IGP Power Consumption Update

 

In our first article, we utilized boards from different manufacturers, enabled each power option available in the BIOS and standardized Vista's power management schemes.  Although each BIOS option appeared similar, the results turned out to be quite different between manufacturers.  In fact, it was the power management features missing that provided the biggest differences between boards. 

After weeks of discussion with AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA about the variety of power management options available in the core BIOS code and then comparing that information to what the supplier implements, we turned our attention to the board suppliers to provide significantly better power management features.  Not only have most responded with improved features or performance, it also appears a greater emphasis from the chipset manufacturers is occurring at this time on new product releases. 

As such, our testing today will utilize boards from Biostar for the AMD 780G and GeForce 8200 chipsets.  The reason being is that most board suppliers will utilize like BIOS code and features along with components for their entry level boards in order to save costs.  Biostar does not supply a G35 board so we will stick with our ASUS sample.  ASUS also offers 780G/GF8200 boards that are very similar to each other in design and price. However, the current boards are being phased out.  They will be replaced shortly by new boards with improved feature sets and the capability to handle 140W TDP processors. 

The important point to make here is that 780G/GF8200 boards from Jetway and ASRock each had very similar BIOS options and board layouts that resulted in comparative numbers between these two chipsets.  Our two Biostar boards do differ, as the 780G is a uATX format while the GF8200 is a standard ATX format board.  However, the Biostar GF8200 board offered the best power consumption numbers in our roundup testing so we will use it as a best-case example.  The same applies for the 780G board from Biostar.

Since our initial article, each board has received several BIOS upgrades along with significant driver changes from the chipset manufacturers.  In doing A/B comparisons between each BIOS and driver change, we did notice improvements in power management for the Intel and AMD products while the NVIDIA numbers increased slightly due to additional performance and features provided by the latest driver set.  We also changed our power supply, fan count, hard drive, and memory components to represent our standard test bed options for future articles.

At idle, the 780G and GF8200 basically tie now.  In previous testing with the Gigabyte 780G board, the 780G was about 7W higher at idle than the Biostar GF8200.  The Intel G35 dropped about 8W after the 0506 BIOS update along with a change in the retail cooler for the E7200.  The H.264 playback numbers favor the AMD and NVIDIA chipsets as they feature hardware acceleration for H.264 that Intel is lacking until the G45 arrives. However, the Intel number did improve around 12W after the latest BIOS, driver, and PowerDVD Ultra updates.  In our final test, the GF8200 performs the best from a pure wattage vantage viewpoint. The 780G actually has the best performance per watt rating based on a 70% increase in frame rates with only a 5% increase in power compared to the GF8200.  The G35 is not recommended for most recent game titles so we will not even comment further on its results.

We will be back on Monday with a look at several different boards and further information about power management features along with performance per watt in additional titles.  In the meantime, we were impressed with the attention Biostar has placed on power management in their IGP boards along with the improvements of our G35 board after a series of BIOS and driver upgrades.