AMD 785G: The Venerable 780G, Evolved

[cleeve]

Ahh... Ok, I see it now. So, basically it is a HD3000 series GPU, but ATI pulled a "Nvidia move" and tweaked it slightly, then relabeled it so people think they are getting the next generation.... This is starting to get old with these company's pulling this crap....

I hear you, man. it certainly doesn't help make things clearer.

 

[Guest]

KT_Wasp - I'd certainly agree if they did it with discrete mid to high-end GPUs like Nvidia does, but seriously, who upgrades their motherboard for the purpose of getting a newer generation IGP? Chipsets have always had evolutionary progression rather than revolutionary, especially the IGP part of it, they could easily cram more stream processors in it, but that would create thermal problems since putting a fan on a northbridge is rather taboo these days.

 

[aproldcuk]

[citation][nom]Article[/nom]Ed.: After discussing with AMD earlier today, it would seem that eight-channel LPCM is not one of the features present in 785G.[/citation]
Hmm... I wonder what's really behind it? Everybody talked about it weeks ago and AMD said nothing. Why say only now? This was supposed to be one major difference from 780G and now it's really hard for me to justify the planned platform switch 🙁

 

[megamanx00]

Seems like a 785G board would certainly be worth a few bucks more than a similar 780G board. Even though the Pentium D series is a good value, pairing it with a G45 board for a low end system makes it less so than say an Athlon II X2 and a 785G board. Good article, but it would have been interesting to see something like Hulu back since I think that's something an HTPC would be used for.

 

[inmytaxi]

I'd like to see how the 550 oc's on the 790 vs. the 785 vs. the 780

 

[JimmiG]

[citation][nom]mcnuggetofdeath[/nom]"refined architecture" ? To my knowledge, and please correct me if im wrong, all that was changed between the original phenom and the phenom 2 was the addition of more L3 cache allowing it to do more simultaneously and a die shrink allowing for higher clocks.[/citation]

You're wrong, actually:
http://www.amdzone.com/index.php/reviews/60/11033-amd-phenom-ii-x4-940-black-edition

In addition to the bigger and slightly faster L3 cache and die shrink, the Phenom II got Path-based indirect branch prediction, Larger load/store buffering / larger floating point buffering / reduced MAB (missed address buffer) lifetime, 2x increase in core probe bandwidth, Improved LOCK pipelining and improvements to the Floating point register-to-register move instruction (FP MOV).

Of course, the larger L3 cache and higher clock speed are probably responsible for most of the performance improvements over the original Phenom.

Too bad about the missing multi-channel LPCM support in this chipset. This kind of confusion and incorrect information (which was published by many sites, not just THG) is never good PR.

 

[drealar]

I'm still confused about the sideport memory ever since the 790GX review.
1. What's the max memory capacity for the sideport in 785g?
2. Like 790 when it's in hybrid crossfireX, what's the memory configuration available? Like, can it still be (sideport+shared)+HD3450, or sideport+HD3450, or shared+HD3450?

1 thing that I notice is that idling with 790GX consumes only 68watts. So I'm guessing in test with 785g, it's higher because of the 1KW PSU? (The difference is 150W previous test setup is 850W). Previously Phenom X4 9350e, though I'm not sure if Athlon II should consume more because it's 1GHz faster (Old Phenom is a more power hungry CPU isn't it?)

Sorry if this sound like forcing to get some answers, I'm just too eager and excited the moment my RSS feed says "Updated: AMD 785G: The Venerable 780G, Evolved" which I've been waiting since CES 2009 😀

 

[drealar]

Sorry for double posting but I guess most people will say the max capacity for the sideport memory is clearly 128MB. I'm just wondering what's the max capacity that manufacturer's can put? 512MB? 😀
If 790GX gained 1~2fps from 128MB, so 512MB could give a ~10fps more? 512+512 = 1GB... sweet. Add up $20 maybe. Hahaha 😀

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

As to the LPCM, I smell a dash of DRM/Hollowood fees here

 

[invlem]

Until a viable (ie not $200 sound card) solution appears that can bitstream DTS-MA or Dolby TrueHD I have no reason to change my HTPC from the current 780g setup.

Until then, optical audio out + hdmi video out seems to be what I'll be sticking with in the near future. I refuse to pay $200 for a sound card, which then restricts me to a single piece of software (TMT) for my bit streaming needs.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]drealar[/nom]I'm still confused about the sideport memory ever since the 790GX review.1. What's the max memory capacity for the sideport in 785g?2. Like 790 when it's in hybrid crossfireX, what's the memory configuration available? Like, can it still be (sideport+shared)+HD3450, or sideport+HD3450, or shared+HD3450?1 thing that I notice is that idling with 790GX consumes only 68watts. So I'm guessing in test with 785g, it's higher because of the 1KW PSU? (The difference is 150W previous test setup is 850W). [/citation]

I've never seen a hard limit published as to the memory capacity for sideport, but I've never seen anyone put more than 128MB on a board. Sideport can still be shared with system memory in CrossfireX.

For power usage, AFAIK the total wattage of the PSU shouldn't matter so much, but the efficiency of the PSU should. The Thermaltake Toughpower 1200 is a very efficient PSU.

 

[drealar]

Thanks Cleeve, though I'm still concerned about the PSU since most reviews are showing better efficiency when setting up a low power system with low wattage 80Plus PSU. What happened to Tom's FPS220 or what ever the model is from Fortron? I really admire that PSU but unfortunately never been available here.

Another thing is, does CrossfireX RAM works something like system RAM? I mean is it better to have 2 same RAM type (like DDR2 or DDR3) with the same capacity (256/256, or 512/512). It's just that it's quite hard to get a 512MB HD3450 these days, let alone the model itself. Wonder if ATI will ever upgrade Hybrid CrossfireX, since crossfiring with the chipset is kinda unlikely to happen with the low stock of HD 3450.

 

[genored]

First there most be something wrong here. This is the first real article at toms in ages. I cant believe that a AMD system beat the Nvida+Intel system. Tom has for the first time in ages the same results as every other major site. I just cant believe my eyes.

 

[amdfangirl]

Almost makes me wanna suck it up and replace my ageing 690G.

 

[xeliman]

i think 785g and 780g are the same thing with other name they have the same rops,shaders,freq.perfomance,ect.the drivers see the name hd4200 and use the uvd2 feature thought,its marketing,the only cool thing is that sb710 can unlock the 2 extra cores.

 

[amdfangirl]

it's like Core 2 65nm to 45nm

 

[Guest]

This makes for a very attractive solution to good desktop on the cheap. The Nvidia Ion boards run about 200$. When for about 75$ I can grab a 785g board, a sempron 140 or athlon ii x2 for about 40-60$-ish and get the ram within that 200$ mark. Also have about twice the horsepower when needed.

 

[Guest]

My 780G works perfectly out of box with Windows 7.

 

[Guest]

> The 785G has stepped up video quality with UVD 2.0,
> compared to UVD 1.0 in the 780G and 790GX chipsets.

I understood that the 780G had UVD2.0 support:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showpost.php?p=53818&postcount=45
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVD2
Are you please able to confirm this one way or another?

 

[bryce55]

Why did you put A-Data against Gskill? Obviously to make a-data lose and promote ddr3

 

[bryce55]

Why put A-dadta up against ddr3 gzkill, to make ddr2 lose not matter what so you can tout the use of ddr3...

 

[Guest]

The table shows 790GX having an output of HDMI 1.2. Is that correct? I thought 790GX was HDMI 1.3 compliant. Please clarify.

 

[Guest]

I need ITX board, there is not much AMD boards in this format.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]bryce55[/nom]Why did you put A-Data against Gskill? Obviously to make a-data lose and promote ddr3[/citation]

What do you have against A-data? They make pretty damn good RAM.

 

[amdfangirl]

RAM... only thing I care about... brand, cheapness and cheapness