Hardware Geeks

AMD today introduced a new graphics chipset, that promises to as the New York Giants would say, “STOMP OUT” the competition.

I have been testing a system for a little over a week now with the new 780G chipset and the Athlon X2 4850e. I have to say, I am pretty impressed with the system. It’s not the power horse a heavy gamer would want, but for an entry level PC or an occasional gamer, it’s perfect.

But I will get into that more later. First let me tell you a bit about the new chipset and processor.

The 780 chipset comes in two flavors, the 780V (ATI 3100 Radeon HD) which will be the entry level chipset and offered mainly to OEMs and the 780G (ATI 3200 Radeon HD) which offers a bit more power.

The 780 chipset is the fastest chipset ever offered by ATI. It is also the first onboard chipset to support Display Port and will support up to two monitors: one digital port and one analog port and DX 10 support. The chipset is even more power efficient than previous chipsets. It will also bring crossfire to onboard video cards in the form of Hybrid Graphics.

Hybrid graphics, which are only supported by Windows Vista, will allow for a motherboard with the 780G chipset to link its onboard graphics with a card plugged into a PCIe slot.

When your Video card and the onboard graphics link up, you get a performance boost of up to 70%.

Like I said above, I have been testing out the new chipset with the new Athlon X2 4850e, and I played Crysis with Hybrid Graphics on and off.

The two screen shots above are with Hybrid Graphics off. First screen shot is onboard video; the second screen shot is from the ATI Radeon 3850 HD that is installed in the PCI express slot.

As you can see ,according to Fraps, I had 5 and 7 frames per second respectfully.

Now check the two screen shots below, both with Hybrid Graphics enabled and the monitor is plugged into the 3850.

As you can see, I have an increase of over 50% in frames per second. The game even seemed more stable and didn’t lag as much.

I did the same experiment in Roller Coaster Tycoon and saw an increase of over 60% in frames per second with Hybrid Graphics enabled.

The system even ran really cool. In my opinion, It is perfect for someone who isn’t a heavy gamer and perfect for OEMs like HP. Recently at CES, I spoke with HP about their Slimline Desktops, and I was told by one of their product managers that their main concern is heat and bad graphics on those machines. With the 780 Chipset, I think HP could lower the temperature of those systems and offer better gaming.

AMD says the new 780G chipset will evolve the PC like never before, and I agree.

Now let’s not forget to mention the new Athlon X2 4850e, a 65nm chip with a max thermal power output of 45 watts. This makes it extremely energy efficient. At 2.5 Ghz, it’s pretty fast too.

I really like AMDs dual core chips, maybe it’s just me but they seem to be better at multi-tasking than the Intel chips, sure Intel chips may bench better but in real world situations I prefer AMD.

With this chip the System benched in PC Mark Vantage a 5258, which is pretty good even though it seems a bit low. You have to keep in mind that this CPU and Chipset are meant for entry level PCs.

I also ran a 3DMark benchmark and it scored 2741. That’s with Hybrid Graphics enabled. (Crossfire must be checked in Catalyst drivers).

Overall the Chipset and the new CPU are great, and if you are looking to buy a new computer or build one for a relative, look for the 780 Chipset and the 4850e CPU.

Motherboards with the new chipset and the CPU should be available at stores like Newegg.com really soon, maybe even today. Don’t expect to pay an arm and a leg these boards will be affordable.

To take advantage of Hybrid Graphics and to unlocks quad- and triple-GPU performance ATI released Catalys 8.3. (available tomorrow March 5th)

Specs for System used in test:
• Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H powered by AMD’s 780G chipset
• AMD Athlon X2 4850e dual-core processor
• Radeon HD3450 graphics card (sent along to test Hybrid Graphics technology)
• 2 GB of DDR2 memory

For those really geeky, here are the Processor Specs:
Processor:  energy efficient AMD Athlon™ X2 4850e dual-core processor
OPN:  ADH4850IAA5DO
CPU Core Count:  2
Operating Frequency:  2.5GHz
L1 Cache Size:  64K - L1 instruction + 64K - L1 data cache per-core (256KB total L1)
L2 Cache Size:  512KB L2 data cache per-core (1MB total dedicated L2 cache)
Manufactured:  Fab 36 / Dresden, Germany
Process Technology:  65-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology
Packaging:  Socket AM2 (940-pin organic micro PGA)
HyperTransport Spec:  One 16-bit/16-bit link @ 2.0GHz (1GHz DDR) full duplex (up to 8.0 GB/sec bandwidth)
Memory Controller:  One integrated 128-bit dual-channel memory controller (up to 12.8GB/sec bandwidth)
Supported Memory Speeds:  DDR 2 memory up to and including PC2 6400 (DDR2-800) unbuffered
Total Processor bandwidth:  Up to 20.8 GB/sec
Approximate Transistor count:  221 million
Approximate Die Size:  118 mm2
Nominal Voltage:  1.15/1.20/1.25 V
Max Thermal Power:  45W
Max Ambient Case Temp:  78o Celsius
Max Processor Current:  36.5 A
Min P-State (power management):  1.0 GHz
o Nominal Voltage @ min P-state:  1.0 V
o Max Thermal Power @ min P-state:  18.1 W
o Max Current @ min P-state:  15.1A

Post Tags: hardware  amd  780  athlon  chipset  dual core  x2  oem 

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