AMD 780G 's Radeon HD 3200 performance

It's has 40 stream processors and is the best IGP on the market today. I upgraded my son's PC with an ASUS 780G and an Athlon X2 4200+

The only drawback with the motherboards is that the manufacturer's (not the chipset) limit the CPU's to 65 or 95 watt. Newer Phenom 125 watt B3's will fry the board.

Graphics wise it's like a complete last generation low end GPU. It works well in hybrid Crossfire with a 2400, 3450 or 3470 discrete GPU. Here are some previews and reviews:

Tom's covers the IGP in detail:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/0 [...] g_chipset/

The graphics core can even be overclocked, and hybrid Crossfire brings 65% more performance.

Sharky Extreme looks at budget gaming performance:

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardw [...] 3732211__1

Anandtech previews video playback:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3258&p=2

My son's 7 1/2 years old, and he's very mature as far as CRPG's go (he loves fantasy movies). He's been playing Fate (E 10+), Icewind Dale (T) and HOMM 3, 4 and 5 (T). The 780G's IGP can handle HOMM 5, which is the most graphically intensive game on his system. I installed Morrowind to test it and it runs Morrowind fine (he doesn't play Morrowind because it involves first person view fighting people, and not just goblins or monsters).

Later, I'll install Oblivion long enough to see if it can actually handle Oblivion (though we don't let him play M rated games). We don't have a 3470 yet, so it's not doing hybrid Crossfire. Overall, I'd say that the 780G board is a great budget PC solution for an Athlon X2 65 watt CPU system that's not used for the most recent games.

The boards will take a 95 watt Phenom, but that's probably a B2, so why bother? Perhaps they will have bios updates in December that will allow for a 65 watt 45nm Deneb. We can only hope.

Just remember that fact when purchasing a 780G they were not intended to run highend chips. I think they only have 3 phase power to the CPU and anything higher than 95w will make your mobo go POOF!

As far as onboard graphics, they have an ATI HD3200 which is by far the best onboard you are currently going to get. It is enough to run HD video and general fluffy vista graphics. Maybe some older gaming but nothing new. Might play farcry pretty well but anything more will choke.

If I was going to build a cheap decent PC or HTPC, THIS is what I would get. You save a bunch on graphics and you can get an AMD chip really cheap to throw in there. This gives a $500 budget system a new name.

I've got one and hope to be building in a week or two. I got the Gigabyte board and plan to set up an active cooling system so I can OC it to 950-1000 (from stock 500). I wish it the onboard memory. I heard that helps a lot. When I do get mine up and running (and OC'ed) I hope to get and post some real world performance numbers.

Not bad. That's an impressive OC on your X2. Surprising it doesn't get you a little higher '06 score

This is not an AMD vs Intel pissing match!



I am also running a 6000+ Oced to 3.4 with a 3dmark 06 score of over 12,400 for the last month and a half.

The Phenom power issue isn't true of all 780G boards.

I have an Asus M3A-H, which has 4+1 phase power, which seems to be the most robust power management of all the 780G boards. Lots of people run the 125+ watt Phenoms on it just fine. It does need a lot of BIOS work done out of the box though, and won't support the better Phenoms until a flash is done.

As for the integrated graphics, yes... it's the best out there at the moment. Additionally, the onboard GPU can be overclocked to extreme amounts. Furthermore, you can crossfire it with a 3450 (as long as you have Vista), which are available for dirt cheap (think cheapest on the Egg is around $20), suck low wattage, and can be passively cooled. That solution won't be a gaming monster, but it will be able to play at more modest settings... silently, cheaply, and efficiently.

It would make a great media center PC.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc [...] R1002_USEN

Damn Bargain !