So, what's new in Nvidia's latest series of onboard graphics? What are the things that they've implemented to benefit the consumers? Let's take a look at some of the features.

Hybrid Power Technology

Hybrid Power Technology allows the computer to turn off the discrete graphics card when the computer is not running graphics intensive applications. This is done by having the system fall back on the Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) that consumes less power and still provides enough power for regular applications. Whilst this may not seem to be a concern for most enthusiasts, we can certainly see this as a boon to laptop power-users. By turning off the MXM graphics solution and falling back on the integrated graphics, users would gain generous amounts of battery life when running regular desktop applications. Unfortunately, we note that current graphics accelerators do not support running in this mode but future NVIDIA graphics solutions will be able to support this

These 3 babies guzzle 230W more power idling than a 8600GT. Will Hybrid Power help turn the heat off as we sleep?

Geforce Boost

As its name suggest, this is a method of using the integrated graphics to boost the performance of a discrete graphics accelerator. A more common name for it would perhaps be Hybrid SLI. Currently, the only supported accelerators are the Geforce 8400GS and Geforce 8500GT. As the only mode of SLI supported is Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR), it makes sense that only these accelerators are supported. Any faster accelerator would actually be slowed down whilst waiting for the IGP to render its share of frames. Whilst the MCP78S that the Palit board is based on supports both Hybrid Power and Geforce Boost technologies, both the 8400GS and 8500GT do not support Hybrid Power since there is little power difference from powering down these low-end graphics accelerators.

DirectX 10, PureVideo HD & Improved Connectivity

The new MCP78 is also known as the Geforce 8200. Despite its naming convention, it is very much a motherboard chipset. Amongst other new features, the Geforce 8200 adds support for DirectX 10 and is meant to be able to fully support Vista Premium graphical features. In addition, a new PureVideo HD decoder is part of the IGP to help relieve the CPU when decoding high definition videos. The PCI-e x16 expansion slot is also a 2nd generation slot thus, future proofing the chipset. Unlike previous NVIDIA IGPs, the Geforce 8200 comes packed with 6 SATA-II ports rather than 4 and also an integrated Gigabit Ethernet MAC across all variants of the chipset. Without further adieu, lets take a look at the board.

Bear in mind that this is a very early sample that's no where near production.

The Palit N78S that we received is a very early engineering sample and so the production units may have certain differences from what is seen in this review. This will explain the lack of markings on the board and the customary box shot. There simply isn't a box as this is not even a commercial product!

Lets take a quick look at the basic specifications of this board before we move on.

Specifications
Processor	Socket AM2/AM2+ for AMD Athlon 64FX/Athlon 64X2/Athlon 64 and Sempron processors with Hyper Transport 3.0
Chipset	NVIDIA MCP78S (GeForce 8200)
Memory	4 x DDR2 240-pin DIMM slots, 8GB memory capacity, DDR2 1066 for AM2+ CPUs and DDR2 800 for AM2 and lower
VGA	Build in GeForce 8200 GPU
LAN	Realtek RTL8211B 100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet controller
Audio	Realtek ALC883 7.1 Channel HD Audio
Expansion Slot	1 x PCI Express x16 graphics slot 1 x PCI Express x1 slot 2 x PCI slots
Onboard Connector/Header	6 x SATA II(3.0Gb/s) connectors, support RAID0, 1, 0+1,5 and JBOD, NCQ 1 x ATA133 connector support up to 2 IDE devices 1 x floppy connector 3 x USB headers support 6 USB 2.0 ports 1 x parallel port header 1 x SPDIF out header 1 x CD-In header 1 x IrDA header 1 x front panel header 1 x front audio header 1 x 24-pin ATX power connector 1 x 8-pin ATX power connector 1 x 4-pin CPU fan connector 2 x 3 pin system fan connectors
Rear Panel	1 x PS2 keyboard 1 x PS2 mouse 1 x Serial port 1x VGA port 1x DVI port 1 x RJ45 GbE controller 4 x USB 2.0 ports 1 x 7.1 channel audio ports (6 phone jack)
Form Factor	mATX (244 x 220 mm)

A myriad of connections adorn the rear I/O plate including but not limited to: DVI-D, VGA, 7.1 output and Gigabit Ethernet.

Realtek's ALC883 HD Audio codec provides 7.1 channel outputs and HD Audio for the board.

Gigabit Ethernet is provided by the RTL8211B PHYceiver from Realtek as well.

Palit isn't following the current trend of using all Solid Polymer Capacitors. Here, Taiwan Ostor caps are used in pre-regulation.

During the course of benchmarking, we wanted to compare the Geforce 8200 to its predecessor, the Geforce 7050. Unfortunately, the latter does not support the Phenom 9500 Quad-core processor that we intended to use. Hence, we decided on pitting the latest IGPs from both ATI and NVIDIA against each other. In this review, we will see how the Geforce 8200 fares against the AMD/ ATI RS780 IGP. Also, as this is a beta board, there are still issues to iron out.

With the Phenom, both the platforms had issues with all the Performance Rams we normally use in reviews. A member in our lair sacrificed 2 sticks out of a quartet of 2GB OCZ value-ram sticks from his personal rig to get this review going. Although the rams would do DDR2-800, CL4 on the RS780 board, the MCP78 would not budge from DDR2-667 and so that was the setting used to run both platforms to ensure a fair test.

The N78S was rested on our special overclocking newspaper.

Benchmark Setup 

• AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-core
• Scythe Zipang w/ S-Flex F
• Palit N78S (MCP78S IGP)
• Biostar TA780G M2+ (RS780 IGP)
• 2 x 2GB OCZ2VU6672G PC2-5400 (@ DDR2-667, CL5-5-5-15, 1T)
• 2 x 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7
• Windows Vista Ultimate
• Enermax Galaxy 1kW reV2.0
• NVIDIA ForceWare 174.13 Beta Drivers
• ATI Catalyst 8.4.5.2 Beta Drivers

Discrete Graphics and Geforce Boost Tests

• Zotac Geforce 8400GS 256MB

Integrated graphics have never matched the performance of discrete graphics accelerators and we don't expect them to. A quick run of synthetic benchmarks will help reveal the performance differences between both the Geforce 8200 and the ATI RS780 IGPs. Both are new to the game and tout similar features such as DirectX 10 and HD video decoding support. Here, we have FutureMark's 3DMark 06 and PCMark 05 as well as LightsMark 2007.

 
Not exactly a score to be proud of normally but both IGP's match up well.

The NVIDIA Geforce 8200 scores well in PCMark 05, leading ATI's RS780 by 300 points.

 
ATI graphics solutions have never performed well in LightsMark and it shows in their IGP as well.

These are just Synthetic tests and so we shall move on to real-world performance: Games

Newer games, particularly DirectX 10 games, have moved on at a much greater rate than graphics accelerators have lately. As such, we don't expect many of them to be playable on just IGPs alone. Nonetheless, as a gauge of what to expect from the Geforce 8200, we have lined up 2 DirectX 10 and 1 OpenGL titles for a quick test. We have: Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Unreal Tournament 3 and Quake 4.

CoH is definitely not playable but the Palit N78S does admirably well against the RS780.

The Geforce 8200 continues to maintain the lead with a healthy 21% better score.

Where ATI solutions are usually worse than NVIDIA's in OpenGL games, the RS780 has trumped the Geforce 8200.

Testing the performance of Discrete Graphics allows us to see if there is a negative impact on the system performance from having the Integrated Graphics on the chipset. At the same time, we're also testing the performance improvement from activating Geforce Boost, if any.
Note that as Hybrid Power would turn off the discrete accelerator when idling, the display has to be connected to the integrated graphics accelerator. Unfortunately, this also means that the output is limited to the resolution of a single-link DVI (1920 x 1080) at the moment. Similarly, when used in Geforce Boost configuration, we were only able to get the display to work on the IGP's output.

In order for Hybrid Power and/ or Geforce Boost to work, you will need to forcefully enable onboard graphics; otherwise, the integrated graphics solution will be disabled upon detecting the discrete accelerator. This is done via BIOS settings on the Palit N78S board:

Currently, toggling between Hybrid Power and Geforce Boost has to be done manually. This can be done by clicking on a taskbar Icon. Alternatively, the Control Panel Power Configuration Options can be used to automatically disable the discrete GPU when idling.

 Synthetic Benchmarks

Hybrid SLI offers a small improvement of 74 points in 3DMark 06.

It's interesting to note that leaving the IGP activated actually takes a toll on system performance; more than the graphics benefits reaped.

The same games and settings used in the IGP tests were run but this time with an 8400GS. This will highlight whether there are real gains to be had with Hybrid SLI.

The healthy 17% gain from Hybrid SLI doesn't make CoH playable though.

In UT3, Hybrid SLI isn't helping and the RS780 pulls a very marginal lead.

Again, we see a slight penalty from enabling Hybrid SLI.

Conclusion

During the course of the review, random BSODs, crashes and wierd occurances plagued us. Once we nailed the Performance Memory as the culprit, the testing started to move on at a much greater pace. Aside from that, enabling Geforce Boost switched the display from the 8400GS to the integrated graphics and caused our LCD to blank out. However, this is an early engineering sample showcasing what is to come and so we cannot pin the blame entirely on Palit. Certainly, Palit has been bold enough to take on this challenge. Perhaps the only gripe we had was the inability to overclock the IGP and see if we could overcome its lack lustre performance, particularly in DirectX 10 games. The BIOS would definitely see some tweaking before the board reaches production and so we hope that these issues would be ironed out by then. Afterall, with the prices of memory crashing in the past few months, Performance DDR2 memory has become very affordable and it would be a shame if the board remains incompatible with them when used with a Phenom.

The Geforce 8200 proves to be an extremely interesting IGP. Bringing features like Hybrid Power and Geforce Boost, the Geforce 8200 certainly is a revolution in IGP technology. Should NVIDIA be able to render all future GPUs compatible with Hybrid Power, we can certainly foresee the mobile computing market being dominated by them. Afterall, which mobile user would mind more battery life? In addition, now that Triple-SLI is possible, enthusiasts who never power down their rigs would rejoice when their monsters rigs churn out less heat whilst they're dozing away. The only issue that remains would be that the technology is limited to one single-link DVI output and hardcore gamers with 30 inch LCDs or multi-screen configurations would be left out.

On the other hand, Geforce Boost has not lived up to the hype generated. Sure, the performance is improved in some games and benchmarks but leaving the IGP activated also caused enough of a performance hit to the system that the losses outweighed the gains sometimes. Due to the method with which Geforce Boost works, it is only useful with the lowest-end of graphics cards and that is where it doesn't make sense. Making an upgrade should never entail a similarly weak solution. Hence, we are unable to see a point in Geforce Boost. Perhaps NVIDIA has a stockpile of mobile Geforce MXM cards to liquidate but we may never know.

As this article is based on an early prototype from Palit rather than a production sample, we will not be awarding any VR marks for the board. Afterall, what's the point of recommending a product that end-users can't buy? However, we would like to take the opportunity to thank Palit for sending us the board.

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