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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kilkennycat - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Anand and Gary,Seems as if an important candidate is MIA in your 3-part review of integrated chip-sets/uATX motherboards, the LONG-promised nVidia MCP7A chip-set for Intel processors with integrated 9400/9300 graphics. The only potential integrated-graphics competitor to the G45 in the Intel-processor world. When is the MCP7A due to be released? Most recent speculation (in DigiTimes, iirc) was the end of this month (September). In time to add a review of one or more uATX motherboards based on this chipset as Part 4 to this group of three reviews?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
By the time this series is over the MCP7A won't be out, but we'll have a standalone review of that product to coincide with availability :)-A
yehuda - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - link
Ok, when will this series be over? I ask because the last news on MCP7A said that it should be out before the end of this month and your statement makes me wonder if there's another delay ahead.kilkennycat - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Anand, thanks for the reply.NDA gag on projected-availability information from nVidia ??
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Yep, it won't be too much longer and NV is quite excited about it but specifics I can't give out unfortunately.*If* I were in NVIDIA's shoes I'd want to capitalize as best as possible on Intel's handling of G45. I'd make sure that the first products worked *perfectly* and availability was immediate and at competitive prices.
If NVIDIA blows this opportunity I'll be quite disappointed, especially given how much crap it has given Intel about Larrabee.
We'll know soon enough, but after the IGP Chronicles are over :)
-A
Pederv - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
From what I read, the G45 can be summed as, "It has a few good points but over all it sucks."kevinkreiser - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
I was hoping there would be mention of the graphics problems when putting nvidia cards in these boards. I was very vocal about this over at the AVS forums. Did any one notice any mention of this in the article? Also will there be coverage of the new nvidia boards MCP7A?Gary Key - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Our final article will feature the discrete cards like the 9600GT and HD 4670. In testing so far, I have not had the problems that have been reported. I do have some additional NV cards coming to test. We will have coverage on the GeForce 9400 series when it launches. ;)kevinkreiser - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Thanks for the quick reply. I appreciate you guys keeping an eye out for the aforementioned problem. And also thanks for the heads up on the forthcoming MCP7A article.sprockkets - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...Shame it costs $100 though. Shame too that Intel boards work so poorly, since I like that mini-itx board. The one from Jetway for the 8200 chipset probably doesn't work any better.