By: Sarju Shah Posted on March 4, 2008

　　Budget products normally don't carry the same cachet as their high-end brethren, but they do make for cost-effective solutions. When we think of inexpensive motherboard chipsets, we have visions of lackluster onboard video solutions slapped together with few connectivity and upgrade options. AMD's new 780G motherboard chipset brings users onboard graphics that almost rival discrete graphics solutions and does so at a palatable price point. Systems built using a 780G based motherboard will accept everything from a budget-level Athlon X2 all the way to the quad-core Phenom.

　　

The 780G

The 780G's most noteworthy feature is the onboard Radeon HD 3200 GPU. It's the first onboard video solution to support DirectX 10, and it also has a new hybrid graphics mode. Hybrid graphics lets you plug in a second GPU to work alongside the integrated graphics for better overall gaming performance. Dual GPU solutions perform, at best, twice as fast as the weakest link. In this case we're bottlenecked early on by the Radeon HD 3200. The following add-in GPUs will function in hybrid mode with the Radeon HD 3200: the Radeon HD 3450, Radeon HD 3470, Radeon HD 2400 Pro, and Radeon HD 2400 XT. The onboard Radeon HD 3200, even in hybrid mode, is useful for light gaming on older titles. Newer titles will likely run at playable frame rates but at low quality and resolution settings. You will need a more powerful GPU to play newer games with higher quality and resolution settings.

　　The onboard Radeon HD 3200 comes with the built-in Universal Video Decoder (UVD) found in other Radeon HD GPUs. UVD accelerates decoding for VC-1, MPEG-2, and H.264 video formats and reduces overall CPU utilization when playing back DVDs, HD DVDs, Blu-ray discs, or HD video files.

　　AMD's OverDrive utility also functions on the 780G platform. OverDrive lets users easily overclock the CPU, system bus, and even the video card for increased performance.

　　Our sample Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H micro-ATX motherboard comes with five internal SATA ports with support for RAID, one eSATA port, 12 USB ports, one firewire port, and the ubiquitous IDE and floppy disk drive ports. The motherboard has both DVI and VGA outputs, in addition to an HDMI output useful for connecting to HDTVs. Internal connectivity options include one PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot, one PCI Express x1 slot, and two additional PCI slots. You'll also find the usual array of audio inputs and onboard networking. The 780G supports up to 16GB of 1066MHz DDR2 memory.

　　Motherboards based on the 780G will vary in configuration and cost from $80 up to $120. To build a complete system you'll still need a bunch of other parts like the CPU, RAM, drives, and the like. End power requirements and noise will vary depending on how fancy you want to get with the other components.

　　System Setup: AMD Athlon X2 4850e, Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GB x 2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit. Graphics Card: Radeon HD 3200, Radeon HD 3450, Radeon HD 2600 Pro, Radeon HD 2400 XT. Graphics Driver: Catalyst 8.2, beta Catalyst 8.47_RC2

　　

Performance

We paired the 780G with an AMD Athlon X2 4850e CPU to see how the system would perform. The Athlon X2 4850e is a low-power, cost-effective CPU that fits well with the theme of a 780G-based system. The onboard Radeon HD 3200 barely managed to squeak out playable frame rates at low-quality settings with new titles like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3. We paired up the Radeon HD 3200 with the Radeon HD 3450 to test out hybrid graphics. Hybrid graphics boosted performance in all of our tests, but we're not quite convinced of the feature's cost-effectiveness. You're better off purchasing the Radeon HD 2400 XT or the Radeon HD 2600 Pro; both cost nearly as much as the Radeon HD 3450 and offer better performance as single cards.

　　

Conclusion

The 780G excels in situations where noise, power, and cost requirements count. Pairing budget CPUs like the Athlon X2 4850e with the 780G yield low power requirements that make for an ideal home-theater PC that sits quietly alongside other home-theater components. The 780's onboard Radeon HD 3200 performs well for an onboard graphics solution, but that's like winning the "Most Improved Batter" award in T-ball. Performance may be superior to onboard graphics, but it isn't enough to satisfy users who play demanding 3D games. However, dedicated gamers can easily transform the 780G into a capable machine by installing high-end components like quad-core CPUs and dual-slot GPUs.