It's been a few weeks since Intel launched its latest chipset with integrated graphics, the Intel G45. Among other things, Intel claimed this chipset accelerated HD video formats such as Blu-ray, where the integrated graphics logic is supposed to off-load the CPU of processing the video. Such as it is, Intel's integrated graphics processors (IGP) have been hugely reliant on the CPU for its functions.

Aaron Brezenski, a product engineer for Intel at its Chandler, Arizona US facility. In his recent blog entry (read here), he writes about the G45 not exactly achieving what it set out for, in other words, it was "still imperfect". He mentions about AMD hosting a demo booth where it was publicly demonstrated that a G45 based notebook made by HP failed to accelerate Blu-ray playback, the processor tipped 100% load throughout the playback which isn't what G45 is intended to bring about.

On the other hand, AMD claims its integrated graphics processors (namely AMD 740G, 780V, 780G) performed Blu-ray playback without this issue. Brezenski quashed AMD's study saying they didn't mention which processors they used, which Intel disapproves saying it wasn't an apples to apples comparison, but did buy their findings that despite the presence of G45, the processors peaked in utilization indicating the G45 was caught napping at its desk. A certain review ExtremeTech did of an Intel DG45ID motherboard came up with the same findings as those postulated by AMD.

Brezenski says that his sources have told him that the low HD HQV test scores were the result of a software player issue. Brezenski says that properly configured advanced de-interlacing would raise scores 20 points higher, and while he admits those scores are still not perfect, he says they are workable. Brezenski hopes driver tweaks will help improve performance even more in the future.

The critical flaws however, according to Brezenski are that when accelerating video using Arcsoft Total Media Player (in which acceleration is found to work, with CPU usage staying around 20%), it is found that the G45 is stuttering every 15 seconds when playing Blu-ray at 24 Hz, and that the G45 isn't able to pass 7.1 channel digital audio to a receiver. Keeping in mind the number of home theater PC users likely to use the G45 chipset and using AV receivers in their home theaters, this one issue will be a deal killer, reason being that while passing video and audio over HDMI makes it HDCP capable, the audio routed out to the receivers wouldn't be 7.1 channel.