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LOSTCIRCUITS
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| AMD' 690G vs Intel's 965G Revolte of the Integrated Graphics | |
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(Joe Freund, September 4, 2007) |
Summary
The acquisition of graphics giant ATI has landed a bunch of problems, er, responsibilities in AMD's lap but also furnished the CPU maker with the one thing desperately needed, namely, a line-up of chipset for all kinds of platforms. Of particular interest is of course a high quality offering in the form of the 690G integrated graphics chipset positioned in the entry level market segment to raise desktop computers above the capability of playing Solitaire only or to display pictures in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. Especially DVD-playback capabilities are in high demand, as is the Vista Aero interface and, before we forget it, a modicum of gaming capabilities should be supported - you never know, somebody might come and visit.
In the same market segment, Intel with their GMA X3000 graphics engine still holds a commanding market lead and it only takes a quick search on CompUSA, OfficeMax and similar websites to get an idea about the fiduciary importance of 90% of all computer sales -- vs. the high-end segment that is oh-so-prestigeous but probably does not pay the bills.
AMD claims they are better by design but is design all that is to performance? Or does maybe the practical implementation throw a monkey wrench?
Integrated Graphics - The Next (Not-So) Big Thing?
Despite the technological success of AMD and nVidia at developing high-end 3D graphics accelerators and the amount of review attention those high-end cards receive, most computers still rely on integrated graphics built into the motherboard. AMD states that 94% of the desktop computers and 93% of the laptops sold in the last three quarters relied on integrated graphics. This has usually meant that the system is adequate for surfing and spreadsheets, but woefully ill equipped when it comes to 3D rendering and multimedia playback. There has been a slow reversal of this trend with graphics companies branching out into chipset design. The increasing capabilities of their integrated graphics chipsets has even forced Intel to add some 3D flavor to their chipsets.
Unevil Twins: AMD's 690G with Radeon 1250 graphics vs. Intel's G965 featuring GMA X3000
Today we compare AMD/ATI’s latest integrated graphics chipset, the AMD 690G with Radeon 1250 graphics, with Intel’s workhorse, the G965 featuring GMA X3000. Asus supplies the motherboards highlighting each platform with the LGA775 P5B-VM hosting the Intel G965 and the AM2 M2A-VM HDMI sporting AMD’s 690G. While the G965 does allegedly support HDMI output, the P5B-VM (along with all other currently available G965 boards) fails to offer it, and has only an old-fashioned analog VGA output for video. The M2A-VM HDMI, on the other hand, makes full use of the 690G’s video output capabilities with VGA, DVI, and HDMI ports. The VGA and DVI are built into the back of the motherboard, while the HDMI output is on an expansion card that fits into the PCI-E 16X slot. Also on the back of the expansion card is analog component video output, old school composite video out, an external SPDIF port, and an internal connection to the onboard SPDIF output.
With such an abundance of video output options, the 690G-based M2A-VM HDMI would appear to be a superb foundation for an HTPC. We’ll run both boards through the Silicon Optix HQV DVD playback benchmark to see how they handle deinterlacing and scaling. We’ll test the 3D muscle of each platform with a couple of the more demanding games available. Then we’ll see how the integrated graphics handle Windows Vista and its fancy new Aero interface. We’ll also check the disk speed on both the SATA2 connection and USB 2.0. To round things out, we’ll see exactly what the 690G can do with all those video outputs by testing the dual monitor capability under both XP and Vista.
next page: => AMD's AMD's 690G with Radeon 1250 Graphics =>
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