FalconFly
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Well, testing is complete.
I aquired two Boards with the AMD RS690V-Chipset : MSI K9AGM2-L GigaByte GA-MA69VM-S2
Problem : On the MSI Board, the integrated X1200 only shuts down when a PCIe-Videocard is present. The mechanism fails to detect a PCI Videocard, however, thus making it impossible to run it with disabled Onboard VGA off a low-power PCI Card.
The GigaByte Board allows to use a PCI VGA instead of Onboard Video, but the Onboard actually does not fully shut down (allocates no resources but the Chip still clocks up to spec). That means the full power is wasted for running the Onboard Video despited not being used at all. Also noteworthy, the tiny Heatsink on the Videochip becomes too hot to touch, even under ideal conditions (Motherboard sitting free on the Table, not even mounted in a case). I can only speculate what insanse temperatures this passive cooler would reach under full 3D workload, eventually posing a fire hazard. I had to place a 30mm Fan onto it to maintain a reasonable temperature curve.
Result : The RS690 Chipset itself would be a nice, power-saving piece of equipment, but failing to physically shut off (=cut power completely) the Onboard X1200 Video Core, it clearly falls behind a comparative VIA K8T890 & PCI Video combination by approx. 8-10W. It also means having a significant hotspot on the GigaByte Motherboard, something I've never been a friend of. Nothing in a Computer should become ever hot enough to cause skin burns or even worse.
That leaves the VIA K8T890 the most power-saving AMD Socket AM2 Chipset existing, ahead of the AMD R690V and far ahead of any NVidia Chipset. The only Chipset that could have beaten it was the ULI Chipset...
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