- Tuesday, 1 December 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
When [Otellini] joined the company in 1974, most people didn't even know what a PC was - From the Wall St Journal 11-11-2004
G45 has HD decode problems
UPDATE 17/04/08 16:42: Intel now says that no non-functional parts will be released. Unofficial word from others at the company say that only a small portion of the chips have problems, and that it only affects a single codec. These will be screened before it reaches customers.
INTEL'S UPCOMING G45 chipset has a novel problem, it is broken out of the gate. Unlike it's G965 and G35 predecessors, this one is hardware based, not drivers.
Actually, the G965 has both, but the hardware bug was pretty minor, so minor that Intel never bothered to fix it, so scratch DX10 on that part. G35 is a driver problem, and that will maybe be fixed soon so the DRM infested, malware ridden, broken OS will work in all of its polished glory.
The problem with G45 is in the video decoders. We saw early silicon at CeBIT, and they did not demo that aspect of the chipset. We have now learned that the shipping step, A2, has bugged HD video decode hardware, and that just won't work on the initial release chips. There will be another spin, think 2-3 months out, that fixes this.
In the mean time, several vendors are looking to 3rd parties to provide the promised 'HD' functionality, with Broadcom looking to be the big winner here. While this may technically fix the problem, it drives board costs way up and makes inevitable driver woes once later steppings make things work. What a mess. ยต
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Oh nVidia will be laughing at the expense of this little piece of news should it be true.
Hah, just imagine the mess that Larrabee will be, driver wise. A whole new architecture to get wrong. At least G45's graphics may now work - 2 years after the basic design was released!

Intel used to have such solid chipsets as well. GPUs that have more than basic functionality seems to have really messed them up.

If you want a media PC, start looking at the AMD solutions (or VIA even), at least it works, and the video quality always gets top scores.
Heh, so much for (un)Intel(ligent) comming out with a legitimate IGP. A bit of light on the horizon for DAAMIT, although considering how insignificant a market this is aimed at, not a very bright light. Broken or not, uIntel will still sell to uninformed customers. Hopefully the 20-30% of the educated consumers will help pull AMD out of hell. Good luck with that..
I've been spec'ing out a system with this chipset. If it bombs I might have to go 780G + 4850e.
Can anyone say Phenom. I guess AMD is not the only one with Die problems.
If they cant get acceleerated video playback right how the hell are they gonna kill nvidia with larabee?

makes you wonder doesnt it.
Strike seven for Intel graphics. Can anyone explain how on earth Intel can go from one year failing on integrated chipsets with Vista problems (915/945), lousy compatibility (945/G33), and awful performance (G965/G35) to a competitive discrete graphics card?
I heard if you buy a 40$ graphic card (hd3400 / 8400gs) these days, they'll play HD for you... and some games too and if you play around a bit, you can get pretty good drivers.

What's the big deal spending 40$ on a graphic card when your spending hundreds on a monitor and blu-ray/hd-dvd drive?
I encourage more of you to be very harshly critical of Intel's current IGPs.. because I would enjoy quite a bit seeing your jaws drop (and maybe eat a little crow) when or if Larrabee comes along and totally doesn't suck.
This must be some secret partnership with nvidia, because it's they that are known to have broken hardware video acceleration, for many generations.
So I'm going to venture a guess and expect the new intel chipsets to also have a broken IDE interface then eh ;)
heave a sigh of relief, if intel gets its IGP right; thats the end of nvidia and amd chipsets. and we'd end up paying monstrous amounts for intel's igp.