After nearly a month of struggling with problems, we finally published our review of Intel's G45 in the first part of this series we hastily called the IGP Chronicles. Part I looked at Intel's G45 and compared it to its predecessor, G35. Initially touted as the holy grail of HTPC chipsets, G45's advantages on paper were plagued by too many real issues for us to get excited about it. Not that we were totally disappointed with the chipset as an HTPC platform, we just knew Intel could have done better and in the end they did not. Of course, as we alluded to in our Radeon HD 4550 review, all you really need is one of AMD's lower end cards and you can use any chipset you want for a decent HTPC.

As a business platform, G45 works just as well as G35 or any other Intel chipset so there are no complaints there. Besides less than desirable HTPC attributes we discovered casual gaming performance is a big disappointment considering the chipset specifications. Paper specifications aside, gaming performance - casual or otherwise - is just dismal even on popular titles that are several years old.

We fully understand that casual gaming is not the be all end all measurement of an IGP solution, but a vast majority of systems sold to home users are designed, marketed, and sold as an all purpose solution for the household utilizing an IGP design. As such, we do think it is an important attribute to consider, along with video/audio capabilities, graphic design, and general application performance.

With Intel commanding the lion's share of the IGP market for years and mindlessly rolling out product that met the lowest common denominator in performance for the corporate market, any real hope for improved integrated graphics solutions slid off into oblivion. This is not to say that AMD, VIA, and NVIDIA solutions were not better at the time; they were, but just enough so they could market and advertise superior performance. However, their platform solutions were still underwhelming.

AMD in particular is responsible for bringing the integrated graphics platform back to respectability. The 690G chipset was an excellent first step over a year ago and then AMD released the 780G chipset earlier this year. The 780G chipset release brought the integrated graphics market back to the limelight. Utilizing a graphics core directly out of their current discrete GPU lineup, AMD provided us with a platform that easily handled Blu-ray playback, offered adequate game performance, made a snap out of spreadsheet and digital imaging work, and wrapped all of this in a very energy efficient package. The only real problem we had with the 780G was the lack of multi-channel LPCM HDMI audio output for HTPC users.

NVIDIA followed suit with their GeForce 8200/8300 series, but gaming performance fell between the AMD and Intel solutions in most cases. However, application performance equaled that of the 780G and NVIDIA provided the elusive multi-channel LPCM HDMI output that was sorely missing on the 780G platform. We have grown fond of the GF8200 as an HTPC solution, particularly after a series of driver updates that really let this chipset shine in BD playback. We expect to see a generational improvement in the GeForce 9300/9400 series, something akin to the leap AMD took from the 690G to the 780G and finally to the 790GX.

Finally, there is no perfect IGP solution at this time. Intel’s G45 offers decent HTPC capabilities and leverages off Intel’s excellent Core 2 series of processors, but gaming performance is flawed, BD playback abilities are hindered by drivers, and the chipset is expensive. AMD’s 780G is nearly perfect for the current market but the lack of multi-channel LPCM really eliminates it from most HTPC configurations and gaming performance could still be better. NVIDIA’s GeForce 8200 is the best current HTPC solution as of this article date but casual gaming performance is somewhere between the G45 and 780G. The other issue is that the stronger IGPs are both Socket-AM2 platforms, when the more desirable CPUs are from Intel. We will discuss what our requirements are for the ideal integrated graphics platform later on.

So today, we widen our perspective as we compare G45 not only to G35, but also to its current Socket-AM2 counterparts from AMD and NVIDIA. We will follow up this article with a full roundup of motherboards featuring the AMD 780G, AMD 790GX, and NVIDIA 8200/750a chipsets. Our final article in this series will focus on budget to midrange discrete video card performance on these products along with processor suggestions for each platform.

The Lay of the Land

While Part I focused exclusively on Intel's G35 and G45, today we've got contenders from both AMD and NVIDIA. First up we have the AMD 780G, quite possibly the best chipset AMD has ever made. The more recent addition to the integrated graphics family is the 790GX, bringing an updated Southbridge and faster graphics clock.

From NVIDIA we have the only two single-chip solutions in today's roundup: the GeForce 8300 and 8200. Sometime last year NVIDIA decided that it needed a renewed focus on its chipsets, and part of that strategy was to strengthen its chipset brands. The nForce brand would eventually be phased out and replaced by the name GeForce. We've got two chipsets from NVIDIA and both of these carry the GeForce brand name: the GeForce 8200 and GeForce 8300 aren't graphics cards, they are chipsets. Technically they have nForce names as well but just as Intel's latest IGP chipset is called the G45, NVIDIA's is called the GeForce 8300. Simple enough.

Looking at the Southbridges, you'll find that they are all fairly evenly matched. Remember that NVIDIA's GeForce 8300/8200 are single-chip solutions so some of the items in the list don't apply. Both AMD and NVIDIA keep their additional PCIe lanes in the Northbridge while Intel keeps them in the Southbridge/ICH. Both the AMD and NVIDIA solutions still give you at least one PATA channel, which is useful for older HDDs and optical drives.