How good (or bad) are the GeForce 9300/8x00 chipsets?

[pennylane]

My computer died unexpectedly and I need at the very least a new cpu/mobo/ram set. I'm not much of a gamer, so I was thinking of just using integrated graphics with no vid card. However, I'm pretty out of the loop with what's new these days.

My old rig was:
A64 3200 (S754)
2 GB DDR1 RAM
GeForce 6800 GT

I will probably get a quad core processor since I do a lot of photo editing and will probably upgrade to Photoshop CS4 in the future. I do dabble in TF2 and CS:S every now and then. How would a GeForce 9300/8x00 run those games compared to my old rig? My monitor's native resolution is 1280x1024 though I can put up with 1024x768, I'd just rather not. I haven't been able to find any benchmarks for HL2 with the new GeForce chipsets.

I'm on a pretty limited budget (the death was unexpected) so I don't want to get a vid card if I don't have to. I have about $300 to spend. Between a quad-core CPU, mobo, and 4 GB of RAM, that's probably pushing $300 already. I'm also concerned about power consumption. This might be lame but I try to be environmentally friendly if I can and if I don't game very much, then a discrete video card will just sit in my computer sucking power without being taken advantage of 95% of the time.

So, anybody have any idea of how decent onboard graphics are these days?

Thanks.

 

[JPB]

I am not too sure how good they are or whatnot, But my younger brother just purchased the Zotac 8200 motherboard, and it has been running flawless for about a month now.

He is running an Athlon X2 5000 overclocked to 3.0 and 2 GIG memory w/ 9800GT.

Great board.

Zotac 8200

 

[Fox5]

They can probably handle those games on medium settings. Source games aren't very intensive.
BTW, on the AMD platform, the 8xxx series of IGP support hybridpower with a discrete graphics card, they'll shut off the discrete grpahics card when not playing a game.

 

[pennylane]

Originally posted by: Fox5
They can probably handle those games on medium settings. Source games aren't very intensive.
BTW, on the AMD platform, the 8xxx series of IGP support hybridpower with a discrete graphics card, they'll shut off the discrete grpahics card when not playing a game.

Ohhh that'd be perfect. I'll look into that. Thanks!

Does it work like it's supposed to?

So I'm reading up on it...
I would have to use Vista, and I'd have to make sure to get a certain mobo and vid card. What is this about Hybrid-enabled power supplies? Is that a recommended thing? I have a Seasonic 460-watt PSU already that I'd like to re-use. I wouldn't be able to use the Hybrid Power with it?

 

[JPB]

Originally posted by: fanerman91

Originally posted by: Fox5
They can probably handle those games on medium settings. Source games aren't very intensive.
BTW, on the AMD platform, the 8xxx series of IGP support hybridpower with a discrete graphics card, they'll shut off the discrete grpahics card when not playing a game.

Ohhh that'd be perfect. I'll look into that. Thanks!

Does it work like it's supposed to?

So I'm reading up on it...
I would have to use Vista, and I'd have to make sure to get a certain mobo and vid card. What is this about Hybrid-enabled power supplies? Is that a recommended thing? I have a Seasonic 460-watt PSU already that I'd like to re-use. I wouldn't be able to use the Hybrid Power with it?

I am just assuming here, but I imagine your current power supply will be just fine.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: fanerman91

Originally posted by: Fox5
They can probably handle those games on medium settings. Source games aren't very intensive.
BTW, on the AMD platform, the 8xxx series of IGP support hybridpower with a discrete graphics card, they'll shut off the discrete grpahics card when not playing a game.

Ohhh that'd be perfect. I'll look into that. Thanks!

Does it work like it's supposed to?

So I'm reading up on it...
I would have to use Vista, and I'd have to make sure to get a certain mobo and vid card. What is this about Hybrid-enabled power supplies? Is that a recommended thing? I have a Seasonic 460-watt PSU already that I'd like to re-use. I wouldn't be able to use the Hybrid Power with it?

Nvidia is big on branding, but any power supply will work. AFAIK, anything 8 series or higher works with hybridpower as long as you have the corresponding motherboard (which is limited only to AMD at the moment).

http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli_desktop.html
I'm not sure if this is a complete list of video cards that support hybridpower or not.
Actually, it appears it is. Pretty small list, but I guess it only applies to newer cards, and specifically the ones that draw a significant amount of power. Makes sense, most lower end cards are able to power down almost completely as it is.

Apparently you also need to enabled HybridPower in the bios, set motherboard GPU Framebuffer to Auto or >256MB, enable the onboard gpu, set the default display adapter to the motherboard gpu, and plug your monitor into the motherboard gpu.

 

[heyheybooboo]

BIOSTAR TFORCE TA790GX AMD 790GX

It's got onboard 128MB DDR2 Side-Port video memory and sb750.

Check the Combo Deals

I would suggest snagging the 'Sempron' deal for $110 total. You should be able to reuse your HSF. Purchase some AS5.

Or you could go ahead and purchase the $256 combo with the Phenom 9850BE (but if you go cheap with the Sempy you could save yer bucks toward a 45nm Phenom Deneb rolling out in a few months).

You could snag some DDR2 1066 (and downclock before you get the Deneb) or grab some of that cheap DDR2 800 ....

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
BIOSTAR TFORCE TA790GX AMD 790GX

It's got onboard 128MB DDR2 Side-Port video memory and sb750.

Check the Combo Deals

I would suggest snagging the 'Sempron' deal for $110 total. You should be able to reuse your HSF. Purchase some AS5.

Or you could go ahead and purchase the $256 combo with the Phenom 9850BE (but if you go cheap with the Sempy you could save yer bucks toward a 45nm Phenom Deneb rolling out in a few months).

You could snag some DDR2 1066 (and downclock before you get the Deneb) or grab some of that cheap DDR2 800 ....

I'm going to have to protest:
The motherboard isn't worth that cost to someone on a budget (especially under $300), though the sempron is essentially free after the combo. Still not worth it, go with a cheaper 780g or 8200 board, you can find them for around $60, then buy an athlon x2 for under $40. Dual core is worth it. Then even a cheap video card would provide a huge boost over the integrated graphics, and the low end video cards are able to downclock to a very minimal power usage, and the high end nvidia cards can shut off entirely with the 8000 series chipsets. (and a few of the low end ati discrete cards can shut off with the 780g/790g)

DDR2 1066 also isn't worth it from the price-performance perspective. I believe even the phenoms still only use DDR2-800 by default, and it doesn't matter since the performance boost from DDR2-1066 is on the order of 1%-3%.

 

[pennylane]

Thanks for the suggestions everybody.

After thinking about it, I'm gonna try to go get a used S754 mobo and chug on for awhile. I figure I'm gonna try to fix up that system anyway so I could give it to a family member as a word processing machine, so I might as well use it for awhile myself while saving up money.

I also want to get a new monitor first (mine is like 6 years old), and I think for the things I do (photo-editing), a quality monitor is a more worthwhile upgrade right now, despite my lack of speed.

In terms of sticking with discrete vs. onboard gpu's, I think I've settled on getting a Radeon 4670 or something like that. It's cheap, performs pretty well (much better than onboard), and is very efficient with power consumption.