AMD 785G Chipset Launch: ASUS and Gigabyte
IGP Gaming: Crysis, ETQW
While the 785G's integrated Radeon HD 4200 isn't exactly ideal for gaming, its predecessor still packed a decent punch. So we've put the Radeon HD 4200 through a series of gaming tests to see how it handles some popular mainstream titles.
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If you're at all into enthusiast computing, the FPS smash-hit Crysis, should require no introduction. Crytek's game engine produces some stunning visuals that are easily the most impressive real-time 3D renderings we've seen on the PC to date. The engine employs some of the latest techniques in 3D rendering like Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Subsurface Scattering, Motion Blur and Depth-of-Field effects, as well as some of the most impressive use of Shader technology we've seen yet. In short, for those of you that want to skip the technical jib-jab, Crysis is a beast of a game. We ran the full game patched to v1.21 with all of its visual options set to 'Medium'. |
Crysis is a crushing heavy duty work load for the IGPs in our test and none of them produce especially playable results with graphical settings at medium. The AMD 785G's integrated Radeon HD 4200 puts up a strong showing in the first gaming test. Both the Radeon HD 4200 and the GeForce 9300 put up a good effort but the GMA X4500 is a no go.
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Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is Based on an enhanced version of id's Doom 3 engine and viewed by many as Battlefield 2 meets the Strogg, and then some. In fact, we'd venture to say that id took ET's team-based warfare genre up a notch or two. ET: Quake Wars also marks the introduction of John Carmack's "Megatexture" technology that employs large environment and terrain textures that cover vast areas of maps without the need to repeat and tile many smaller textures. The beauty of megatexture technology is that each unit only takes up a maximum of 8MB of frame buffer memory. Add to that HDR-like bloom lighting and leading edge shadowing effects and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars looks great, plays well and works high end graphics cards vigorously. |
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was much more forgiving than Crysis and the Radeon HD 4200 as well as the GeForce 9300 were able to produce somewhat playable frame rates. The GMA X4500 on the other hand barely did any better here than in Crysis. While the GeForce 9300 performed better than the Radeon HD 4200 in both gaming benchmarks, it's also a much more expensive chipset. GeForce 9300 based motherboards can currently be found in the region of $130+, while the new AMD 785G debuts in the sub-$100 segment. The savings could easily be put to a value graphics chip which, in conjunction with the Radeon HD 4200 via Hybrid CrossFire, can would increase performance considerably. 
