NVIDIA 780a: Integrated Graphics and SLI in One
by Gary Key on May 6, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
NVIDIA's chipsets have almost always been pretty decent (if not excellent with the nForce4 for AMD), their only issues were usually price and a lack of any compelling features to justify the added cost. SLI was always the biggest selling point of NVIDIA's platforms but with the nForce 780a (and its new lineup of chipsets in general), NVIDIA is attempting to bring more value to the table.
Honestly the biggest attraction to the nForce 780a SLI platform is its support for HybridPower, which will finally allow gamers to build machines that are both high performance and are efficient on power usage. Thankfully you aren't limited to the 780a for HybridPower support as these motherboards won't come cheap. Our ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe board will carry an introductory price of $249, something we are not used to seeing in the current AMD market sector.
Whether or not this price tag is worth the premium over the nForce 750a SLI boards is up for debate. It's not really in our opinion as we do not believe the current AMD processor series is capable of the required computational power needed to support 3-way SLI or Quad SLI configurations. This is not a knock against NVIDIA as AMD has the same problem with Quad CrossFire; it just reflects the current state of the processor offerings from AMD.
HybridPower is clearly in its infancy, the lack of dual-link DVI support from the mGPU means that owners of 30" displays can't enjoy the benefits until the next generation of NVIDIA chipsets come out. We would like to see eventual automated switching between HybridPower modes, not to mention a reduction in switch time for multi-GPU setups, but we'll take what we can get as a starting point. The list of GPUs that support HybridPower will hopefully continue to grow as NVIDIA would be doing its customer base a disservice by reserving the feature for only its highest end graphics cards.
Then there's the plain fact that what we're looking at here is an expensive Socket-AM2+ chipset, and while AMD can be competitive at lower price points, at the very high end of the market there's simply no reason to go with anything non-Intel right now. With Intel's G45 chipset due out later this summer, we would much rather see an Intel solution from NVIDIA shipped quickly as the combination of a mGPU with H.264 decode acceleration and HybridPower could be enough to actually make NVIDIA's platforms competitive in the Intel space.
Looking to the future, we wonder what will happen to NVIDIA's chipset business. Giving every chipset integrated graphics is a good move, but is it possible that it is too little, too late? Nehalem will begin shipping this year and next year we should start to see models with integrated graphics, leaving NVIDIA with SLI as the only thing it has to bring to the table once again. Losing on the integrated graphics performance front to AMD is also troublesome. Surpassing Intel's IGP performance is nothing to crow about for a GPU manufacturer; it's the competing GPU manufacturers that you have to beat, and here NVIDIA falls short. We want to see NVIDIA raising the bar for mGPU performance relative to AMD, not lowering it.
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wjl - Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - link
I tried a Wolfdale 2,6GHz (E8200) with Intel's G35, and it's an improvement already - tho for "serious" HTPC usage, I would probably wait for the G45, which should be out this summer.Sure, Intel chip sets are not flawless, like their drivers also. But Intel and AMD are moving into the right direction, and I wish this would be honoured more when comparison tests like the one here are performed.
The world isn't only Windows, and only gamers - wake up guys. Take the Phoronix test suite if you have to compare and show numbers. I think even this test suite is GPL'ed, so...
Anyway: the ATI/AMD 690G (RS690) will work now with 3D, using only open source drivers - and it's news like these which are really important for the rest of us - not which newest chip set has a few frames per second more or less, which is really ONLY interesting for first person shooters.
Natfly - Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - link
How important is HT3 for the IGP? Is 1080P content watchable without it?
Also, is there an equivalent to AMD's sideport memory that may show up in some 780a/8200 boards?
derek85 - Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - link
HT3 is most important when you watch interlaced contents (1080i) because of the extra HDHQV features require alot more bandwidth than normal 1080p. Theoratically 1080p should be watchable without HT3, but this largely depends on the K8 model you get.I'm not sure about sideport equivalence from NVIDIA, I haven't heard anything related to it and I highly doubt they will be able to come up with one, because that requires modification of their existing blocks which they probably won't bother to spend the time on. If you really want that, just get an AMD board ;)
Natfly - Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - link
Well I was planning on getting a 4850e and have been recently trying to decide between the 780G and 8200. I'd like to get the best IGP performance and also have RAID5 w/out using any extra cards, but that seems impossible at this point. Maybe a manufacturer will pair up 780G with SB750 when it gets released.derek85 - Thursday, May 8, 2008 - link
If you want to max out 3D performance, HT3 is the way to go. HT1 can provide maximum 8GB of bandwidth, HT3 with 1800MHz can provide 14.4GB of bandwidth (2 channel DDR2-800 is 12.8GB). The actual improvement of this reflected in benchmarks such as 3DMarko6 is quite significant (>20%), but nonetheless it is still IGP, so whether you would like to invest more into it is totally up to you.Von Matrices - Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - link
Is my PC at fault or does anyone else notice the horrible compression of the charts on page 6?JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - link
Fixed... Gary changed the chart sizes but didn't update the HTML (where a smaller width and height was hard-coded). Shame on him. I have had him flogged with a Cat-o-nine-SATA-cords.Mgz - Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - link
in page 4 you have a little typo "we can't really be sure until NVIDI confirms the details"homerdog - Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - link
I appreciate the effort by Nvidia to reduce idle power consumption, but I would much rather see a discrete GPU that doesn't draw so much power when idling in first place. ATI has been making significant strides in this department lately with PowerPlay, and EVERY motherboard/configuration benefits. Having two GPUs with redundant framebuffers is going around your elbow to get to your ******* if you ask me.ChrisRay - Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - link
HomerDog. Not sure I entirely understand your problem with Hybrid Power. Its basically a technology that lets you shut of your discreet GPUS completely. No amount of power saving tech is going to have that measure of impact. ((Or system noise impact)).Your right that every motherboard benefits from power saving tech on discreet GPUs. But the difference in power saving by using a feature like Hybrid power is huge compared to any idle technology existing on GPUS. Browsing from my desktop with Hybrid Power enabled and Quad SLI 9800GX2. My AVG room temp went down 4-5C after 2 hours of web activity from having hybrid power enabled. Thats significant.
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