at a time that is certainly not progress but rather a step backwards.
     
  20. K20

    K20 What's a Dremel?

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    I believe this UVD MPEG-2 debate can be explained by the AMD 7-Series Innovations slide (which also states that the SB700 is PCIe Gen 2) and by this snippet from the AnandTech Radeon HD 38x0 review:
    indicating that the 780G has entropy decode for MPEG-2.


    The IGP performance can probably be improved if overclocked to say... 1Ghz.


    Okay sorry Renoir I didn't mean to direct that towards you, though reading it I can understand why you might have thought I did. I merely meant to compare the 690G and 780G as output capabilities are concerned.
     
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