AMD 785G Graphics Performance Update

** Updated on 5th August 2009 **

What's New in AMD 785G?

AMD's 780G was arguably a breath of fresh air when it debuted last year. The excellent integrated graphics chip on the 780G was based on ATI's entry level discrete GPU and compared to the insipid graphics performance from Intel's integrated graphics chipsets, the 780G was clearly superior.

Fortunately for Intel, AMD's 780G was restricted to the AMD platform, though that meant NVIDIA found itself with a competitor instead. As we experienced for ourselves in our AMD IGP chipset and motherboard roundup, NVIDIA's GeForce 8200 and 8300 chipsets did manage to compete reasonably against the 780G, with its 8-channel LPCM HDMI audio output a clear feature advantage over its AMD rival. But AMD held the upper hand when it came to heat and power consumption, both important criteria for motherboards with integrated graphics.

More than a year later, even this slim advantage for NVIDIA will be gone, as AMD updates the 780G with the 785G. In many ways, it's a minor upgrade, since this chipset remains a 55nm part like the 780G. However, HTPC users will find much cheer from the support for multi-channel LPCM via HDMI (up from just two channels on the 780G), along with an updated integrated graphics chipset that's on par with AMD's Radeon HD 4000 series in terms of features. This means the features you'll find on the company's discrete GPUs, like its Universal Video Decoder (UVD) 2.0 (with full hardware acceleration for HD playback) and DirectX 10.1 are similarly found on the 785G. (Update:- AMD has informed us that the AMD 785G only has two-channel LPCM support via HDMI like its predecessor).

With these upgraded features, the Radeon HD 3200 graphics chipset found in the 780G will also be rechristened the Radeon HD 4200. The core clock for its shaders however remains the same at 500MHz and features like CrossFireX and HyperTransport 3 will be supported like its predecessor. Also, one will likely also find the Radeon HD 4200 equipped with SidePort memory like those found on the 790GX chipset to improve the graphics performance, if only slightly.

The 785G itself is expected to be paired with AMD's newer SB710 Southbridge chip. Again, it's a slight upgrade from the SB700 that used to be found with the 780G. The main addition is support for AMD's Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC) feature, which allows for greater overclocking allowance and is compatible with AMD's OverDrive tweaking utility.

Test Setup

We're be doing a full review of the AMD 785G chipset based motherboards in the near future but first, we'll be taking a quick look at the graphics and HD playback performance of the Radeon HD 4200 onboard. After all, with the updated GPU being the main difference on this chipset, this is what should matter to most consumers.

With that in mind, we have configured a new 785G board from Gigabyte, the GA-MA785GPM-UD2H with similar hardware configuration used for our previous AMD IGP shootout and will be comparing the 785G directly against those older motherboards. (While there are DDR3 models available, ours is a DDR2 AM2+ board). Of course, the drivers for the AMD 785G are newer and different; from what we can tell, their version numbers (8.63RC1) are similar to that found in the current Catalyst 9.7 drivers (version 8.632). When do embark on the detailed motherboard reviews, we'll be sure to keep comparisons more comparable, but for now in this article, we're giving you a quick glimpse of what to expect.

The following motherboards were tested:

• Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H (AMD 785G)
• Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (AMD 780G)
• Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 (AMD 740G)
• Zotac GeForce 8300 (NVIDIA GeForce 8300)
• Zotac GeForce 8300 (NVIDIA GeForce 8100)

With the following configuration:

• AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 @ 2.5GHz, 2 x 1MB L2
• 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 @ 5-5-16 CAS 5.0
• Integrated GPU Memory size set to 256MB
• NVIDIA nForce 18.11 and ForceWare 174.74 for Zotac 8300, 8100
• AMD SB700 Driver version 8.475 and Catalyst 8.5 for AMD 780G and 740G motherboards
• AMD SB Driver version 8.63RC1 and Catalyst driver 8.63RC1 for Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (and DirectX 9.0c)
• LG GGW-H20L Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc Rewriter & HD DVD-ROM
• CyberLink Power DVD 7.0 (updated to 7.3)

Graphics and HD Playback Benchmarks

• AquaMark3
• 3DMark06 (version 110)
• Quake 4 (version 1.3)
• Unreal Tournament 3 (version 1.1)
• Superman Returns and Black Snake Moan Blu-ray discs 

Benchmark Results

3DMark06 saw a rather significant 25% improvement for the AMD 785G over the 780G. Of course, with the core clock at the same frequency, this improvement can probably be attributed to the updated drivers on the 785G (circa Catalyst 9.7) but more importantly the additional SidePort memory on this board (as compared to our 780G board). AquaMark3 also witnessed a similar amount of improvement in the Graphics segment.

For the two actual games that we tested the AMD 785G on, the improvements were around the same level as what we saw for the synthetic benchmarks. However, that doesn't mean that the 785G is capable of running games at the highest settings. Even at our rather modest settings and resolutions, the performance was not ideal, though the 785G did emerge as the best performer. Again, it highlights the fact that these chipsets are meant for casual gamers at best and you'll be stretching it trying to play these intensive 3D games.

What the AMD 785G is expected to fulfill is the HD playback requirements of HTPC users and as an integrated graphics solution, it continues what the 780G started. The UVD 2.0 onboard lowers the CPU utilization numbers for our Blu-ray playback test even further and cements the 785G as the ideal chipset for this purpose. Short of getting a discrete graphics card, we can't recommend any other integrated solution that comes close to the 785G at the moment.

Concluding Remarks

Our quick test on the graphics and HD playback capabilities of the AMD 785G has shown a significant improvement over its predecessor. While the overall verdict on its 3D gaming performance remains a resounding nay for hardcore gamers, casual or older games should find the AMD 785G decent, especially if you pair it with a newer and more powerful processor than our example.

HD playback performance however was impressive and it appears to be the main usage model for this chipset, as a reasonably priced, integrated solution in mainstream PCs or HTPC setups. The addition of multi-channel LPCM audio output through HDMI is crucial for it to stay on top of its rivals and the new UVD takes over the burden of processing from the CPU.

We're not done with the AMD 785G chipset just yet so stay tuned for the full reviews of motherboards based on this chipset coming your way soon.

** Updated on 5th August 2009, 9.30am **

While we (and many tech sites) have reported about multi-channel LPCM audio output through HDMI as a new feature on the AMD 785G (as initially shared by AMD), it turns out that was incorrect. AMD has clarified with us that it supports only stereo LPCM audio like its predecessor. Hence, our earlier assessment of it being better than its NVIDIA competitors is similarly flawed. The minor improvements to graphics and HD video playback is certainly welcomed on the AMD 785G but the lack of multi-channel LPCM audio output feature will deter some of the HTPC enthusiast crowd looking for that perfect, elusive chipset.

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