Power Consumption
Our power consumption numbers are based on our test setup for this article and each board has C1E/EIST turned off. We will provide additional power and thermal numbers in our µATX roundup articles. The G965 consumes a little more power due to the additional circuitry onboard for the X3000 graphics core but we were surprised the difference was not greater.
Quick Take
Our initial performance results indicate a toss up as to which solution is better. That was to be expected as we have two almost identical boards from a features and BIOS perspective that only differ in their use of chipsets and layout design. Even though the chipsets are different, they are based on the same core logic so any real performance differences would be derived from BIOS tuning, options, and the quality of board components.
While the G965 boards will never overclock as well as their P965 siblings, the base performance is almost identical if you have the ability to tune the board. This is a limitation of the chipset and not the µATX board design. On the AM2 side, we have already seen excellent overclocking results from the abit and DFI µATX boards and expect even better performance with their GeForce 7050 designs next month. Also, the performance differences between AM2 solutions in the µATX and ATX designs mirror our test results on the Intel platform for the most part.
We have a few µATX boards with the G965 chipset that have very limited BIOS options, but even so our initial performance tests only indicate up to a 2% difference in most test results due to the memory timings being the prime differentiator in the scores. In fact, probably the biggest difference we have witnessed in our game tests is 5% between a top tier P965 ATX board that has been tuned and a base level G965 µATX board from Intel utilizing auto settings. Our application tests vary from 1% to 3% in scores at stock CPU settings between the two boards with DDR2-800 memory.
In the end, we feel like your choice of a µATX or ATX solution should be dictated by the requirements of the system (price, features, layout, overclocking, warranty, etc.). The use of an integrated graphics chipset will not inherently reduce performance relative to a discrete graphics chipsets, provided you use identical components. It will be the other aspects - particularly overclocking if that's a concern - that will warrant the use of a discrete graphics chipset rather than an IGP solution.
Our power consumption numbers are based on our test setup for this article and each board has C1E/EIST turned off. We will provide additional power and thermal numbers in our µATX roundup articles. The G965 consumes a little more power due to the additional circuitry onboard for the X3000 graphics core but we were surprised the difference was not greater.
Quick Take
Our initial performance results indicate a toss up as to which solution is better. That was to be expected as we have two almost identical boards from a features and BIOS perspective that only differ in their use of chipsets and layout design. Even though the chipsets are different, they are based on the same core logic so any real performance differences would be derived from BIOS tuning, options, and the quality of board components.
While the G965 boards will never overclock as well as their P965 siblings, the base performance is almost identical if you have the ability to tune the board. This is a limitation of the chipset and not the µATX board design. On the AM2 side, we have already seen excellent overclocking results from the abit and DFI µATX boards and expect even better performance with their GeForce 7050 designs next month. Also, the performance differences between AM2 solutions in the µATX and ATX designs mirror our test results on the Intel platform for the most part.
We have a few µATX boards with the G965 chipset that have very limited BIOS options, but even so our initial performance tests only indicate up to a 2% difference in most test results due to the memory timings being the prime differentiator in the scores. In fact, probably the biggest difference we have witnessed in our game tests is 5% between a top tier P965 ATX board that has been tuned and a base level G965 µATX board from Intel utilizing auto settings. Our application tests vary from 1% to 3% in scores at stock CPU settings between the two boards with DDR2-800 memory.
In the end, we feel like your choice of a µATX or ATX solution should be dictated by the requirements of the system (price, features, layout, overclocking, warranty, etc.). The use of an integrated graphics chipset will not inherently reduce performance relative to a discrete graphics chipsets, provided you use identical components. It will be the other aspects - particularly overclocking if that's a concern - that will warrant the use of a discrete graphics chipset rather than an IGP solution.
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8steve8 - Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - link
nice to look at the g965, long overdue.but u didnt even touch on integrated graphics.
lots of people out there dont play many 3d games.
you should have compared performance between g965 onboard with g965 discrete with p965 discrete
power/heat numbers would be interesting, then we could see how efficient the integrated x3000 is...
xsilver - Saturday, March 17, 2007 - link
are there ANY G965 boards that DO overclock well?JarredWalton - Saturday, March 17, 2007 - link
Meaning beyond 325MHz bus speeds? No, because the X3000 IGP really limits the chipset's maximum speed. Where on the P965 you're able to overclock the chipset to 500 MHz and above, the IGP can really only take about a 25% overclock - certainly not more than 33% or so. You might be able to hit 350 MHz on some boards, but that's about it as far as I'm aware. Other IGP chipsets on the other hand... we'll have to see Gary's mATX roundup for that information.Treripica - Saturday, March 17, 2007 - link
I'd like to echo MrNeutrino's sentiment. How massive of a mATX roundup can we look forward to in the near future?kobymu - Saturday, March 17, 2007 - link
I just wanted to say thanks for saying that.
While enthusiast discussion is important (I'm PC enthusiast myself), it is always more important to keep a wider, proportional point of view of the industry as a whole, and that sentence has achieved that goal, so when the enthusiasts start discussing higher-end PC components it can take a more practical, sensible approach, and maybe, hopefully, with time we will see a decrease in the "OMG company X is going down!11" department in particular and in radical fanboism in general.
sdsdv10 - Saturday, March 17, 2007 - link
Do you really expect enthusiasts to be either practial or sensible...
That would be kind of an oxy-moron!
MrNeutrino - Saturday, March 17, 2007 - link
Thanks for taking the time to post the mATX performance update, Gary!My performance concerns based on architectural scrutiny of how memory bandwidth is shared between two hungry processors in an IGP chipset vs. its ATX counterpart, were always nagging me as I started looking for a mATX build. Add to that the lack of always reliable reviews - if at all - on the web, and you have the perfect recipe for a burning desire to be sure - and soon - whether almost a thousand some odd dollars of investment in a quality mATX vs. ATX (read: G965 vs. P965) will be worth the money.
At least in my case, the lingering questions were mostly extinguished by your forum reply with quantifiable benchmark data, after the 690G review. What little concern remained (more like intrigue), has been put to rest with these benchmarks and additional comparison data in this article.
Impressive, that there is this little difference between the two chipset / system architecture variants. I suppose then, thanks goes in large part to the hunk of cache on the C2D (compared to CPUs of just a few years back), better predictors / prefetchers, shorter pipelines and a myriad of other uArch improvements.
Anyway, techincal topics aside, all I can say is, HURRAY!!
I'm just happy that this is concrete, published proof that us SFF / mATX fans can have our cake and eat it too!
Now if only we all could also get those April C2D price drops soon enough... :)
Renoir - Saturday, March 17, 2007 - link
Agreed this was a good comparison of the performance between G965 and P965 when BOTH are using a discrete card. As for the question of how sharing memory bandwidth between IGP and CPU compares to using a discrete card, it has only been touched upon briefly by Gary in the forum thread you mentioned. More detailed info on this aspect would be much appreciated in the upcoming roundup (already planned?). Bit-Tech.net did just that with the 690G but they used XP so I'm very interested in the results when using the more bandwidth hungry Aero in Vista.