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
Blu-ray Playback: Integrated Graphics Matters Again
We've already established that integrated graphics don't really matter for gaming. Those who are serious about games have a discrete card, those who aren't serious about games are either playing something that doesn't require 3D acceleration or plays well on everything. There is a small group that this doesn't apply to but I'd bet that you can fit the vast majority of users into one of the two aforementioned categories.
Over a decade ago, integrated graphics performance mattered for another very important reason - 2D performance. These days most all IGPs handle basic Windows performance just fine, so if you're not using integrated graphics for gaming, is there any reason to care about one over another?
Video playback emerged as a killer application for integrated graphics over the years, and with Blu-ray's emergence as the de facto high definition media standard the need for some minimum level of IGP performance was established.
CPU utilization during high bitrate Blu-ray playback is prohibitively high, thankfully we now have the transistor budget to include the entire H.264, VC1 and MPEG-2 decode pipeline on GPUs. As chipsets also shrunk in manufacturing process, the hardware Blu-ray acceleration functions also found their way into integrated graphics cores. It started with AMD and NVIDIA but now Intel is on-board.
G45 is Intel's first chipset to include support for full hardware H.264/MPEG-2/VC-1 decode acceleration, including the entire H.264 decode pipeline (CABAC/CAVLAC entropy decoding included). This support puts Intel's integrated graphics on-par with the feature set of ATI/NVIDIA IGPs as well.
It gets even better for home theater PC enthusiasts: G45 continues Intel's recent tradition of including support for 8-channel LPCM audio output over HDMI, a feature that has been around since the G965 days. NVIDIA supports 8-channel LPCM audio output over HDMI with its chipsets while AMD only offers 2-channel LPCM. I recently went through and explained exactly what this feature means but if you're looking to build a Blu-ray compatible HTPC with many speakers, it's a useful feature.
G45 Blu-ray Playback
The first incarnation of G45 had horrible Blu-ray playback issues, it just didn't work. Since then Intel has gone through numerous driver revisions and we're finally at the point where, with the latest drivers (15.11.2.1554) that Blu-ray acceleration just works. It's supremely disappointing that it took Intel this long to fix these issues but they are at least finally taken care of.
CPU utilization, as you would expect, goes down with hardware acceleration enabled.
| Blu-ray Playback with a Celeron Dual Core E1200 | Intel G45 | Intel G35 |
| Dave Matthews - Live at Radio City (VC-1) | 55.5% | 73.2% |
| Crank (MPEG-2) | 37.6% | 53.2% |
| The Simpsons Movie (H.264) | 51.2% | 95.9% |
With a Celeron Dual Core E1200 processor, CPU utilization while playing a Blu-ray movie goes down tremendously, especially during H.264 playback. On faster CPUs the end result is even more manageable:
| Blu-ray Playback with a Core 2 Duo E7200 | Intel G45 | Intel G35 |
| Dave Matthews - Live at Radio City (VC-1) | 31.4% | 44.2% |
| Crank (MPEG-2) | 27.4% | 36.3% |
| The Simpsons Movie (H.264) | 24.9% | 67.6% |
The gap between the hardware accelerated G45 and its predecessor actually shrinks in the lighter load scenarios with a faster processor, but the difference when decoding H.264 is still impressive.
8-channel LPCM but no 24Hz Playback
Intel was extremely forward looking in its support of 8-channel LPCM audio over HDMI back on the G965 chipset; only within the past year have its competitors caught up. As I mentioned before, there's a thorough explanation of what 8-channel LPCM over HDMI means in our recent article here, but if you've got a 6 or 8 channel speaker setup and want to play Blu-ray movies, this feature is quite useful.
I tested 8-channel LPCM on G45 and, as expected, it just worked. Unfortunately there's still no 24bit playback support, which Intel is blaming on the ISVs for not supporting at this time - but technically there's no reason that it wouldn't work on G45 if there was proper driver/software support.
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Olyros - Sunday, February 8, 2009 - link
I noticed there's a mention in the article about searching for the perfect mini-itx case. The Nexus Psile case that I'm using for my Intel "DG45FC"-based computer is perfect for it I think. Especially if you are after stylish and quiet computers.Here are a couple of links for you to check it out if you want:
www.psile.com
http://www.3dgameman.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4...">http://www.3dgameman.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4...
lubama - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Quote from "Intel's G45 Motherboard round up"However, at various times after the system has gone to sleep it will wake back up without intervention for a few seconds and then shuts down. Sometimes this a few minutes after entering sleep mode, other times it occurred an hour or so later. The board requires a full power cycle to come back to life and does not always resume to Vista, instead we receive the error that Vista has been incurred an error after entering the OS."
Have you found a solution to this problem, seems like you are the only person, other than me, who is catching this issue. I have posted in numerous DG45ID forums and this exact issue is non-existent and haven't received any answers.
IntelUser2000 - Sunday, October 12, 2008 - link
Anand, G965/G35/GM965 has 8 EUs(Execution Units), but each of the EUs contain 2 cores, meaning it has 16 cores. Each cores can also process 2 threads, meaning it has a maximum of 32 thread capability. From that, its not comparable to Nvidia, nor ATI so Intel have their own performance metric.For G45, I assume its 10 EUs, 20 cores. Intel papers mention 50 threads.
puddnhead - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
I second (thrid? fourth? fifth? 9th?) the call for the part 2 (what it's pretty obvious everyone is more interested in anyway, not this article).I wonder if you coudl at least give us an ETA of not the article itself? You know, if it's this week, this month, or ??? Thta doesn't seem too much to ask, I'm surprised you don't give that from the start.
computerfarmer - Friday, October 3, 2008 - link
Looking forward to part_2.I hope they are sooner than the promised reviews from these articles.
AMD SB750 arrives on the Foxconn A79A-S...
Date: July 21st, 2008
Author: Gary Key
http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=47...">http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=47...
AMD's SB750: Enabling Higher Phenom Overclocks?
Date: July 23rd, 2008
Topic: CPU & Chipset
Manufacturer: AMD
Author: Gary Key
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
AMD 790GX - The Introduction
Date: August 6th, 2008
Topic: CPU & Chipset
Manufacturer: AMD
Author: Gary Key
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
computerfarmer - Friday, October 3, 2008 - link
When is PART_2 coming out?duploxxx - Friday, October 3, 2008 - link
Lots of talk of bringing a great roundup of chipsets...already for a few weeks now.Where does anand start? at the least interesting and the most garbage chipset for several years now.
lets hope your global review is as good as people expect it to be.
you started off already a bit better then you did in recent gpu reviews, you actually took a cpu that was rather common to be used, although a e7200 or Q8200 would be a much better fit for this kind of boards.
whosthere - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - link
I didn't see any specifics on the Game Settings. Could you please post them...Thanks
dutchroll - Monday, September 29, 2008 - link
Yeah I was thinking much the same thing about the "fanboi" comments.Can they spell "hypocrite"? It really betrays your allegiance when you rant at Intel then go all wobbly and weak at the knees while mentioning AMD. AT are damned if they do, damned if they don't as far as reviewing either brand's offerings. They've already stated how good the 780G was. They've stated what bugs are in the G45. So what the heck is the problem?
piesquared - Wednesday, October 1, 2008 - link
The problem is, they promised a SB750 review 2 months ago. The problem is they promised a DFI LP JR. review 1 month ago. The problem is they go well out of there way to avoid any comparison of Intel's ITD, and AMD's IGP. So what if they obscure and bury a line inside an Intel article that gives credit to AMD hardware. They fail to give credit where credit is due, and it is glaringly obvious. And it's even more obvious when this article pops up suddently when Intel has a new driver. They were waiting on Intel's promises of a new driver that would improve performance, and show it's hardware in a better light. Doesn't matter if you crap in a plastic or paper bag, it's still a bag of shit though. I'll make a wager that none of the upcomming "promised" reviews will have any side by side comparisons of Intel's IDT, to any other IGP. Unless of course AT stalls long enough to allow Intle more time to produce yet another driver.....