AMD’s 690G/V Series Chipset Preview and Benchmarks

The AMD 690 Chipset

Designed for socket AMD processors, the AMD 690 chipset series makes use of the Radeon X1250 graphics to deliver the premium Windows Vista experience. The AMD 690 chipset family is the first chipset for AMD processors that fully supports ATI Avivo technology, which helps produce smooth video playback and enhanced colors. The 690G/V supports all socket AM2 processors such as the AMD Sempron, AMD Athlon 64, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core and AMD Athlon 64 FX. The new platform is comprised of the RS690 Northbridge and SB600 Southbridge as seen below.

The integrated Radeon X1250 is clocked at 400MHz and has the ability to share up to 1GB of system memory via settings in the BIOS. The integrated graphics have a maximum resolution of 2048×1536 with 32-Bit color, which is amazing! For those that want to upgrade the graphics down the road a full x16 PCI Express lane is present. The 690G also supports up to four additional x1 PCI Express connections, which is handy. The AMD 690 series chipset also employs the latest Southbridge technology, the ATI SB600 series, to give PC users the most connectivity options available today. This inclused up to 10 USB 2.0 ports, 4 SATA Generation II pors, RAID support (0, 1 and 10), HD audio and PATA support for older optical and hard drives. The chipset also has disk controller technologies such as the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) with native command queuing (NCQ) to provide faster access to data storage and quicker load times. The 192kHz High Definition (HD) audio controller is a nice touch and is something that many motherboards with integrated graphics lacked in the past.

The HDMI interface supports the 1.2 specification as well as HDCP (High-Digital Content Protection) 1.1 specification. The audio over the integrated HDMI output is powered by the audio controller that is found in the Northbridge.

Lastly, the 690 series chipset will be available in two different ways. The flaship chipset will be the AMD 690G with an ATI Radeon X1250 IGP as well as integrated HDMI or DVI outputs. The other version is the AMD 690V which comes with an integrated ATI Radeon X1200 and no HDMI/DVI support. Both boards will have identical graphics logos, but different chipset logos.