The IGP Chronicles Part 2: AMD 780G vs. Intel G45 vs. NVIDIA GeForce 8200
by Gary Key on October 14, 2008 12:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Hardware Accelerated Blu-ray Playback Comparison
All three platforms we're talking about here support hardware Blu-ray acceleration, but how much of an offload do they provide? To find out we looked at CPU utilization while playing all three types of content (MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264) with a Core 2 Quad Q9450 on the Intel chipsets and a Phenom X4 9950 BE on the AMD/NVIDIA platforms. Because of our CnQ issues we've provided data with it both enabled and disabled. Intel's EIST is always enabled.
The breakdown of video decode offload is as follows: AMD offers the best in terms of CPU offload, followed by NVIDIA, then Intel with the G45. Remember that the G35 has no hardware decode support, so that's the reference point.
With CnQ enabled Intel takes the lead; however, this isn't a recommended configuration.
The same holds true for MPEG-2 and H.264 playback: AMD's 780/790GX offer the most CPU offload, followed by the GeForce 8200/8300 and then G45. Turn on CnQ and Intel takes the lead.
All of these numbers are low enough that the chipset you pick shouldn't matter - as long as you have hardware acceleration you're golden, but let's look at power consumption to see the impact of the CnQ issues on the AMD platforms.
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MrMilli - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
If you multiply it all out that gives Intel a throughput of 8 instructions per clock for G35, 10 for G45, 10 for NVIDIA's GeForce 8200 (where two are transcendental operations) and 40 for AMD. In terms of worst case throughput however, AMD falls down to 8 per clock (assuming the compiler can't feed the hardware 4 shader ops + 1 transcendental per SP) as does NVIDIA. This worst case rarely happens, but it is definitely worth noting.10 for nvidia => 8 for nvidia
AMD falls down to 8 per clock => to 10 per clock
a1yet - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
wow finally a video playback comparison :-) TYI have a question one of you may be able to answer ?
In the "Hardware Accelerated Blu-ray Playback Comparison"
(CPU usage) the 780 beat the 790 in 3 of the 6 tests!
With the 790 using up to 9% MORE CPU usage, and in the
other 3 tests. The 790 beat the 780 by only .3% (well within a margin of error)
Up to 9% MORE CPU usage is A LOT!
I want to buy the 790 but this is a disappointment!
Dose anyone know why the 790 uses so much more CPU then the 780.
Is it's HD Acceleration sub-par ?
Heck in the "Crank DB" test all the cards beat the 790.
Please help TY
yknott - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Do we know if the Radeon HD4xxx cards support output at 1080p/24fps?I did some googling and can't find anyone who can verify this
Geraldo8022 - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
"do we know if the Radeon HD4xxx cards support output at 1080p/24fps?"this is exactly what I want to know also.
Screammit - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
I just received a 4670 today to plug into my old PC that i'm slowly converting into an HTPC. In the display modes 1080p/24 is natively listed, but i'll have to get my blu ray drive in before I can truly verify that it works. Sure seems to have support though.Calin - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
An Intel processor and chipset with an AMD discrete cardSkCom - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
testing amd ddr 2 and intel ddr 3 is not fer test and amd made the 780 790 for usage with cheap cpu SEMPRON so why use phenom and rise the w power when simply can do the chep cpu psu ram and stillwatch HD movies surf and dissant gaming price perfom AMD 1 CHAMPION
strikeback03 - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Checked twice, can't find any punctuation in this post. I have no idea what you are trying to say.fic2 - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
Apparently using a Sempron takes away your ability to punctuate, spell check or make much sense.Clauzii - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - link
He says that by using a Sempron CPU (lower watt than Phenom), it would still be a nice machine for most people, and still be good for movies.