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Hardware Intel Fesses up to G45 Performance Issues
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - August 15, 2008 12:45 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 49 comment(s) - last by Targon.. on Aug 21 at 9:50 AM
Intel blames software partners for one of the most severe issues

Intel launched its G45 chipset featuring its latest integrated graphics only a few weeks ago. So far, the response to the chipset and motherboards using the chipset has been a mixed bag by Intel's own admission.

Aaron Brezenski wrote a blog entry this week on the Intel Software Network that was titled, "Welcome to G45! Better (but still imperfect…)." In the blog, Brezenski wrote that Intel's competition -- AMD -- put together a demo booth stating that HP laptops using Intel's G45 did not accelerate Blu-ray playback. AMD maintains that its integrated graphics were able to playback Blu-ray without issue.

Brezenski points out the fact that AMD fails to offer any specifications as far as the CPUs used in the systems and Intel maintains it was not an apples to apples comparison. Despite that fact, Brezenski acknowledge that the demo showed Intel's CPU to be 100% utilized -- a clear indication that Blu-ray acceleration was not taking place.

Brezenski also talked a bit about review ExtremeTech did of an Intel DG45ID motherboard, which also found that Blu-ray acceleration didn't work. Even after an update to the review, the Intel system was still only able to score 30 out a possible 100 on the HD HQV test performed.

Brezenski says that his sources -- presumably within Intel -- have told him that the low HD HQV test scores were the result of a software player issue. Brezenski says that properly configured advanced de-interlacing would raise scores 20 points higher, and while he admits those scores are still not perfect, he says they are workable. Brezenski hopes driver tweaks will help improve performance even more in the future.

Using Arcsoft Total Media Player, Brezenski says that Blu-ray acceleration is clearly working, as indicated by CPU utilization lower than 20% on all Blu-ray materials. The big issue with G45 according to Brezenski is that stuttering every 15 seconds of Blu-ray playback at 24 Hz is still an issue. The same problem with stuttering was seen in previous Intel products including G965 andG35. According to Brezenski, Intel believed the stuttering at 24 Hz with the G965 and G35 platforms was due to the SDVO chips being used for HDMI with Intel graphics. That has proven to be incorrect since the same chips are not used on G45.

That's not the least of G45 problems. Perhaps the biggest issue of all -- especially considering G45 was expected to be an excellent HTPC chipset -- is that G45 is still unable to send 7.1 surround sound through a receiver. Considering the vast majority of home theater enthusiasts -- possibly the most likely to use the G45 chipset -- will have AV receivers in their home theaters, this one issue will be a deal killer for the majority of home theater enthusiasts.

Brezenski says that this is not a problem with Intel's hardware; rather the problem is that standard COPP protocols used in current software players do not support the use of repeaters. He goes on to say that, software players available don't take advantage of OPM, which does support repeaters.

Brezenski writes in his blog post, "I don't know what we can do at Intel to implore our partners in the software player companies to get this done (implement OPM), but we need them to implement a fix for this issue ASAP. I know we must be engaged with them on this, I just don't see why it's not implemented yet. It's been at least three months, and it's making us, not them, look bad in the marketplace."

Despite all the problems Brezenski still maintains that G45 is the perfect home theater chipset. Intel's inability to get its latest integrated graphics functioning correctly for home theater use -- whether or not Intel is at fault -- may leave many wondering how they'll be able to pull off a more complicated discrete graphics processor based on Larrabee in the future.

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Same old same old...
By Amiga500 on 8/15/2008 12:57:46 PM , Rating: 5
Our next graphics chipset will work... honest.




RE: Same old same old...
By Amiga500 on 8/15/2008 1:05:10 PM , Rating: 5
Oh... and Larrabee is an x86 based GPU... which will rely heavily on what to perform to a high standard?

Yeap, you've guessed it... SOFTWARE.


RE: Same old same old...
By michael2k on 8/15/2008 2:13:09 PM , Rating: 2
The good news is that Intel is actually good at that. Witness blu-ray taking 100% CPU, for example :)


RE: Same old same old...
By nosfe on 8/15/2008 2:41:14 PM , Rating: 4
yep, they really know how to write drivers that use 100% of the CPU, no wasted resources from intel


RE: Same old same old...
By MrPoletski on 8/15/2008 9:07:50 PM , Rating: 2
yep not a single cycle wasted (as in left for system idle process). you'd better buy yerself a faster processor (from intel of course) if you wanna get it done quicker though.


RE: Same old same old...
By Penti on 8/15/2008 2:15:00 PM , Rating: 2
Well all hardware does rely on software - the driver. As long as the hardware does the stuff DX/OGL asks for through the driver fast enough it will be fine without specialized instructions/operations. It's not that any hardware run D3D or OGL directly, it's just specialized for the stuff. They won't have standard floating point or vector units (SIMD) anyway.


RE: Same old same old...
By daftrok on 8/16/2008 5:14:24 AM , Rating: 5
Oh please it's just a cop out. When Sony was having lackluster performance on their 2006-2007 Vaios they were blaming Vista. Nvidia blamed software, Intel blames software, SSD blamed software. Just because you make hardware doesn't mean it entitles you to disregard checking if the software works properly. What was Intel's rush bringing out G45 anyways? If these companies just spend an extra month making sure their sh*t works maybe it won't end up screwing over millions of customers.


RE: Same old same old...
By Penti on 8/17/2008 6:55:30 AM , Rating: 2
It doesn't, but it was a Larrabee comment.

However it's not like any of the companies that makes mediaplayers are that good themselfs. And you can't claim that Intel should start writing there own codecs and players. They however failed to work with those companies and that's there own fault.


RE: Same old same old...
By Suomynona on 8/15/08, Rating: -1
RE: Same old same old...
By teldar on 8/15/2008 5:28:41 PM , Rating: 2
It sounds like the sb700 and SB750 are both well worth having. It would just be nice if AMD were willing to include a ethernet controller in their chipset like everyone else does.


RE: Same old same old...
By rudolphna on 8/15/2008 9:33:51 PM , Rating: 4
They are. I own 3 Radeon Chipset computers. (Xpress 1250, AMD 780G, and an AMD 770.) All are completely stable. The 3850 and 2600XTs I have are also completely stable. The only problems I have with any of them are caused by the Crap Netgear Wireless card on one. While I have never had problems with intel, beyond i915G troubles, even you have to admit, that AMD graphics chipsets are far more capable when it comes to gaming. I can play WoW at 1280x800, with 0x AA and otherwise max settings on the Xpress 1250 at completely playable framerates. The intel can barely run it at 800x500


RE: Same old same old...
By voodooboy on 8/15/2008 1:58:05 PM , Rating: 2
Reading this comment right after reading the entire article, it looked as if you'd quoted that Aaron guy saying that...funny stuff :D


RE: Same old same old...
By tallcool1 on 8/16/2008 7:47:35 AM , Rating: 5
Intel graphics have always been horrible, "barely enough" should be their motto.

Funny how all of a sudden when Intel talks about releasing a new graphics chip "Larrabee", Anandtech acts like its going to be the next greatest thing when history tells us, not likely. However when AMD/ATI released the 4870 X2 showing top notch performance, the Anand review made it sound like it was a botched piece of hardware not worth buying.

Anand summerized the first page of their 4870 X2 review by ending it with the following quote:
quote:
Enough with being distracted by AMD's product lineup, let's talk about the competition.


WHAT?!?!


RE: Same old same old...
By inv on 8/16/2008 11:44:39 AM , Rating: 3
When was the last time you read a GFX/CPU review that didn't try and sway its visitors into a bias towards company X, or felt that the numbers were a little odd. It's a shame, I don't know what to believe these days!


RE: Same old same old...
By iocedmyself on 8/19/2008 5:56:04 AM , Rating: 5
No review is completely devoid of bias, but i agree with those who fear anand will go the way of tomshardware. I used to be a loyal reader of THG, but now i just read it to make fun of those who write the craptastic articles. While Anand isn't as biased by any means they still seem to heavly favor Intel/nvidia, their saving grace is well written articles that more often than not are factual with the bias being kept to the obvious form of the writer opinion.

However the shameless pimping of Nehalem/larrabee and to a lessar extent the GTX260/280 proves that no matter how well informed the hardware journalists may be, they still pimp what they're paid to and that makes them whores.

Intel IGP's up until very recently struggled to display the desktop animations in WinXp, and more depressingly Win2K. When intel was asked about this chipsets support of Blu-ray/HD video playback they always skirted the question by rattling off it's features and an indirect comment indicating that it would support it though they couldn't officially say so. Pretty much a "well what would be the selling point of the IGP if it couldn't go up against AMD's version" wink wink, nudge nudge.

The Nehalem silcon is a carbon copy of AMD's with a die shrink and the same poor 64bit performance. That's what no one seems to acknowledge, AMD doesn't care about 32bit performance it's focused on 64bit, and Intel is using AMD's x86-64 code on their chips so they know it's futile to try and compete in 64bit thus they downplay it's benifits and push 32bit.

After reading the review of the Nehalem on here I clocked my 9850 phenom to 2.66ghz and ran the 64bit version of cinebench and compared the results to the 32bit results of Intels new baby. In single core performance intel had a 5% lead, in multicore intel's lead went up to just under 15%. 15% clock-for-clock performance gain for a chip that will most likely cost $1000-$1300 MORE than an AMD chip. Granted the test board and drivers weren't mature, that's still not hugely impressive, by no means worth the fact that you can build 2 high performance AMD rigs for the cost of an Intel flagship cpu that will be replaced in 3 months by something that has near identical performance, half the cache and half the cost.

The larrabee just makes me laugh. Its design team is the same guy's that are responsible for netburst, and one of the industry's high level players has the opinion of

"well i think larrabee is the result of the same guys that brought us the pentium 4 needing something to do, and larrabee is the kind of thing they do well. Bringing you the best 1996 had to offer..."

Intel has already released the info that announces their impending doom,

"The larrabee will be capable of UP TO 16 FLOPS / per clock/per core."

while people ignore the creative wording of the performance even under the best circumstances the math is still straightforward. For a single 65nm core the performance will be
1 GHZ clock = 16 Gigaflop/sec
2 GHZ clock = 32 Gigaflops/sec
3 Ghz Clock = 48 Gigaflops/sec

It's easy to see how larrabee will be so ground-breaking. The top performing GPU core is only putting out a measely

750mhz clock = Teraflop/sec (1000 Gigaflop/sec)

Doing so on a 55nm core, with 512mb - 1024mb of GDDR5 running at speeds of 3600 - 4400mhz with no hardware modifacation.

To even make par Intel would need to have a 32 core larrabee with a clock of 2ghz, and they are still at least a year and a half away from doing that. The first release is claimed to be an 8 core chip, which means that it's computation power will be

2ghz clock = 32 GF/s x 8 = 256 GF/s
3Ghz Clock = 48 GF/s x 7 = 384 GF/s

Well i should say that is the peak performance, ya know when it launches in another 6+ months it will have UP TO BETWEEN 1/4 and 1/3 the performance of a gpu that's already near 2 months old.

Intel can't get a single core IGP to work properly, doesn't have the greatest track record with multi-core cpu's...but they'll get it....this time. Riiiiggghhtt

In regard to Nvidia, they have just been milking the G80 core for the past 2 years, die shrinks, memory upgrades, different cooling and small tweaks that should have been nothing more than a refresh released under the same GPU nane, Probably has something to do with the fact that the 8800 GTX ultra was still $550+ a month ago.

I prefer AMD/ATI, i admit my bias, i used to be a die hard intel/nvidia fan, until they stopped making progress but kept raising prices. I had a 2900xt for a year and a half, just traded it in for 4870. I used it in 64bit Vista ultimate with a 939 dual core toledo and could play Crysis in ulta high setting in 1280x1024 with 40 FPS minimum. As i got the card for free, i had no complaints. There were alot of features that never got used that would have increased performance hugely, but i didn't find it lackluster enough to covet an 8800 ultra.

Intel is great for 32bit enviorments, and for those who count the frame rates when they play games, and don't mind blowing a couple extra grand on their system every 6 months. AMD is better for 64bit enviorments, multitasking and workstation 3D rendering apps/ video editing, and for those that like to build a computer every 6 months but don't want to spend more than $600 or $700 to get high performance.


RE: Same old same old...
By ICE1966 on 8/17/2008 8:30:01 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, I get very annoyed by people always trying to put down a product because they are biased. Botton line is the Intel chipset has problems, be it software or hardware. AMD intergrated graphics are plainly just better, thats all. AMD cpus are great cpus. They may not over clock like the intel, but who cares. If you must buy a lesser clocked cpu that will over clock just so you can say you have a 3ghz processor, then maybe you should wait till you have enough money to afford the properly clocked cpu. Intel is not the "do no wrong" company people think they are. the 4870 X2 is a great card, with great performance. The visual look of the ATI cards have always been better than Nvidia. nvidia just cannot seem to get rid of the "washed out" look to thier color. I am going back to ATI now that they have a very strong video card out there. I really should have never left using thier graphic cards just gain a few frames per second in performance.

I hope that Anandtech does not get like Tom's hardware. I never read the biased website of Tom's hardware anymore.


RE: Same old same old...
By tedrodai on 8/18/2008 10:37:42 AM , Rating: 4
You're being sarcastic right?

quote:
I get very annoyed ...because they are biased.

quote:
AMD intergrated graphics are plainly just better, thats all.

quote:
They may not <blah blah>, but who cares.

quote:
The visual look of the ATI cards have always been better than Nvidia


Forgive me, I know this topic is beat to death constantly, but sometimes I just can't help but make a time-wasting response.


RE: Same old same old...
By ICE1966 on 8/19/2008 10:15:43 PM , Rating: 2
Why would you think I'm being sarcastic?

AMD intergrated graphics are better than Intels.

The color and sharpness of ATI cards have always been better than Nvidias.

If you are a benchmark freak, then a C2D is what you need in an cpu, but if you want a workhorse thats stable{one that you don't have to overclock} to have great performance, then AMD is the way to go. Maybe you need to waste your time somewhere else,LOL.


Huh?
By jtesoro on 8/15/2008 1:03:25 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
Despite all the problems Brezenski still maintains that G45 is the perfect home theater chipset.


Huh? Am I missing something here?