Building a system on the new AMD 780G chipset....video question...

March 11, 2008 9:47 AM

I’m building my first desktop system in many many years now and getting back up to speed on all the hot topics is taking a while. I’m leaning towards getting the GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H which is based on the 780G northbridge so it has the integrated graphics with the hybrid crossfire feature (and also is miniATX size and has audio optical out, HDMI…). Review here and here continued...

My question is, if I add in one of the $50 low end radeon video cards to utilize the hybrid crossfire, and the performance in gaming is not really what I want – is there anything preventing me from nixing integrated graphics entirely and putting in one of the mid-level cards in the ~$200 range from a performance standpoint? Not totally understanding the details of the NB and SB, and cache and piplines.......i just don’t want to hurt myself by not looking at other boards.

I’m building this machine to be both a home theatre pc able to play bluray, as well as able games at playable framerates with pretty decent settings.

The cpu I’m looking at is either going to be the new 4850e (low power, but only 2.2ghz) or whichever 65w I can find a good deal on in something like 5200 2.7ghz

posted by joshgray to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Sorry screwed up the links to reviews:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3258

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/amd-780g-chipset-review.ars
posted by joshgray at 9:48 AM on March 11

Yes, from the article it seems you can put in a $200 video card and disable the integrated graphics and go from there. From the sound of it, you could also just keep the integrated graphics turned on and utilize the power there too. With the hybrid crossfire, it seems you are limited to the 2400 and 3400 series of ATI cards.

They also noted that the 780G chipset doesn't offer "multi-channel LPCM audio over the HDMI interface" which I don't really understand but you may want to look into.

If your main concern is an HTPC (home theater PC), then I'd recommend you browse AVSForum and there will surely be discussions about which compenents to choose. In fact, there is a thread about the motherboard you're thinking about.
posted by escher at 10:31 AM on March 11

Escher, thanks for the reply - yup i saw that on the AVSForum the other day about the lack of true HD audio over HDMI - that's why i'm liking the optical audio out on board. Ah decisions...
posted by joshgray at 10:37 AM on March 11

Wow, this thread on the avsforum is amazingly helpful link
posted by joshgray at 11:16 AM on March 11