Review: Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2H/Intel G45 Chipset

12 August 2008 Tags  , , , ,

My initial choice for a G33 board for my HTPC was to get whatever would work for the right price, with the goal of turning it into a gaming capable machine by adding a PCIe x16 graphics card which would also give me DVI/HDMI output. As cool as gaming on a 40" 1080p panel is, the keyboard and mouse just aren't up to scratch in their current forms.

When I needed a new motherboard for a new system (my Windows Home Server box) and I learnt that Intel G45 chipset boards were around the corner, offering AVC/VC1/MPEG2 hardware decoding with DVI/VGA/HDMI out, I put one and one together and ended up purchasing a Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2H motherboard, the only G45 motherboard I could find for sale (at $169) in Australia.

The G45 chipset introduces the GMA X4500 HD, which brings Intel inline with both ATI (780G/HD 3200) and NVIDIA (GeForce 8200) by offering an integrated video chipset capable of hardware assisted decoding of Bluray and HD-DVD's. In reality this translates to reducing CPU usage during playback of hi-def discs by making the GPU do a lot of the work. Previous Intel chipsets have been pretty woeful in this regard, actually hampering playback if hardware assist is enabled.

Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2H Features

IMG_8729

The back panel is fairly well endowed, HDMI/DVI being my main concern, but optical audio out, 6 USB ports, eSATA, Firewire, 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, and six stereo audio jacks.

IMG_8731

Internally it consists of the usual assortment of ports you'll find these days. The only things of interest are 5 SATA ports (6 total in the system, if you include the eSATA port on the back), two PCI slots, a PCIe x1 slot, and a PCIe x16 slot which is only capable of PCIe x4 speeds. I can see the reasoning – people who buy this board should really be using it in a HTPC, and with the newfound speed of G45 an dedicated graphics card isn't needed, but it still seems "wrong". This is an issue specifically with the Gigabyte board not a blanket problem with G45 boards.

Oh, and a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), for all the times you need your HTPC to be uberly secured?

Lets face it, the feature set on this makes it a perfect board for a HTPC, general home computer, or heck, even a workstation/personal server, which has always been the aim of the "G" chipsets from Intel (perhaps Larrabee will change this?). It is not designed as a gaming board, and the PCIe x4 slot posing as a x16 slot makes sure of that.  

The Test

I had trouble enabling Cyberlink's PowerDVD to take advantage of the G45's hardware acceleration, so I turned to ArcSoft's Total Media Theatre (TMT). TMT's CPU usage always seems to be a little higher than PowerDVD's (I'm not sure if it is the application or their codecs), but the latest version worked fine with offloading to GMA 4500 HD.

  CPU Load HA Off CPU Load HA On Power usage HA Off Power usage HA On
V For Vendetta
HD-DVD/VC1		 70 –> 80% ~30% 70 –> 80w 70 –> 80w
Jumper
Bluray (TS-Container)/H.264		 90 –> 100%
(Jerky playback)		 ~30% 83w 61 –> 70w

Jumper used less power (with HW Acceleration On), despite identical CPU load, because the TS contained file was moved to a hard drive, instead of being read from the disc. I'm guessing a Bluray/HD-DVD drive draws 10 –> 15w while playing a movie.

As you can see Hardware Acceleration works for VC1 and H.264/AVC (and one would assume MPEG-2, but I don't have any 1080p MPEG-2 sources) which reduces CPU usage as much as 70%, which in turn reduces power usage by as much as 22w.  The Hardware Acceleration Off values are roughly the same as what the G31/33/35 chipset's will achieve with power usage a watt or two higher.

The Bottom Line

Pro

  • 8 Channel LPCM Audio (ATI's 780G chipset only supports 2 Channel LPCM, but ATI's newer 4000 series cards, and Nvidia's GF 8200 boards have 8 Channel LPCM). While I'd love to use this until I get a better audio system it doesn't matter to me. Still, it's nice to somewhat future proof it.
  • HDMI/DVI/Display Port support
  • "Works as advertised" – X4500 HD does indeed do the hardware accelerated decoding for H.264(AVC), VC1 and MPEG2 as described.
  • Dolby Home Theater (encapsulates all analogue audio to a DD stream, which is handy when you have a 6 channel analogue stream which would otherwise be down-mixed to stereo)

Cons

  • Price. As it stands, it's cheaper to go with a G31/33 motherboard, and throw in a low end video card from ATI or Nvidia and you'll get the same hardware assisted decoding. On the other hand, that will net you higher power consumption, and if you choose a non-passive model noise will be increased.
  • While the PCIe x16 is physically a PCIe x16 slot, you'll only get PCIe x4 speeds out of it.

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