ATI is readying the 4200HD IGP

ATI is preparing to launch a new IGP "King"



Designated as RS880 by ATI. This new IGP is said to claim the crown of the IGP world. For quite some time NVIDIA has hold this place with their NVIDIA 9400M G, which could outperform entry-level GPUs. Now ATI is aiming at this spot with their new ATI 4200HD.

It is said that this new IGP will outperform any other existent in their class, and sport a 15% increased performance over the top, which is the NVIDIA 9400M G counterpart. As the software, it uses DX10.1 fully supported, and the OpenGL equivalents as well, and it is aimed to give thin and light and ultra portable laptops the performance of any GPU will keeping the temps low and saving battery life. ATI Stream is also supported.

Apparently AMD is trying to push the Yukon platform and the Neo CPU with this new IGP to improve performance of netbook-like laptops, sparing us from Intel's IGPs. It is also meant to fight NVIDIA's Ion platform.

Looks like ATI is trying to re-conquer their place, which they had with the 3200HD, with a completely new solution. ATI claims it will be ready in later August. Good way to go!
<ninja 4200HD><ninja 4200HD><ninja BEST IGP><ninja BEST IGP><ninja 4200 HD><ninja 4200 HD><ninja ATI 4200HD IGP><ninja ATI 4200HD IGP>

 

The problem with this however is power management. If IGPs become dedicated level, how's that going to fare for battery life?

 

This is an IGP, much like the 9400M G, so it should be quite battery friendly. At least much better than any GPU...

 

Ah well that's good! If this is better than the 9400M G then that means that people who only want to play older or lower end games without sacrificing price or battery life will be able to

It surprises me how far IGPs have come really.

 

Currently, ATI claims their HD 4330 (dedicated) is rated at 7W max compared to Intel's 4500MHD is 5W, and it completely owns it. If they can make an IGP that near the HD 4330 and above the 9400M G, I would think that the power would be 4W or less. This is very good news! Now add in the possibility for switchable graphics and/or hybrid power w/ say HD 4860. Mainstream notebooks can get a huge boost in battery AND maintain superior gaming capability...

 

Intel's never been very good at graphics really.

The idea of more switchable graphics machine would be very pleasing to say the least Especially if the IGP is of low power and performs decently well ^_^

 

I completely agree with you here. IGPs have come a long way, and perform very good nowadays. If this 4200HD supports Hybrid Graphics and Crossfire then we have definitively a winner in the IGP world.

Assuming in consumes around the same as the 9400M G or a bit more, we are talking of a great performance and good battery life. They are saying it outperforms the NVIDIA by 15%, that is quite some improvement, plus the DX10.1 supported should give a better performance.

I think we are looking at a great competitor here, and since ATI used to rule in this market place with the 3200HD, we might see "the return of the king"? ROFLOL

 

I didn't think this was going to appear so soon......yay! Hopefully it really is based on the 43xx and 45xx GPUs, that would be awesome. Hopefully PC developers will fully support it. The 3200 was capable of running multiplatform games with decent competence, and the 4200 should prove to be much more powerful. Now if only AMD could make some more competitive CPUs....then DAAMIT would have a real winner for the entertainment and media laptop/PC market.

 

Well for the GPU market AMD is doing far better than Intel seeing as they have ATI lol
ATI IGP>>Intel IGP

As for CPUs, well in the world of desktops, their 2nd generation Phenoms aren't bad at all. Given their price point they make good competition despite their lower performance to the newer Intels. AMD still hasn't said much about their new tigris platform coming up for laptops though. Was thinking the HD4200 would be included in that platform actually

 

Well, it is after all an IGP, so integrated it is (rather obvious lol). It is supposed to come out mid to late August. About Tigris I cant say much, since I dont know much. But this IGPs seem to be turning the scale to the ATI side once more in the IGP world.

 

Intel still holds the vast majority of the IGP market, especially with all those goddamn netbooks floating around. While the Puma platform is a great introductory multimedia package, alot of buyers would still be weary about not knowing who AMD is or just hesitant not to get another Intel based computer. On top of that the typical lowest price of a Puma based system is usually more than ~$550 (lowest I've seen is a Puma based Gateway for $579 at Best Buy), while you can get Intel based notebooks with very low end dual cores and IGP 4500s for just under $400. Despite this, Puma seems to have been successful, especially since Nvidia's only real competitor, the 9400M is in very few notebooks outside of Macbooks. If DAAMIT can get the introductory cost down far enough for 4200 IGP systems, lets say, starting at $450, then I can see them making a very big dent in an Intel IGP and CPU dominated market. If this is part of the Tigris platform, then I see two crucial features that need to be implemented by AMD: both DDR2 and DDR3 based systems, as well as new CPUs. Most importantly they need a DDR3 based system, as it'll increase the IGPs possible memory bandwidth by a nice margin since it'll use shared video memory. Side port memory I'm sure is a possibility, but honestly I don't think it's needed since the cost to put in dedicated VRAM would pretty much justify putting in a Radeon 4330 w/ dedicated 256/512 MB of DDR2 instead. There should be DDR2 based systems too of course to help push out the current and near future crop of AMD processors, at least at the beginning, with replacement by DDR3 systems just after launch.

 

Well price point will be a crucial aspect of course. I'm not expecting it to kill Intel's HD4500 since it's not designed with the same functions/crowd in mind. The HD4200 is a capable IGP made for heavier graphic uses(although still considered "light") than the HD4500. The HD4500 is the IGP you stick in a laptop because you need some for of GPU. That's the only reason the HD4500 is so popular. Most laptops don't have the need of good GPUs so lots of companies stick the cheapest thing they can find which does the job i.e. the HD4500 since it comes along with the Intel platform.

Hmm if it's coming out in August I suppose it won't be part of Tigris since that comes out later this year I believe though. Mind yo, Tigris probably will feature the HD4200 as its IGP.

 

Really too bad AMD/ATI hasn't produced a chipset supporting Intel CPUs since 2006....which is your big reason why Intel is controlling the notebook IGP market with the GM45 chipset.

It's a good time for AMD to pick up support again for Intel CPUs since the new mobile i7 and i5 chips coming out will need a graphics option seeing as there aren't going to be any on the CPU or on the chipsets. Hopefully AMD will

If not then the the HD4200 chipset will lose out to Nvidia's upcoming iG209 chipset.

 

will it run crysis? what about power consumption?

 

maybe @ minimum settings at 400x600 resolution

 

The HD3200 was able to "run" Crysis(or Warhead I forgot) at 800*600 everything to lowest IIRC so if this is supposed to be better tahn that, I suppose it can probably run Crysis at lowest settings as well.

As for power consumption, we're not sure yet. however, if its based off their HD4330 as they claim, it'll probably run around 7W if not lower(Intel's HD4500 runs at 5W).

 

This sounds like an awesome lil' thing to have with switchable graphics.

 

I haven't heard anything about the iG209. Any links?

---------

Two details still missing concerning the 4200HD -

1. Is this a 40nm part?
2. Are we talking about the mobile variant being released in August or a desktop part?

It is indeed unfortunate to think this chipset will not be supporting Intel cpus.

Alas, I will have to go with NVIDIA's solution. That is if they release the 40nm shrink of the 9400m before October. I read ION 2 will DOUBLE the number of shaders from 16 to 32 (equivalent to a 9600M) . Not bad for an IGP!

And since the ION platform is based on the 9400m, it's successor should also [hopefully] feature this update. A 100% increase over it's current IGP. Now compare that to ATI's measly 15% over the 9400m (if it's a 40nm part).

Too bad most of the GPUs announced this year have been paper-releases. Especially all the 40nm cards. Which makes me seriously doubt whether this will even surface in a notebook..

 

No details on the iG209 only a roadmap that estimates it's release in Q3 2009:

http://www.nordichardware.com/news,8536.html

 

Well if Intel really saw a need for very rudimentary GPUs then we'd still have X3100s as the current Intel IGP. The reason the 4500 is around is because of a need to have HD capable IGPs for video and multimedia which has become extremely popular and important. Thing is, I hear the 4500 still struggles at doing full 1080p playback. On the cost thing, it's all about DAAMIT getting the entry price down as far as possible while having a superior feature set. The HD 4200 should be built into the motherboard chipset on every AMD based system with built in switchable graphics if there is dedicated video hardware as well.

 

Well as the needs of the masses increases, so does the GPU. In recent years, the term "HD" and all its features has become very widespread to the main public. Therefore, to compensate, Intel came out with a GPU that can [somewhat] handle HD content. Idk whether it struggles or not because I haven't thoroughly tested it, but Intel claims it can at least do it. As it stands, there really isn't much reason to switch to a higher grade IGP at the moment unless some other graphics heavy widespread thing comes along(say all of a sudden MS Office demands higher level graphics )

Therefore, just as the HD3200 was based on AMD systems that needed a base IGP, so will the HD4200 most likely. If AMD can pair that with a lower cost(but well performing) CPU, then their new platform may provide a new lower end market(as it stands I believe Pentium Dual Cores with HD4500 are selling more than AMD laptops with HD3200 in the lower end market of laptops).

 

You guys are forgetting that discrete graphics cards need additional power for the components on PCB and the memory chips. I agree in performance wise 4500MHD is way worse, but on power, that's a different story.

 

best post in this thread so far.

the 785G chipset which house the 4200HD IGP does not deserve the brand.

4xxx implies it comes from the lineage of the 4xxx series chips, it does not, it comes from the 3xxx series chips. in fact it is virtually identical to the forty shader 2xxx series chip used in the 780G chipset when it was released back at the dawn of time.

they even use the same 55nm fabrication technique, the only difference being the inclusion of DX10.1 support in addition to the 780G's DX10 feature set.

so it will have the same shader number and the same frequency ceiling as the old 780G, with any performance improvement coming from the modest IPC increase that occurred between the rv610 and rv620 generations.

why does this matter, and why was it a stupid mistake?
1) because AMD owned the low-cost IGP market segment for people who wanted some 3D capability
2) because nVidia is about to release a 40nm IGP with 32 shaders, which is a massive improvement of the 65nm 16 shader IGP which already beats the 780G into the ground
3) because the power efficient 80 shader rv720 has been out for nearly a year now, and fans of AMD technology such as myself feel like they are trying to dupe us.

the 785G should have used a genuine 4xxx series GPU for their next IGP, and one with at least 80 shaders that could compete with nVidias near future offerings.

 

The TDP figure should be inclusive of all features for that discrete GPU.

 

Yeah I saw this on the ATi GPU comparison chart on wikipedia. 785G is a 40 shader GPU

I was really hoping for a true 4xxx part, though I must say I should've noticed when they displayed the 3DMark06 score of the new IGP barely getting close to 2000, which would be terribly low if it was based on the 80 shader 4xxx series part.

 

they said; "better than any comparable chipset", neglecting to mention that they were only comparing the 785G to the 780G, because the Intel 4500 is not comparable and the nVidia 9400........................ "well, that's just inconvenient so we won't compare it to that either!"

muppets.

 

yes it's weird why the did it. ot, hd3200/3300 overclocks like crazy, most of them can run at 900mhz without any tweaks.

 

Looks good. Sounds interesting.
I wonder when we will see this in laptops, and who will adapt it?

I dont know why they cant just make the part for the IGP Bigger on the mobo, so it could be more powerful. This wouldnt be too hard with the size of components always getting smaller. And It'd much closer to a real GPU.

 

I'm sure the HP DV2 will get it.

 

I'd except any AMD based machine to have this as its IGP once it comes out really. I mean, I suppose it would(with the Tigris CPUs) form the whole platform.

A bit too bad that it's not a "true" HD4xxx series GPU, more like an upgraded HD3200. Well we'll see

 

what i want to know is if the AMD slides from november last year stating Tigris to be DDR2 only are still accurate.

the CPU definately supports DDR3
the 785G has zero problems with DDR3
the price has plumetted for DDR3

why on earth wouldn't they support DDR3 on Tigris?!?!

 

I'm glad that the attention & development of GPUs have shifted to the lower end of the spectrum. Only significant advances in the area was the 9400M and the 210M.

 

DDR3 is still more expensive and has 0 performance impact/

 

zero impact even on a high performance IGP?

that's not the conclusion nVidia came to with their 9400M............

but still, why disable a feature that is present in the chip and supported by the chipset, a bit arbitrary, no?

 

Thats not the conclusion the makers and sellers of DDR3 came to either...
They probably just want to sell DDR3 memory or have a agreement to advertise it, to increase sales.

I doubt it's difference over DDR2 changes that drastically, just because of an IGP.

 

In fact performance should be heavily affected between DDR2 and DDR3. Remember that an IGP uses system memory. For example, a GPU 9600M GT with DDR2 will be largely outperformed by the same GPU with GDDR3, that is solely thanks to the faster memory type the GPU carries. Now, passing this concept to the IGP world, where the IGP takes advantage of the system memory, RAM, a faster memory should perform much better than a slower one. Lets be real, not a 50% increased performance, but still somewhere around 15-20%? That is noticeable.

Where DDR2 vs DDR3 has no real impact on performance is on loading faster or making overall system go faster. This performance difference is around 5-10%, which is nowhere near noticeable on daily applications, such as MS Office, web surfing, and even gaming.

 

Due to launch tomorrow.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/14898/1/

 

even were that true, why would AMD arbitrarily disable it on the mobile platform when both the cpu and the chipset support it, and DDR3 is lower voltage to boot.

having just seen the hexus benchmarks of the 785G i am very disappointed, it cannot even match the performance of the 790GX chipset.

this should have been an 80 shader genuine 4xxx series IGP.

 

Later this year they will release a 790GX chipset successor. It's akin from going to 785G from 780G.

 

that's all very well, but where does this leave Tigris?

it is the mobile platform i am concerned about, i don't give a damn about integrated graphics on desktop platforms.

 

I am thinking this is a mere "quick" response from ATI to come back into play. Since Win7 is not out yet, the true improvement is being held back.

I read somewhere that after this, they plan on a new release on Q1 2010 with DX11 support. So the 4200HD should be like a patch, just to be heard again. It is confirmed it will have 40 shaders, therefore we are talking of a slightly better 3200HD, not a true upgrade, but still, if this is going to beat NVIDIA 9400M G for less (as usual ATI is less expensive than a comparable NVIDIA), then I would say it is worth it.

About Tigris, when it comes it, whenever this is, ATI might be doing a refresh on GPUs and IGPs.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...agegallery/&article_id=667225&image_id=937094

Perhaps a ATI Radeon 5xxxHD?

 

in those slides from November 2008 they brand the Tigris chipset as the RS880.

i believe that is what AMD wanted to call the 785G before common sense prevailed and they realized the hardware sites would pan them for trying to palm off their customers with dross by marketing it as gold.

i would be delighted to be proved wrong, but all indicators point to the 785G chipset being the basis for the Tigris chipset.

 

Oh look DDR3 make no difference:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3615&p=8

Clocking the core to 800mhz does though.

 

The reason is because the IGP needs to go through the Hypertransport bus in order to reach the CPU's memory controller. The HT is clocked at 2.0GHz, which results in 16.0GB/s of bandwidth. PC2-8500(DDR2-1066) dual channel will already saturate the HT bus, so DDR3-1600 won't give any advantages.

 

DDR 2 at 533mhz nowhere near provides 16GB/sec.

 

Well great!! This was long overdue.

I dont think its bad if they stick with AMD exclusively again. Considering new AMD chipsets are around the corner this could work.

The price should also be quite a bit better then the Nvidia counterpart.

 

??

DDR2 at 533MHz clock is 1066MHz after the DDR is factored in. Have you even read the review(or since we said it, did you notice PC2-8500, which is 8.5GB/s?). Dual Channel DDR2-1066=17GB bandwidth which is already more than the HT bandwidth.

You might want to argue in real world, it will never reach theoretical values, but its same with the HT bandwidth. I can tell you real world HT bandwidth won't reach 16GB/s either. That's why you just compare theoreticals, and DDR2-1066 dual channel exceeds HT bandwidth. DDR3-1600 is of course, overkill.

 

So when are laptops with this chipset actually coming out?

 

Here are some details on the 4200HD and performance. It seems that ATI has failed to awe us with this platform... GO-->

 

You can push up to just under 10GB/sec out of DDR2 running it to around 600mhz.

I would expect a bus system to get more real throughput than that. I doubt that the HT bus is saturated with DDR2, there should have been SOME difference run with DDR3.