The 780G's northbridge chip has an integrated Radeon HD3200 GPU, so you don't need a graphics card or powerful CPU to build a hi-def multimedia computer. Crossfire support lets you add a graphics card for very good gaming performance.
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/0 [...] g_chipset/

Seems the video card/chipset side of AMD are really showing some impressive products and innovation
780G would be fantastic for laptops.

I'm sure its a very nice chipset.  Pity its tied to the Phailnom.  That's kinda like taking a Ferrari and hitching a donkey to the front, yes?
 
BTW, are they intentionally trying to cause confusion with the (upcoming?) Nvidia 780a?

Quite nice for what it is.

Very Nice.  Can't wait to overclock a laptop on one of these chipsets.  Multi-display with full decoding features.  All around winner no doubt about it.

Good for low end workstations.  Imagin the energy savings (cheep PSU's can be used) and still able to use Vista's graphics.  This would be great for office apps and the like.  Heck it could even take on some old school games.  GJ AMD!

 
It runs Athlon's as well, and besides AMD CPU's have attractive price/performance ratios (and the 5000+ BE also OC's pretty well).
 
And considering that AMD's last-gen chipset was the 680V/G, I would say that 780 is the next logical step up.

I must voice my agreement; this seems to be something that AMD has done pretty solidly right after getting so much wrong; it's precisely the sort of thing I'd been hoping for when I first heard about the idea of more solid on-board graphics.
 
Yeah, the ability to have Blu-Ray playback on a cheap CPU, as well as an extreme level of stability and low TDP? (hence yielding a stupidly high >190% overclocking ceiling?)
 
This is kinda like to chipsets what Wolfdale has become to CPUs.
 
And hot dang... Am I seeing it within sight of even my beloved X800XT's performance? Wow, what a world...

Wow, something new this year that actually is worth reading about.  

Man that looks very promising. I mean even though htpc's are becoming more and more common, now you can actually fit a good performing dvr all in one front end in the living room that actually fits with the rest of your entertainment center. I cant wait to build something with this. Low profile, above average graphics (when in hybrid mode), and the ability to playback every possible codec.  

Wow, I was impressed with the performance and power consumption.  Good to see they are releasing innovative products.  Even THG was impressed with its performance in COD4.

I'm a little confused.  I thought I understood what an average was.  On page 13 I see what I think an average is... but on page 12 I see something.... that they're calling an average... but doesn't look like an average.
 
let me know where I mess up.
378.3 + 283.4 + 166.5 + 168.8 + 231.2 + 213.8 = 1442 / 6 = 240% Average Overall performance improvement.  Where does the 352.9 number come from?  To me it looks like the new chip is 2.4X as fast, not 3.5X.

For the last several years, PC gaming has been under fire from console/gamemakers. I think this is a step in the right direction. Others may too  : Tom's Games: What do you see as the biggest threat to PC gaming?
 
Mark Rein: At Epic Games we have our narrow view of PC gaming. We make these high-end action-movie type games that really push hardware. That's our whole raison d'être. Our view is pretty narrow so you have to take it with a grain of salt but we're interested in preserving the ability to ship those high-end shipped-on-a-disc super high-end experiences that... I said "high-end" twice. That's how high-end; double high-end. That's our goal: to preserve the ability to ship those kinds of action-movie type games on the PC.
 
The trend with those games is that they're going to the console in huge numbers. There're a lot of reasons for it but to us it's something worth saving. There're a lot more PCs out there than there are Xbox 360s and Playstation 3s combined but unfortunately people aren't using them as entertainment devices; at least not for gaming. If I buy a laptop from Best Buy chances are it won't be able to play the kinds of games we make. That is an area of influence that we'd like to have so we can convince people to fix that situation and have a more level playing field.
 
Why is a $3000 laptop, or in the case of the Macbook Air, why is a $2000 laptop less capable of playing games than a $280 game console? That's my point. We're not talking about putting an NVIDIA 8800 in every single one of those machines but the Macbook Pro is a perfect example. It's got an 8600 GT perfectly capable of playing games. If that was our minimum spec we'd be in great shape. Everybody could at least get some experience gaming and then decide, "Do I want to continue gaming on my PC? Do I want to upgrade? Do I want to get a bigger high-end rig?"
 
I think ultimately for the Dells of this world that's a positive thing because they could try and sell [users] a higher-margin device. But those lower-priced devices have to at least give people enough to get the experience; to get bitten by the bug, if you will. That's [the PCGA's] main goal. There're others as well. Piracy's a huge problem. It'd be great to have the industry work together to figure out how to resolve that but it's a much tougher problem. [Piracy's] a huge obstacle but shrinking the difference between the low-end hardware and the high-end hardware is important. It's just limiting our audience.
 
Thats from the Mark Rein interview. I hope this has that effect, and preserves and lifts the potential of PC gaming

Me thinks the laptop and Walmart/Best Buy Desktop PC world is going to be seeing a good change with this.  Hell it may be do something to increase AMD's OEM based sales.  We might actually see baseline PC's that can do just about anything for less than $500, and if you want to do more recent games, just drop in a hybrid capable discrete card.  Not to mention with the price going down on HD and Blue ray drives, a new HTPC build to go with my TV is looking phat right now, especially if they release the 9100e soon.  
 
And to add, I'm expecting things to get real interesting in the laptop arena, 780g chipset plus 9100e if it manages to be good performance with low power=quad core laptop with gaming ability at a cheap price.  Not to mention if they decide to do a hybrid xfire solution in those laptops.  
 
Just curious about one thing though, I noticed they said that AMD gave the motherboard manu's the ability to give the 780g's hd3200 dedicated memory, so that it wouldn't need to share system memory.  I wonder if some dedicated DDR3 or DDR4 wouldn't have an impact on performance?

Yeah, mathos, OEM's will push a lot of this chipsets onto the market. Oh, far as the memory goes, it will still take from your system RAM, but now, you can set how much it does take.

You could do this before, set as much as youd like, within parameters. This is different "For the first time ever, AMD is also equipping its integrated graphics chip with a separate memory interface. This allows motherboard makers and OEMs to provide dedicated graphics memory for the integrated chip directly on the board, if they find the GPU's performance unsatisfactory, or don't wish to use a shared-memory solution. In effect, this transforms the integrated on-chip graphics solution into a dedicated graphics card that just happens to reside in the northbridge." Its better/quicker and even possbly can be made to have its own

Wow, they made the GPU overclock almost 100% without hardly any effort  or instability! But why would they ship it as is with the 500Mhz core where if after much testing they find they can clock it higher and verify its stability, make a great product even better. Not only that the OC provides a massive gain in performance according to the charts. Bravo AMD.

Indeed. The sheet is labeled with "improvement" over the percentages. It does not show the improvement over the 690g but the speed relative to the 690g.

It is 240% faster (2.4).

I have critized the labeling of the sheets in other reviews and now it seems, they have finally fallen victim to it themself.

Good catch.

Some board manufacturers might go that route. Clock the chip higher and equip it with dedicated memory.  
 
Clocking it higher made no sense for AMD though, since the power consumption would rise and, as it seems, AMD is very careful about that. It uses shared memory which means that performance is not their main concern.

Ok Tom's come on... Did I miss something or was this review just a few short of really being a good article?
 
Which CPU did you use in your benchmark testing?  When I look at your VGA charts I see two 2600XT cards, which one did you actually use?  For Pray, your charts say 65, your review says 41, so why would a "graphics" bench be off 50%?  Was your graphics bench tainted by an underpowered CPU?
 
The ability to put a low cost GPU in xfire and produce some real speed is of great appeal, but how can we get a feel for this without a clear reference point?  If you could bench say, an 8800GT on this system, then compare the xfire, those results could be more meaningful.
 
This article was better... but it still left some pretty big holes.