AMD 790GX: RV610 For Enthusiasts?

Test Setup

Notes

It’s worth noting that Hybrid CrossFireX and GeForce Boost are Windows Vista-only features, so you can’t add a card to the AMD or Nvidia platforms and expect to see better gaming performance in XP — a real quandary for the legions of gamers who still prefer XP to Vista.

The MA78GPM-D2SH employs AMD’s 780G chipset with 128 MB of side-port memory massaging performance up a bit. And the MA79GP-DS4H is of course the 790GX board, also with 128 MB of side-port. This should give us a good indication of how much benefit is attributable to the onboard RAM. We also planned to include Gigabyte’s MA78GM and Intel’s new DG45ID in the lineup. However, a spate of issues with the boards we had in the lab forced us to narrow the competition a bit.

Another point that we wanted to mention : when 780G launched, AMD was adamant that the best way to configure a Hybrid CrossFireX platform was with the display attached to the motherboard. During periods of idle, the discrete card would power down completely, yielding the power consumption of a purely integrated system. In testing the 790GX, however, we weren’t able to get Hybrid CrossFireX functioning properly unless the display was attached to the add-in Radeon HD 3470 board.

Finally, bear in mind that the integrated graphics core is heavily dependent on memory bandwidth performance. You’ll want to use DDR2-1066 whenever possible, tuned to the most aggressive timings to maximize gaming.