Intel blogger slams employer over G45 IGP issues

If you've bought a PC based around Intel's G45 chipset - desktop or mobile - and your Blu-ray Disc performance is pants, change your software, the chip giant has suggested.

The remedy comes from a staffer and blogger called Aaron Brezenski, now achieving his 15 minutes of fame thanks to a couple of grumbles he's made about other aspects of the chipset's integrated graphics sub-system.

First, Blu-ray, clearly Brezenski's specialism. Noting a couple of other organisations have highlighted very high CPU utilisation while playing BDs on G45-based rigs - a sure sign the GPU's not accelerating the process, as it's advertised to be able to do - Intel's man says applying the correct Bios settings ensure the GPU does enable the missing hardware acceleration highlighted by the company's critics.

Bios tweaks are all very well, but they're not for the average user. We hope, therefore, that Intel's G45 customers, the mobo makers, are applying said tweaks to the Bios settings in shipping products.

Beyond the Bios tweaks, Brezenski claimed using better player software with "properly configured advanced de-interlacing" can push an HD Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) benchmark score from a poor 30 per cent to 50 per cent or more, a rather better results. Still not perfect, he admits, but he said he hopes future driver updates will improve matters further.

Still, the fellow's not without crits of his own, specifically the G45 GPU's poor 24p - 24 frames a second - performance and "broken" 7.1 sound send from the chipset over HDMI to an HD TV via a set-top box.

It's the 'via' bit that's the problem, he says. This uses "repeater mode" to relay the HDMI stream, and Intel's chipset doesn't support repeater mode because the Certified Output Protection Protocol (COPP) spec doesn't support it.

Unfortunately. AMD's GPUs do, leading Brezenski to the conclusion "we are sunk in the Home Threatre PC space if the home user can't get their equipment to even work with our graphics, or have to buy hacker software to do so. Even if we're not the root cause".

He adds: "The G45 is really the perfect home theater chipset... But it galls me to see such great work marred by two issues which seem correctable but which are still extant."