Intel DG45ID Motherboard @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Intel DG45ID Motherboard with Integrated HD Graphics - It comes in a pint sized package and reading the specifications you would think that the Intel DG45ID motherboard would seem to have the makings of a winner. When it comes to integrated graphics for an HTPC pushing Blu-ray content; do you want Intel inside?

HTPC guys will find the DG45ID a bit more interesting, and rightly so as that is who this motherboard is fitted for outside of a building cheap office drone boxes.
The DG45ID has as good onboard audio. The ICH10R southbridge is one of the fastest we have ever seen in single disk configurations. The onboard NICs are well above average as well. It’s HD and Blu-ray content support is perfect even with a “lowly” E7200 CPU that is in the $120 range.
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The CPU usage during bluray playback is waaaay too high. That's pretty much unacceptable. You can get numbers that are far lower with an nvidia chipset board. Just look at an IGP motherboard roundup on a site run by a certain Indian...
 
This seems like a good board for a simple HTPC indeed. I am using the DG33TL, which looks somewhat like a predecessor, minus the HDMI. Has been very stable btw.

The Blue-ray playback CPU usage doesn't bother me, since adding a cheap ATi 4X00 card will solve that problem.
 
panfist said:
The CPU usage during bluray playback is waaaay to high. That's pretty much unacceptable. You can get numbers that are far lower with an nvidia chipset board. Just look at an IGP motherboard roundup on a site run by a certain Indian...
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At least we know now you can see the pictures, but we are still wondering if you can actually read.
 
Modred189 said:
The Blue-ray playback CPU usage doesn't bother me, since adding a cheap ATi 4X00 card will solve that problem.
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Here is some of what I wonder in all of this, "the CPU can't be busy" world many are seeming to strive for. Didn't you buy the CPU to USE IT? Now if you are going to encode and want to watch BD, I can get that, but putting in an extra card to do what the board will already do for "free" does not make a lot of sense to me.
 
I think the people that are concerned by it would be those who intend to multitask while watching a movie or have more than just high-def movie watching in mind.

As for myself, I would like to put together a nice HTPC setup for my dad, who I know will probably use this as a regular computer just as much as a means of DVD/BD playback. So, I'm thinking this board, an E8500, and some Corsair DDR2. I would exclude the video card though unless my cousin comes over and wants to play something with me, so I could see where a video card would be beneficial in that respect. But for my dad, I don't think he'd need a dedicated vidcard.

For me though, I'd want to use this as an HTPC and a dedicated Folding box, so for me I'd probably throw in a video card to have it fold alongside one processor core when I'm not watching movies.
 
Thanks for the review guys.

I like the layout of DG45ID and it's performance with an E8500 is pretty good considering the board's class and compatibility issues with certain configurations.

What I would have personally liked to have seen is the board's performance when equipped with the QX9770 as the MSI P45 Platinum was. It would have been interesting to see the performance differences between the two chipsets.
 
hmm not bad. Maybe shuttle can build a barebones box around that board.

Just popped in At Worlds End and fired up powerdvd 8 to the harbor fight/siege scene and on my HTPC it's at 50-60% CPU usage.

I like to have some extra headroom on my CPU in-case Beyond TV while "recording" 720p/1080i broadcasts needs it, while I'm watching a blu-ray.
 
Hmmm, that was a good read. I'm trying to finalize my specs for my SFF gaming setup that won't be OCed. Now im torn between this board and these final choices. I just want it to run stable and reliable. Any incite?

ASRock G43Twins-FullHD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157137

ASUS P5E-VM HDMI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131237

ASUS P5E-VM DO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131222

Intel BOXDG45ID
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121355
 
I don't understand this review, is it a mobo review or a CPU review, at least you should review the onboard graphic against nVidia and AMD solution like GeFore 8200 or 780GX.
 
Blaaahhh . I would have liked to see Intel DG45ID vs Nvidia 9300 vs AMD 780G & 790GX review for HTPC only. Who in there right mind is going to get a HTPC board to game on when graphic cards are at a all time low and not have to share ram. I just built a 780G HTPC rig and it plays HD-DVD & Blu-Ray so smooth its not even funny with a 4850e 45w cpu.
 
alg7_munif said:
I don't understand this review, is it a mobo review or a CPU review, at least you should review the onboard graphic against nVidia and AMD solution like GeFore 8200 or 780GX.
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Motherboard review. That is why is says "Motherboard/chipset" on the article category. I am fairly sure that if you actually read the article you could figure that out on your own. As for G45 gaming graphics, yeah, let me review that for you. They suck shit and only gaming retards need to worry about them. Need to know anything else? ;)
 
Modred189 said:
I tend to agree with you there, I was just offering a bit of an alternative.
On the other hand, I think the main concern is temperatures. These boards will be going into a lot of SFF cases with limited airflow, so keeping the cpu temps lower -or- spreading the heat output between the CPU and GPU can be more efficient in getting rid of the heat.
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I would suggest that adding another card into the enclosure is not a good idea if you want to keep it cooler.
 
I intend to follow up with a video review discussing AMD/ATI, NVIDIA, Intel. JUST got the latest NVIDIA boards and if I sat around and waited for all the start to align, you would be waiting much longer, but I think this was worthy of a board review on its on, and that is how we will continue to do things.
 
AceGoober said:
Thanks for the review guys.

I like the layout of DG45ID and it's performance with an E8500 is pretty good considering the board's class and compatibility issues with certain configurations.

What I would have personally liked to have seen is the board's performance when equipped with the QX9770 as the MSI P45 Platinum was. It would have been interesting to see the performance differences between the two chipsets.
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You can count on none in real world applications.

The G45 however will not accept CPUs with multipliers that are unlocked.
 
Does the HDMI pass the audio as well, or you have to use the SPDIF as well? I'm looking for something to replace my SD36G5M here soon, and was wondering if this (or similiar mb's with onboard HDMI) does this?

BR playback is a real concern for this board, maybe the 730i will fare better.
 
As far as the motherboard revision goes, it's the last 3 numbers after the hyphen on the white sticker. I'm curious about the problems you had with your blu-ray drives. We use Intel boards here at the store I work at, and I've notice that when I boot up a 64bit Vista DVD, I get this odd menu with a choice for 1. and 2. with no descriptions after the numbers and a message that says to pick one of the numbers and press enter to continue. I always choose 1. and it boots up fine. I noticed it only happens if RAID or AHCI is enabled though. Oh and Nlite is a great way to bundle the RAID drivers into a WinXP install disc, negating the need for a floppy drive.
 
Why cant intel get their act together on their IGP to offload HD content instead of shipping it all over to the CPU!
 
good review one question though where is a 790gx board and when can see a review of one on [H]?
 
Your review of this board is not accurate. I am using this board in a dedicated HTPC paired with an E7300 CPU and get ~15% CPU utilization when decoding Bluray movies. You obviously are not using a video codec that supports hardware acceleration.

Your review is not clear what configuration you were in when you performed the BluRay playback tests... were you in XP or Vista? What playback software did you use? It's really not hard to setup this board for hardware acceleration, I'm not sure how you guys got it wrong.
 
Those Blu-Ray CPU utilization numbers don't seem right from what I've seen in the very large official thread on AVS. They seem more like CPU decoding only and not GPU assisted. Most use the E5200.

That said, I purchased this board without realizing all the issues that go along with it. Needless to say it will be available in the F/S section, BNIB, shortly.
Eskimo Pie said:
Your review of this board is not accurate. I am using this board in a dedicated HTPC paired with an E7300 CPU and get ~15% CPU utilization when decoding Bluray movies. You obviously are not using a video codec that supports hardware acceleration.

Your review is not clear what configuration you were in when you performed the BluRay playback tests... were you in XP or Vista? What playback software did you use? It's really not hard to setup this board for hardware acceleration, I'm not sure how you guys got it wrong.
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I have to agree, while this might not be a bug free board it is certainly capable of much more than what the review states in terms of GPU decoding.

As Eskimo hints at, there are tons of variables to get proper GPU offloading of HD content.
MrGuvernment said:
Why cant intel get their act together on their IGP to offload HD content instead of shipping it all over to the CPU!
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eh this is more of a PEBCAK issues than a board issue. It is really more like; why couldn't intel get their act together and make a "it just works" HTPC board?

For a more comprehensive look at the board from owners;
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1050334
 
Eskimo Pie said:
Your review of this board is not accurate. I am using this board in a dedicated HTPC paired with an E7300 CPU and get ~15% CPU utilization when decoding Bluray movies. You obviously are not using a video codec that supports hardware acceleration.

Your review is not clear what configuration you were in when you performed the BluRay playback tests... were you in XP or Vista? What playback software did you use? It's really not hard to setup this board for hardware acceleration, I'm not sure how you guys got it wrong.
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Good to know. I am fairly certain we had hardware encoding enbled, but I will go back and check it out today.

Vista 64-bit

WinDVD as supplied by Intel.

I got the latest Power DVD from Cyberlink direct this week. We will check our results. If I screwed the pooch, and it sounds like I did from you post, we will get things changed.

As far as being able to get it wrong, well, I am not going to sit here and tell you that G45 has been a priority with me.

Thanks for the heads up. We will let you know as it is simple enough to retest.
 
alg7_munif said:
It certainly looks like an intel vs amd CPU review based on the benchmarks. The integrated graphic is part of the motherboard/chipset but it was not covered much in the review. I think that benchmarking the igp with some HD viewing and light gaming is much better for a motherboard/chipset review than benchmarking the CPU multimedia performance because the igp is still a part of the motherboard/chipset but the CPU is not.
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Your thoughts are noted. Thanks for the feedback.
 
Atech said:
To repeat what have been stated before in this thread:
Why must you CPU do nothing, but it's okay that your GPU is fully loaded? :confused:
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Thats not what some people are talking about in terms of CPU utilization.

It's about being able to buy a cheaper CPU since the GPU is doing the heavy lifting.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Why cant intel get their act together on their IGP to offload HD content instead of shipping it all over to the CPU!
Click to expand...

To repeat what have been stated before in this thread:
Why must you CPU do nothing, but it's okay that your GPU is fully loaded? :confused:
 
www.avsforum.com has some VERY large discussions on this board, starting back in 07-18-08. Many posts by people who have owned the boards for quite some time, with the main focus being on HTPC use.


*Official* Intel G45 DG45ID microATX HTPC Motherboard Thread
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1050334


*Official* Asus P5Q-EM Motherboard Thread
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1057809


*Official* Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2H Thread (mATX Intel G45 + 8 Channel LPCM)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1054632
 
4670 is not bad for a htpc i think. intel still has their work cut out for them when it comes to graphics
 
Just for general info:

IDE to SATA adapters don't work that well with optical drives (from my experiance), so its not a problem with the blu ray nessasarily. I had the same problem with my older DVD burner.

Instead, what I do is use a IDE to USB adapter for my DVD drive, and I can boot just fine with it. Even the windows install cd. I actually have it directly plugged into a USB header on the motherboard using an adapter.

Also (and I know you guys didn't have a problem with vista and the driver, so this is just general for everyone else), MS changed the structure of windows install with vista to more easily support custom versions of the install image with drivers. So one alternative for people with driver and vista issues would be to put the drivers into a custom vista install image. Actually theoretically one should be able to slipstream the driver on a XP image too, but that tends to be more iffy.
But playing around with that can take a pretty large number of hours to find out how to do it, and find the right tools (for instance, MS makes you download a 1+ gig WAIK to get .wim image support, and the actual files you need for that are only a few hundred k), and google around, etc, and burning DVDs to find they dont work...
 
I installed this board in my HTPC and to my surprise the video would not pass HDCP so I had to resort to using my spare 8800GT vidoe card which works great. I have seen others around the net with tha same problem but no fixes as of yet. I would like to hear from someone who has it working.
 
JRitt said:
I installed this board in my HTPC and to my surprise the video would not pass HDCP so I had to resort to using my spare 8800GT vidoe card which works great. I have seen others around the net with tha same problem but no fixes as of yet. I would like to hear from someone who has it working.
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HDCP is working for me passing protected bluray video via HDMI through my Onkyo 875 receiver to a Samsung 1080p DLP. At one point there were issues with HDMI repeaters (such as a receiver) but that's since been fixed (I think it was a player issue). Make sure you have the latest video drivers and player updates (I'm using Arcsoft TMT).
 
Eskimo Pie said:
Kyle, were you able to re-test this and did you see lower CPU utilization with hardware acceleration working?
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I am having troubles getting the hardware acceleration to say selected during playback. I KNEW I had turned it off, but with WinDVD and PowerDVD neither actually stay engaged when the player starts. Still working on it....
 
cybrsage said:
You should download the 15 day trial of Arcsoft's Total Media Theater. It is a full feature trial, and it has been extremely well received by the HTPC crowd. It fully integrates with Vista Media Center, uses the Windows Remote, and plays both BR and HD-DVD disks.

http://www.arcsoft.com/products/totalmediatheatre/

Just make sure to do the update to the latest version...the trial is not the latest version.
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Download link no worky.
 
Did a bunch of testing today. Looks as if GPU offloaded BD playback is somewhat if not fully broken in this product if you use a BIOS after 0075.
 
On the follow up, which BIOS are you using in the video? Intel wanted to use .0075, you used .0079, and .0081 is now available. Is that .0081 or .0079 in the video? (I dont care but some people might ;) )

And the above link works fine for me.
 
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