BlueSmoke - Review : Intel 845G Chipset
BlueSmoke - Review : Intel 845G Chipset
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Date | : May 22nd, 2002 | ||
| Category | : Chipsets | |||
| Manufacturer | : Intel | |||
| Author | : Jin-Wei Tioh | |||
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Another interesting fact is that the graphics cores with the largest sales are not those catering towards add-in solutions such as those from ATI, nVIDIA, or Matrox. By far, that title belongs to the cores that are integrated into chipsets, which is why both ATI and nVIDIA are scrambling to the market with their respective integrated chipset solutions. The chipset business is very lucrative, provided you can supply good volume. Intel is dead serious about its chipset venture, and has thus launched a brand new integrated solution for the Socket-478 platform - the Brookdale-G.
There are two versions of the Brookdale-G; the 845G and 845GL. Both chipsets are duplicates of the 845E, except that the 845G features Intel's integrated Extreme Graphics while the 845GL is a crippled 845G, lacking an AGP slot and support for the new quad-pumped 533MHz FSB.
In our P4 Chipset Roundup, we took at look at the 845 chipset. The 845G is also a two chip solution, consisting of the i82845G MCH (Memory Controller Hub) and the i82801DB ICH4 (I/O Controller Hub). The i82845G MCH supports either PC133, DDR200 or DDR266 memory. This time around, in addition to asynchronous memory bus and FSB operation for PC133 and DDR266 support with 400MHz FSB P4s, the i82845G adds synchronous operation of both buses to support the newly launched 533MHz FSB P4s. Strangely missing are AGP 8X and DDR333 support, which places the i82845G behind the P4X333 and the SiS645DX.
The i82801DB ICH4 is a long-needed breath of fresh air. The 845 sported the i82801BA ICH2, a carry-over from i850, i815 and i810 chipsets. ATA-133 and USB 2.0 are features that would logically be added to bring Intel's South Bridge up to speed with the VIA VT8235 and upcoming SiS 962. 3 USB 2.0 host controllers (6 USB ports) made it into the design, but ATA-133 support did not.
All in all, we can only speculate that Intel desires to closely guard its chipsets' reputations for compatibility and reliability. Adding the latest whiz-bang features is not always inline with that goal. Fortunately, at least two motherboard manufacturers have equipped their 845G motherboards with additional features. MSI will be integrating LAN and Bluetooth technology in the 845G MAX-L. EPoX has added LAN and ATA-133 RAID into the EP-4G4A+, the 845G test platform in this article. An excellent motherboard contender, the EP-4G4A+ has excellent layout, stability and feature set : 3 DIMM slots, 6 PCI slots (all full-length capable), hardware-based 6 channel integrated audio and EPoX's popular POST debug LED.
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The 845G will be pitted against an existing platform for the Pentium 4, its older sibling the 845. Before proceeding, here's a brief technical recap of both chipsets :
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| Intel 845 - Evolution |
| Intel 845 | Intel 845E/G/GL | |
| North Bridge | i82845 MCH | i82845G MCH |
| South Bridge | i82801BA ICH2 | i82801DB ICH4 |
| Memory Technology | SDRAM / DDR | SDRAM / DDR |
| Memory Type/s | PC133, DDR200, DDR266 | PC133, DDR200, DDR266 |
| Effective Memory Clock Speed | 133 / 200 / 266MHz | 133 / 200 / 266MHz |
| Peak Memory Bandwidth | 2.1GB/s (DDR266) | 2.1GB/s (DDR266) |
| Maximum Addressable Memory | 2GB | 2GB |
| Quad-pumped FSB | 400MHz | 533MHz, 400MHz 400MHz (845GL) |
| Bridge Interconnect | Intel Hub Architecture | Intel Hub Architecture |
| Peak Interconnect Bandwidth | 266MB/s | 266MB/s |
| USB Ports | 4 | 6 |
| USB 2.0 Support | No | Yes |
| Ultra-ATA 133 Support | No | Yes |
Without further ado, we'll put the chipsets through their paces with our suite of benchmarks.
| Platform Information | |
| CPU | Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz (S-478) |
| Motherboards | EPoX
4G4A+ AOpen AX4B Pro |
| Cooler | Intel Retail HS/F |
| Interface Material | Arctic Silver II |
| Memory | 1 x 256MB DDR266 CAS 2 (Apacer) |
| Hard Drive | Seagate U10 10GB 5400rpm U-ATA 66 |
| CD-ROM Drive | AOpen 36x |
| Network | RealTek 8139A |
| Video Card/s | ABIT Siluro MX400 64MB (default clock - 200/166) |
| Operating System | WindowsXP Professional |
| DirectX Version | 8.1 |
| Video Drivers | 6.13.10.2832 (ver 28.32) |
| Benchmarks | SiSoft Sandra 2002 Professional
Cachemem WinBench 99 Business Winstone 2001 v1.03 PCMark2002 3DMark 2001SE Aquanox Dronez Return to Castle Wolfenstein Quake III Arena (Retail) - demo001 POVray SPECviewperf |
As previously indicated, the 845 was the P4 DDR266 chipset with the best memory and storage performance. The 845G maintains the 845's excellence, with virtually no noticeable change in performance. Due to the design of the graphics core, the memory bandwidth consumed scales with user requirements. In this case, the bandwidth consumed is minimal due to the graphically unintensive nature of Sandra, which is merely simple 2D.
ZD's Business Winstone 2001 measures real world system performance by seeing how fast a system can finish a set of common business tasks, including Microsoft Word 2000, Excel 2000, Access 2000, FrontPage 2000, PowerPoint 2000, Project 98, Norton AntiVirus, Netscape Communicator 4.7, Lotus Notes R5 and NicoMak WinZip.
All applications are run on a multi-tasking basis. The whole benchmark suite is run five times (highest score taken), with automatic hard drive defragmentation and rebooting in between each run. This effectively minimizes the margin of variation to within 3% or less. The final score indicates how much faster the system is compared to ZD's base system.
The 845G is right on track with the 845. Switching over to the integrated graphics results in a 5% drop in performance, pretty much unnoticeable by the end-user.
Again, there is little change in performance compared to the 845. What is interesting however, are the 3D performance numbers for the Intel Extreme Graphics. In Quake III Arena, the GeForce2 MX400 (and hence MX as well) is well over twice as fast as the Intel 845G. 3DMark2001SE shows a similar performance trend.
In all other games however, the performance lead of the GF2 MX400 drops to 50%. Thus, the integrated graphics core provides greater performance than the GF2 MX200. What is impressive is that this is achieved with no programmable pipelines or hardware T&L. While certainly no speed demon by any measure, the integrated graphics core should provide decent 3D gaming performance at lower resolutions and color depths.
The performance trend exhibited in professional 3D applications is similar to that of 3D gaming. POVray does not utilize any hardware assistance and thus the rendering times for the 1024x768 chess set are the same.
SPECviewperf is a portable OpenGL performance benchmark program which provides a vast amount of flexibility in benchmarking OpenGL performance. The SPECviewperf suite consists of 6 viewsets, each corresponding to a particular application, eg. Intergraph's DesignReview (DRV), IBM's Data Explorer (DX) and Alias/Wavefront's Advanced Visualizer.
In the Alias/Wavefront viewset, the 845 and 845G come to a tie, while the Intel Extreme Graphics achieves roughly 85% of the GF2 MX400's performance level.
In the remaining viewsets, the integrated graphics consistently lagged the GF2 MX400. However, this performance disparity disappears in the ProCDRS viewset.
As we have somewhat glossed over the integrated graphics core thus far, let's take a closer look at it. The Extreme Graphics is Intel's first new graphics core since the i752 of 1999. Like the i740 of old, the Extreme Graphics is targeted at the low-cost market, a fact clearly illustrated by its 200MHz single rendering pipeline architecture. Being a SMA (shared memory architecture) solution, the immediate drawback is its memory bandwidth consumption. Obviously, this would negatively influence overall system performance, as the 2.1GB/s of peak bandwidth offered by DDR266 SDRAM isn't sufficient to match the 4.26GB/s of the 533MHz quad-pumped FSB, much less with the integrated graphics core sipping away bandwidth.
Realizing this, Intel has implemented several bandwidth saving measures. Among them are the graphics pipeline's ability of processing 4 textures in a single pass. There is also what Intel dubs Dynamic Video Memory Technology, an acronym for the way the graphics core allocates memory for use. As shared memory architecture implies, the graphics core has no dedicated video memory and must wall off a chunk of main system memory (and hence system memory bandwidth) for its own use. As compared to conventional methods which set aside a fixed chunk of contiguous main system memory, Intel opted to bypass the AGP GART, using its own translation tables for memory addressing. This enables the allocated memory to be non-contiguous and the allocation of memory to be truly dynamic. The GMCH will resize the amount of allocated memory according to application demands, freeing up as much system memory as possible to maximize system performance.
Another bandwidth saving measure is Intel's Zone Rendering Technology. In conventional immediate mode rendering, as each polygon is sent to the graphics hardware, it immediately goes through the pipeline and is rendered into the frame buffer. Any portion of the frame buffer may be drawn at anytime during a single frame. Zone Rendering divides the frame buffer into a number of rectangular zones, rendering all the pixels within a single zone before proceeding to the next. In effect, this approach optimizes the rendering process for the GMCH's internal buffers. Since the depth/Z data is now stored within the chip's cache, depth buffer reads and writes, as well as potential frame buffer updates are eliminated, saving a significant amount of system memory bandwidth.
As we have seen so far, the performance of the Extreme Graphics is in the ballpark of the GeForce2 MX200. Although not impressive by today's standards, it is more than sufficient to provide a decent gaming experience at sufficiently low resolutions and color depths. One positive way to look at it is that the Extreme Graphics should be sufficient to tide you over until say the NV30 and NV35 hit the streets later this year.
The Socket-478 platform is finally an attractive one, especially so for corporate users with the introduction of the 845G and 845GL. The 845E/G/GL can be thought of as simply being a 845 with support for the new 533MHz quad-pumped FSB in terms of performance, which is not too shabby since the 845 was the best performing DDR266 chipset in our P4 Chipset Roundup. The i82801DB ICH4 finally brings 3 USB 2.0 host controllers, placing the 845E/G/GL's South Bridge on par with competing solutions from VIA and SiS. The integrated Extreme Graphics, while not exactly something to write home about does bring about interesting ideas concerning graphics memory bandwidth conservation. Its GeForce2 MX200 level 3D performance is more than sufficient for the corporate user, casual gamer, or those of you whom are building a brand new Pentium 4 system and would rather let the dust settle after the launch of the NV30, NV35 and R300 later this year. Although one would have to sacrifice resolution and color-depth, as the saying goes "no pain no gain".
That said however, some features conspicuously missing are AGP 8X, ATA-133 and DDR333 support. Intel's RDRAM-based 850E chipset is also missing these features, and furthermore, is using the now outmoded i82801BA ICH2. It would be a reasonable conclusion that there will probably be another Intel chipset release towards the ends of the year, quite possibly at the Intel Developers' Forum. For now, the 845G is an excellent DDR266 solution from Intel, and the fairly decent integrated graphics should make 845G-based motherboards a hot sell for value-oriented end-users, corporate and end-users whom for some reason or another are just leery of non-Intel chipsets.
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