nVidia 6150 vs. AMD 690G

[Maelwys]

I'm starting a new HTPC build that will run 24/7. I want to go mATX and silent, and am considering an NSK1300 and PicoPSU. I'm stuck on the motherboard though and thought I'd ask for opinions on them. The two I'm trying to decide between are:

Asus M2A-VM HDMI - ATI Radeon Xpress 1250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131174

Asus M2NPV-VM - nVidia 6150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131014

Spec-wise the two boards are nearly identical aside from the chipset. The nVidia board comes with an HDTV adapter and the ATI board comes with the HDMI card. My questions are: which of the two will provide better graphics for an HTPC and which is likely to use less power overall? I can't seem to find any power consumption numbers on chipsets.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[MikeC]

My bet would be on the 690 chipset board. AMD's been boasting about its low power, and although the 6150 is good, earlier ATI chipset 939 boards tended to be a touch better, at least for power efficiency.

[frostedflakes]

Yeah I'd assume 690G is a bit more power efficient, although 6150 isn't too bad either. Keep in mind, though, that 6150 doesn't support HDCP, so if you plan to play Blu-Ray or HD-DVD on a high-def display, you better not go w/6150 (or if you do, plan to get a video card for it).

nVidia's answer to 690G, X7025 and X7050, are supposed to be showing up pretty soon. They are single-chip solutions, which means they should be pretty power efficient, and support HDCP. I think the GPU is supposed to be updated as well.

[jessekopelman]

Linux or Windows? Nvidia tends to have much better Linux support. If you are going Windows, the ATI is based on a more modern/powerful GPU and all the tests I've seen show that ATI has better video quality than Nvidia (although, whether you can tell the difference at 8-10' away from the TV as opposed to 2' from the monitor like they test is a good question).

[qviri]

nVidia's answer to 690G, X7025 and X7050, are supposed to be showing up pretty soon.

Word has it that it will be more powerful than the 690G, which is currently more powerful than the GF6150.

I'm not really sure about whether the power draw differences are enough to be relevant. Going by the heatsinks, both chips draw well under 15 watts.

[autoboy]

I would go with the 690. AMD has better deinterlacing support which will give you a better picture for DVD 480i and HD 1080i content. Both chipsets are within a few watts of each other

[bonestonne]

Linux or Windows? Nvidia tends to have much better Linux support. If you are going Windows, the ATI is based on a more modern/powerful GPU and all the tests I've seen show that ATI has better video quality than Nvidia (although, whether you can tell the difference at 8-10' away from the TV as opposed to 2' from the monitor like they test is a good question).

hmm, you know, i almost thought that nVidia was better than ATi, however i need to find an article i read a while ago, that had two ATi cards in crossfire being slightly, but noticable faster than the 8800GTS in SLi... if i stumble upon it i'll post it, but i dunno...it was about 5-10fps faster, and ran cooler, although consumed more power, so it depends on what you want more.

nVidia is alright for cheaper, better driver support etc, however ATi is a powerhungry sometimes underachiever.

depends on the card, how its configured, and the system its in.

[autoboy]

Linux or Windows? Nvidia tends to have much better Linux support. If you are going Windows, the ATI is based on a more modern/powerful GPU and all the tests I've seen show that ATI has better video quality than Nvidia (although, whether you can tell the difference at 8-10' away from the TV as opposed to 2' from the monitor like they test is a good question).

hmm, you know, i almost thought that nVidia was better than ATi, however i need to find an article i read a while ago, that had two ATi cards in crossfire being slightly, but noticable faster than the 8800GTS in SLi... if i stumble upon it i'll post it, but i dunno...it was about 5-10fps faster, and ran cooler, although consumed more power, so it depends on what you want more.

nVidia is alright for cheaper, better driver support etc, however ATi is a powerhungry sometimes underachiever.

depends on the card, how its configured, and the system its in.

He is talking specifically about the 6150 vs the 690. The 690 beat the 6150 in the HQV video quality benchmarks. Both are integrated video and consume similiar amounts of power.

[~El~Jefe~]

yeah, for the past year and a half, the 6150 was the best possible solution for integrated graphics. Right now, the amd/ati 690G is the one that rocks. I love how you can get an asus board that has a load of expansion slots, is microATX and has dvi out + hdmi. I so want to pair that with a 3600 brisbane and a gig of ram for a sick, cheap low powered media and server box.

edit: doh! thats the board you picked out... yeah, thats a sick board. That's where my sites are aimed this summer

All of a sudden, I am excited about amd again. glad I resisted the C2D urge!

[~El~Jefe~]

Linux or Windows? Nvidia tends to have much better Linux support. If you are going Windows, the ATI is based on a more modern/powerful GPU and all the tests I've seen show that ATI has better video quality than Nvidia (although, whether you can tell the difference at 8-10' away from the TV as opposed to 2' from the monitor like they test is a good question).

if it uses Avivo, yeah, then the dvd clarity is great. I am fan of that technology bundle, works really well and I sit like 2 feet from my screen to see the differences.

[Maelwys]

Thanks to everyone for all the extremely helpful information! I was initially thinking of the nVidia board because I didn't particularly need HDMI and I was planning to use the nVidia Purevideo Decoder which I thought would work better with an nVidia GPU. I've since read that it should work just as well with any graphics card though, and the HDMI does future-proof me a bit.

So I've purchased the M2A-VM HDMI and a Brisbane 3600+. My plan is to first build in the NSK1300 (or an Aria if I can save some money that way) with the existing power supply. I'll post the build log along with temps and a noise analysis in the gallery if anyone is interested. After that, once I've got a bit more money I'll pick up a picoPSU and see how that changes the landscape.

Thanks again gents! Cheers!

[Palindroman]

If you could also let us know what the power consumption of your system is, I'd be most grateful.

Here's some graphs comparing the Geforce 6150 and AMD 690G, I forgot where I got them from:





Does anyone know if 690G/V will also appear in a single chip chipset? I thought I read that somewhere but can't find it anymore.




edit: hmmm, did something wrong with the images, too tired to fix it.

[qviri]

Yeah they can't be embedded because they don't have a .png/.jpg/.gif extension.

Here are the links:

http://picserver.student.utwente.nl/vie ... 883MG0QV2D
http://picserver.student.utwente.nl/vie ... 793EUZN6D8

They look like Xbitlabs graphs, but I haven't been able to find an article about that on the website, so maybe not?

[Palindroman]

Thanks, qviri!

The pictures are from Techreport





My experience is that single chip chipsets consume less power than dual chip chipsets. The AMD 690 dual chip chipset already consumes less power at idle than the nVidia 6150 single chip chipset. A single AMD 690 chipset should consume even less, right? I hope we'll get to see one some time soon.

[~El~Jefe~]

the 690G is really powerful as well for an on board video chip.

thats neat!

[jessekopelman]

Thanks, qviri!

The pictures are from Techreport

If you read the whole The Tech Report article in the link, the Nvidia 6150 LE actually seemed generally superior to the AMD 690G in every regard other than 3D Gaming and in that regard the AMD is still woefully underpowered for high-end games. For a non-gaming machine, especially if it were running Linux, the 6150 SE seems like a better way to go. Things seem like they will tip even more in Nvidia's favor with the rollout of its 7025/50 chipsets. Did AMD buy the wrong company?

[jessekopelman]

Here's an article saying that AMD 690 is by far the best choice for HTPC and that Nvidia MCP61 (6150 SE) is unusable. This is a very different take from something like The Tech Report article that only considers CPU utilization for its video benchmarking. Given that the tests were done with a single application and codec, I don't know how much weight I'd give this article. Frustratingly, the author goes into no detail at all about his HTPC configuration, monitor choice, and viewing environment. He doesn't even mention what OS (I assume Windows) and whether his drivers were up to date. That said, time and time again I have read that ATI looks nicer than Nvidia for watching video.

[Palindroman]

Here's an article saying that AMD 690 is by far the best choice for HTPC and that Nvidia MCP61 (6150 SE) is unusable. This is a very different take from something like The Tech Report article that only considers CPU utilization for its video benchmarking. Given that the tests were done with a single application and codec, I don't know how much weight I'd give this article. Frustratingly, the author goes into no detail at all about his HTPC configuration, monitor choice, and viewing environment. He doesn't even mention what OS (I assume Windows) and whether his drivers were up to date. That said, time and time again I have read that ATI looks nicer than Nvidia for watching video.

I'm primarily interested in power consumption and I wish there were some figures somewhere stating exactly how much power a motherboard consumes. After that I look at performance. At this moment the 690 chipset obviously meets the demands of average users best. It is to be expected that the new nVidia 7025/7050 chipsets will perform even better, but how about power consumption? And what of single chip chipset-solutions?

And for real gaming you need a discrete graphic card so that's not an important criterium for me. Power consumption and video playback capabilities come first.

[jessekopelman]

At this moment the 690 chipset obviously meets the demands of average users best. It is to be expected that the new nVidia 7025/7050 chipsets will perform even better, but how about power consumption? And what of single chip chipset-solutions?

Actually, it's not clear that the 690 chipset meets the average user's needs better than the MCP61. By synthetic benchmarks (The Tech Report article), the MCP61 actually seems superior. The Tech Lounge article claims the MCP61 is worthless for video playback, but considering they only tested a single application with an undocumented configuration, can we give it any credence? I agree that we need reviews that actually document power consumption (SPCR seems well ahead of the curve here, but sadly they don't often test things like CPU, MB, and add-on cards). I also think we need reviews that have real world tests for video playback using multiple applications and documented configurations (like we already have for games). When it comes to HTPC, there is quite a dearth of useful reviews, which is surprising given the current level of interest and consumer spending on the subject.

[Mariner]

As a matter of interest, the AMD RD790 chipset has apparently now passed the PCI-SIG compliance tests.

Hopefully this will mean the RS790 with integrated DX10 graphics and UVD video support will not be far behind. The UVD function is reputed to get 128/130 (out of 130) on the HQV video test as well as decoding h.264 at bitrates up to 40Mbps!

Certainly should be of interest to the HTPC crowd (including me!).

[Erssa]

As a matter of interest, the AMD RD790 chipset has apparently now passed the PCI-SIG compliance tests.

Hopefully this will mean the RS790 with integrated DX10 graphics and UVD video support will not be far behind. The UVD function is reputed to get 128/130 (out of 130) on the HQV video test as well as decoding h.264 at bitrates up to 40Mbps!

Certainly should be of interest to the HTPC crowd (including me!).

AMD doensn't even have their discreet DX10 cards out yet, so I think it's much too early to start waiting for an integrated one. There's always something behind the corner, no need to waste thoughts on RS790 as it's not coming out anytime soon.

[Chocolinx]

Well the biggest difference between the two that I've noticed:

AMD690: Supports Shader 2.0

6150: Supports Shader 3.0

Not sure if that makes a difference for your use, watching/recording TV/movies. But it should make a difference when playing video games. Another note, I was looking into these boards as well, it appears that the M2A-VM is also cheaper by $15 CND. So for my next system I plan on going with that board too.

[Maelwys]

Shader support is one of the primary differences in the GPU itself, but this board is really more geared towards integrated builds that aren't going to be doing much in the way of gaming, so the shader support is less critical. If someone wants to game with these boards, a dedicated video card is pretty much required.

As for waiting until the next-gen versions of these boards, I think the issues will still remain the same. The board itself will have most of the same integrated components, it will probably have very similar power requirements, and gaming will still require a dedicated card.

[dvdmonster]

The Nvidia MCP68 chip should be released within a weeks time or so.

It's an updated MCP61, named MCP68/GeForce 7050-630A based on the 7xxx series.

Personally, I'm really looking forward to checking out some test on this as soon as it comes out.

[~El~Jefe~]

7xxx series is a nice chip, that would make a really good chipset/on board

SM 3.0 cannot be viewed (most likely) with a system using integrated graphics.

dedicated 3.0 on a 6600 GT cannot even use it! It comes with a huge performance hit. My x1900 aiw runs sm 3.0 nicely but on some games it chugs along in spots......

I think this is one of the reasons for only sm 2.0 shrugs?

[Mariner]

AMD doensn't even have their discreet DX10 cards out yet, so I think it's much too early to start waiting for an integrated one. There's always something behind the corner, no need to waste thoughts on RS790 as it's not coming out anytime soon.

AMD seem to be making big noises about a whole platform launch with the high, mid and low-end graphics cards being announced at the same time as Barcelona and RD790 - due some time around the middle of May, I believe? Personally I'm hoping to see the RS790 launched by September though, of course, whether it then becomes available on motherboards by Christmas or not is a different matter!

Hopefully, NVidia will be looking to release a chipset with a UVD equivalent. Once such features become available, low-cost but capable HTPCs should become very easily available.

As for the SM2.0/3.0 discussions, they aren't particularly relevant because of the relatively low performance levels of integrated graphics these days. Even the fastest of these aren't really powerful enough for games and the relatively low-end ones are still capable of supporting Vista's Aero interface. Outside of games and Aero there isn't really anything which uses accelerated 3D graphics at the moment.

For me, a bigger problem is that current integrated graphics chipsets have crippled Avivo/PureVideo support compared to the discrete graphics cards from the same companies.

Hopefully this will change with the next generation.

[~El~Jefe~]

yeah, the most important thing right now integrated gfx can do is to hardware offload 1080p content. I dont know if this will be possible, but it seems to be based upon a review I read about purevideo and the 8600 series.

[jessekopelman]

yeah, the most important thing right now integrated gfx can do is to hardware offload 1080p content. I dont know if this will be possible, but it seems to be based upon a review I read about purevideo and the 8600 series.

Is this really needed, though? People have gotten 1080p playing on a Mac Mini and that is only a Core Duo (not C2D) with Intel's GMA950 (which is also not the current generation). Now, not all 1080p content is created equal and what's on Blueray and HD-DVD is a tough road to hoe. Still, by the time it takes the drives for those formats to come down in price and lots of compelling content to be available, the typical $100 CPU should be more than up to the task with not a lot of help from GPU.

[Mariner]

Is this really needed, though? People have gotten 1080p playing on a Mac Mini and that is only a Core Duo (not C2D) with Intel's GMA950 (which is also not the current generation). Now, not all 1080p content is created equal and what's on Blueray and HD-DVD is a tough road to hoe. Still, by the time it takes the drives for those formats to come down in price and lots of compelling content to be available, the typical $100 CPU should be more than up to the task with not a lot of help from GPU.

Although (relatively) high-end PCs are capable of decoding 1080p content, they do so using quite a high percentage of their power and therefore will be functioning under load and using more power = more difficult to silence.

If, on the other hand, NVidia/ATI/Intel support full hardware decode on their graphics chips, this specialised support ought to take up just a relatively small area of the die space and therefore use less power. In other words, rather than having your CPU using 60W to decode 1080p content, we'd be much better off having specialised decode hardware burning, say, 10W (this figure is just plucked out of the air!) to achieve the same effect. This would be a win-win situation in every respect as far as I can tell.

[jessekopelman]

If, on the other hand, NVidia/ATI/Intel support full hardware decode on their graphics chips, this specialised support ought to take up just a relatively small area of the die space and therefore use less power. In other words, rather than having your CPU using 60W to decode 1080p content, we'd be much better off having specialised decode hardware burning, say, 10W (this figure is just plucked out of the air!) to achieve the same effect. This would be a win-win situation in every respect as far as I can tell.

Communication between CPU and IGP seem to generate a good amount of heat. On my machine, C2D with Intel GMA950, when I play Civ 4 the CPU utilization stays < 20% but the core temperature climbs just as if it were around 70%. Perhaps this is a fault of Intel's design? That aside, I'm not sure the example you gave saves anything. Using CoreAVC and a C2D, CPU utilization is going to stay under 50% and the difference between 50% load and idle is about 10W for a C2D . . . Modern CPU are a lot better suited to video decoding than some seem to believe. It seems like the real issue for video playback may be more about having the right codecs than the right hardware.