Saturday, January 3rd 2009
Gigabyte Has a Crippled VGA Slot: MSI
Although presentations that are internal to companies never make it to the public scene, some of those presentations are interesting, to say the least. Computer hardware manufacturers spread around an area as saturated as Taiwan, China, Malaysia, etc., get so involved into aggressive competition that in more occassions than one they get carried away. Internal presentations are the ones manufacturers such as ASUSTek, MSI and Gigabyte share with their potential customers in channel vendors, OEMs, and the likes. One such presentation by MSI, a particular slide of which, has become an example of how far competition has taken the manufacturers.
MSI, in one of its internal presentations regarding its G45M Digital motherboards, accuses Gigabyte of misleading its consumers by selling motherboards with "crippled VGA slots". Quite simply put, the VGA slot, in this case, PCI-Express x16 slots most commonly used to install graphics cards are "crippled" by Gigabyte, by reducing its number of PCI-Express lanes. The affected Gigabyte motherboards, according to MSI are EG45M-DS2H, EG43M-SH2H, and EG41MF-S2H. So while the slots are mechanically PCI-Express x16, they are electrically PCI-Express x4 (with a bandwidth reduction of 75%). MSI backs its claims with Gigabyte's own data published on its website.
Now comes the question of "Why?". The Intel G4x northbridge is capable of providing 16 lanes to a mechanical x16 PCI-Express slot, but it would also mean wiring the northbridge to the slot. With the way in which PCI-Express is built, the number of available lanes can be manipulated by simply not connecting the lanes to the device. In this case, not wiring all the lanes to the slot, when the northbridge is very much capable of providing the lanes. Furthermore, Gigabyte put up a "VGA compatibility list". Backed with credible evidence, MSI looks to capitalise on Gigabyte's design flaws in its own marketing campaign.
Source:
ModReactor
MSI, in one of its internal presentations regarding its G45M Digital motherboards, accuses Gigabyte of misleading its consumers by selling motherboards with "crippled VGA slots". Quite simply put, the VGA slot, in this case, PCI-Express x16 slots most commonly used to install graphics cards are "crippled" by Gigabyte, by reducing its number of PCI-Express lanes. The affected Gigabyte motherboards, according to MSI are EG45M-DS2H, EG43M-SH2H, and EG41MF-S2H. So while the slots are mechanically PCI-Express x16, they are electrically PCI-Express x4 (with a bandwidth reduction of 75%). MSI backs its claims with Gigabyte's own data published on its website.
Now comes the question of "Why?". The Intel G4x northbridge is capable of providing 16 lanes to a mechanical x16 PCI-Express slot, but it would also mean wiring the northbridge to the slot. With the way in which PCI-Express is built, the number of available lanes can be manipulated by simply not connecting the lanes to the device. In this case, not wiring all the lanes to the slot, when the northbridge is very much capable of providing the lanes. Furthermore, Gigabyte put up a "VGA compatibility list". Backed with credible evidence, MSI looks to capitalise on Gigabyte's design flaws in its own marketing campaign.
75 Comments on Gigabyte Has a Crippled VGA Slot: MSI
There are many Pcie slots with different sizes...
matx boards are quite commonly used in LAN PC's, due to the compact size. I have one, my brother has one, one of my housemates have one.
we hit the requirements for 16x with the dual GPU Cards on 1.1 (8x to each GPU) so they went 2.0 -if a single high end GPU Needs 8x in 2.0, what makes you think even the mid range GPU's (which arent really that much different, in nvidia they're all G92 anyway) will require less than that?
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-2-0,1915-10.html
HD3850
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-2-0,1915-9.html
tested this on 5 diffrent asus nf5 boards, all of them had the same crap settings locked in bios and non-functional trfc settings......worthless!!!!
they dont fix their audio drivers for the analog devices sound chips they use, dispite ADI having patched them years back to fix the KNOWN issues in the asus 2k/xp/2k3/x64pro drivers......
i wont own another asus AMD board, just not worth the money you spend.as others have said, even pci-e 4x in pci-e 2.o spec holds back anything but the lowist of addin cards, would be fine for a 1300/8400 class card but wouldnt be good enought for a true mid ragen card like the 4670.
This is one slide from a presentation meant for OEM businesses with computing needs vastly different from you guys in your "OVERCLOCK TO THE MAX ONE ONEONE" clique.
"Gigabyte has a serious design issue on all their Intel G41 / G43 / G43 based mainboards. They run their primary PCI-Express x16 VGA slot at fake x4 speed..."
Out of context, this statement is a lie.
In context of a comparison of 3 models Gigabyte produces to MSI's products, it's true.
The PCI-E 16x slots are clearly specified to run at 4x.
Gigabyte offers full speed PCI-E 16x slots in its other boards besides those 3 models singled out in this slide.
Lets be on the look out for the TPU headline about Larabee that shits all over Intel for using Pentium 2 technology in a 2009 graphics card - you really missed the big picture here TPU.
if you insert a card (graphics or not) in the PCIe x16 slot (GEN2 x16), then the onboard graphics is disabled automatically.... this is the chipset's (G41/43/45) limitation...
GIGABYTE board does not suffer from this limitation because the PCIe x16 (electrically x4) is not attached to northbridge (G41/43/45)... it's attached to soughtbridge (ICH7/10(R))... and that's why it has "only" x4 bandwith...
check out GA-EG45M-DS2H block diagram for more info...
img59.imageshack.us/img59/729/blockdiagrambyj4.png
these boards are for HTPC/office use... so haveing no full x16 slot is no real issue...
edit:
i would also like to point out that modern AMD (ATI) / NVIDIA chipsets does not suffer from such limitations... so you can plug-in full x16 discrete VGA and have you're igp working alongside it, providing additional display support or hybrid crossfire/sli graphics...
^ 9800GX2 with PCi-E 2.0.
It'd be worse on 1.1/1.0 boards. There are cards out there that would need more than this in todays games, for sure (GTX 280/260, 4870 etc)
as nathanfake said these boards arent for gaming use. I think the backlash is that simply, people are sick to death of these misleading motherboards. Most manufacturers have done it, even my board has 16x/4x when in crossfire, despite the second slot appearing full length (which to most people, means 16x)
I bought a premium MSI MB almost 7 years ago and after 1 year of use the MB started to crash my system , they woudln't give me another saying it works for them , then i go on forums and find out most of the people are having this problem and MSI refuses to give warranty , it was some via KT600 chipset but i don't remember the MB name exactly , anyways very bad experience with MSI.
The problem was any time the system started to consume more power by proccessing something more than a movie i heard a shhhhh sound from the motherboard and the computer freezed , voltage regulators problems people where saying.
If i was to make a top of the MB company the first 2 that comes to mind are always Asus the first and gigabyte the second , but i tend to buy gigabyte because they seem more stable and better overclock on the mainstream and some cheap MB's from low end , well not so cheap but a bit cheap.
In the mainstream Asus kind of sucks with price and quality where gigabyte is top notch , gigabyte p35 DS3L and p31DS3L are some cheap and very overclockable MB's , let' see this from punny little MSI , in my country they are expensive and badddd , bad overclock , bad quality , not very bad but bad compared to Asus and gigabyte.
"Pay 100%, get 25% performance"
It is mainly a compatibility thing, if people open the case and see a PCI-E x4 slot, it is hard to tell if it is open ended or not, most would assume that it is a regular PCI-E x4 slot, and assume they can't put a graphics card in it at all.I think the biggest backlash is that there really is no reason that this slot shouldn't be x16. The lanes are available to use, Gigabyte just decided not to use them all. On your board, there simply aren't enough PCI-E lanes to make the second slot anything more than x4.Actually, according to the tests, it is more like 50% of the performance on a very small number of games. It is more along the lines of 80-90% of the performance in most situations.
EVERYONE here has complained about GB. they are not they "greatest" of brands at all
oh and MSI is so not a bug compared to the other two its a huge company
If you did read the reviews about 780G chipset months ago when it just released, GIGABYTE and Asus were the only one who has 780G chipset with 4 phases power+ that could handle 125 Watt cpu (Phenom). All other branch failed.
And the 780G board that could OC its onboard vga better than the rest.
GIGABYTE > MSI in Asian markets, that's why they pulled this bullshit out. Oh! And I think in US market too, it's hard to see overclocker using MSI boards on most forum.
Asus and GIGABYTE overcrowed MSI boards.
I wouldn't say all other branch failed, heck there was only foxconn and biostar at that point...who were only handling 780g.
Not heard of to many people using MSI unlles they are sponsored by them or some organized event by MSI , i guess they want a piece of that market too but they should prove they have something good.
This is not the first time people from here blame Gigabyte so much for something they didn't do , if they inform you it will work at x4 what's the problem ? you can get a better one if you want gigabyte or you can buy a MSI :) .
Last time with the Asus scandal people still blamed gigabyte but from reviews and just all around knowledge everyone knew Gigabyte has the better power savings and Asus just wanted to have that extra that gigabyte had , actually there are numerous things these bugs like MSI and Asus are copying from gigabyte , they didn't used all solid capacitors on MB's until gigabyte did this , they didn't go so far with power savings until gigabyte did this.
Well this is competition , they copy every good move you make but we consumers must know who copyes everything and who is actually moving this industry forward.
I can't speak for all MSI products , they probably do a lot of good things (laptops , lcd's , graphic cards .... etc.) but the motherboards segment are just nobodys for informed people , of course the brainwashed TV comercials and we trust in the "brand" people will buy MSI because they heard something or because of the so many stickers with features , never the informed people because in all segements of price Asus and Gigabyte always has something better , if not gigabyte because it has some x4 slot than Asus and still MSI is a nobody.
They say clearly on the product pages "1 x PCI Express x4 slot (Refer to the VGA device support list.)" for two of the motherboard and "1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (Refer to the graphics cards support list.)". If they didn't mention that, then the comments on this thread would be justified.
4x PCI-E 2.0 = 8x PCI-E 1.0
however, if its on a PCI-E 1.0 or 1.1 card, the hit is going to be bigger. tests with a 7600GT, or x1800 would have a lot more performance problems.
its not as simple as it seems.
yea it could of been better but if thats not the market its aimed at why no try to save some money/power????
iv had asus, giga and msi and had issues with all 3, and they have fixxed them too but asus was the harder to get sorted. imo the bigger they get the less they care.
if people dont do the research they will end up paying twice as much for a rebadged g92 :roll:
Not really, even with PCI-E 1.1 slots with PCI-E 1.1 cards, the x1900XTX barely shows any performance loss going down to x4 in games. so the 7600GT and x1800 wouldn't really have any performance problem.
The 8800GTS definitely takes a bigger hit though.
The reason why gigabyte crippled that slot
vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20080729234236140
from that forumand latter answersSoooo , anyone cares to add more to this ?