The IGP Chronicles Part 1: Intel's G45 & Motherboard Roundup
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on September 24, 2008 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
The Last "Discrete" Intel Integrated Graphics Chipset?
Intel always made its chipsets on a n - 1 manufacturing node. If the majority of its CPUs were being built on 90nm, Intel would make its chipsets on 130nm. When the CPUs moved to 65nm, chipsets would move to 90nm and so on and so forth. This only applied to the GMCH/North Bridge, the South Bridges were on a n-2 process. If the CPUs were built on 65nm, the GMCH would be built on 90nm and the ICH would be a 130nm part.
Building chipsets on n-1/n-2 manufacturing processes meant that Intel could get more use out of its older fabs before converting them to the latest technology. Given how large of an investment these multi-billion dollar fabs are, Intel's approach to manufacturing made financial sense.
Unfortunately from a performance standpoint, Intel's approach left much to be desired. Graphics performance, to a certain extent, is closely related to the die size of your GPU. The reason NVIDIA's GT200 is twice as fast as its previous generation G80 core is because there are simply more transistors, on a larger die, to crunch away at pixels (and more memory bandwidth to feed them). By limiting its chipset manufacturing to older technologies, Intel artificially limits the performance of its IGP solutions. This is compounded by the fact that they are also building hardware using architectures with fundamentally reduced capability and performance compared to competing solutions.
A year ago Intel committed to changing all of this; remember this slide?
With G45 the gap between the process that the chipsets are made on and the process that the CPUs are made on is narrowed, G45 being Intel's first 65nm IGP, it's also Intel's last IGP. After G45, there will be no more integrated graphics chipsets - Intel's graphics cores will simply be integrated onto the CPU package and eventually the CPU die itself.
A Lower Power Chipset
The move to 65nm does have some serious power benefits, we looked at the total system power consumption of G45 vs. G35 using a Core 2 Quad Q9300 running a variety of tests:
| Intel G45 (DDR3) | Intel G45 (DDR2) | Intel G35 (DDR2) | Intel G45 Power Savings | |
| System at Idle | 66.8W | 68.2W | 79.7W | 11.5W |
| Company of Heroes | 92.4W | 95.6W | 103.9W | 8.3W |
| Video Encoding (PCMark Vantage TV/Movies) | 114.8W | 115.8W | 124.6W | 8.8W |
| Blu-ray Playback | 83.3W | 84.9W | 107.3 | 22.4W |
Using the same memory, G45 manages to shave off a good 8 - 11% from the total system power consumption. There's a tremendous advantage in Blu-ray playback but that is due to more than just more power efficient transistors, which we'll address shortly.
We'll also see some G45 boards use DDR3 memory, which thanks to its lower operating voltage will shave off another couple of watts from your total system power budget.
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Butterbean - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
I'm not sure why this board is measured/reviewed for its gaming ability (or lack of). A lot of HTPC peeps get these because they are quiet and can play DVD's without the noise /heat. Not many people really expect to play Oblivion on it.8steve8 - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
the dg45id has the unique ability to ouptut simultaniously to two displays with a digital interface.imo its the prefect board for non-gamers with dual-monitors..
seriouosly.. analog sucks.
should be listed in the pros/cons.
CSMR - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Yes, a very important feature for a work system with integrated graphics. Presumably common to all G45 boards with DVI and hdmi?yehuda - Saturday, September 27, 2008 - link
No, the Gigabyte board can't do that even though it has both ports.http://download.gigabyte.ru/manual/motherboard_man...">http://download.gigabyte.ru/manual/motherboard_man... (p. 8, footnote 1)
npp - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
SPCR measured the power consumtion of the same mini-ITX G45 board and found it to consume 35W at idle with an E7200 CPU installed (which should consume a tiny bit more than a 5200, given it works at higher FSB speeds and has more cache).Your figures showed something like 57W; one would say, hey, no big deal, we're talking about only 22W here. But if you take this as relative difference - it turns out to be 60%! SPCR used only one DIMM, but I doubt this can explain the discrepancy. The PSU was a 400W model, so I guess it has similar efficiency curve as the Corsair model you used.
Given the strange results of you power consumption measurements recently, I have reasons to doubt that something simply isn't right out there.
CSMR - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
SPCR people will make more efficient choices. Efficient PSU, notebook hard drive, non-overclocked RAM. 57W is a good result for a mainstream review. Little things can add up to 22W, especially PSU efficiency.MadDogMorgan - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
ANAND! These vibrant media popups are KILLING ME!!!!I am about ready to GO INSANE reading your site. You CAN'T POSSIBLY be making any MONEY off those things, they are too INCREDIBLY ANNOYING for anyone to ever THINK about watching one or clicking one.
Oh, and I LIKE PS/2 ports. What's wrong with PS/2 ? It works great, takes less cpu than USB (in my VERY informal mouse testing) and the headers take up very little space on the mobo. You also have the option to use the USB connections instead, if you want.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Visit this URL: http://anandtech.com/siteinfo.aspx?off=yes">http://anandtech.com/siteinfo.aspx?off=yesIt'll disable all IntelliTXT on AnandTech for you :)
-A
zagood - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Wow, thank you! Now how do we do that on DT?MadDogMorgan - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Thank you VERY MUCH for providing this option.Also, please keep up the good work and I appreciate you spending some time in the HTPC area. It seems to me there is a decided lack of good technical coverage in this arena. The kind of in-depth coverage that only your and a couple of other notable sites provide.
I would like to see some TV Tuner card reviews from your site comparing the technical details of the latest offerings from Hauppauge, ATI and any other popular ones. Toss in a review of a few PVR apps like GB-PVR, SageTV, MythTV and BeyondTV and (HTPC) life would be complete. Don't forge to address the difficulty of getting the channel listings when using a freebe like GB-PVR, or the ins and outs of getting scheduled recordings to actually WORK when the app uses the Windows Task Scheduler.
Thanks Again.