AMD integrates ATI Radeon X1250 into Vista-certified 690 chipset
By Darren Murph 
posted February 28th 2007 10:43AM
posted February 28th 2007 10:43AM
Although ATI's R600 graphics chip may have hit a recent snag, it seems that the company's Radeon X1250 GPU is coming along just fine, as it claims the proud title of "world's first" integrated graphics unit to receive Vista certification. The chip, of course, is a critical piece of AMD's latest 690-series chipset, which integrates Aero-capable graphics, 1GHz HyperTransport interface speeds, and support for Sempron, Athlon 64/64 FX/64 FX X2 processors, PCI Express, Microsoft's DirectDraw, hardware acceleration for MPEG-2/4 and WMV9, TV output, HDCP-compatible DVI / HDMI outputs, and the general smorgasbord of connectors we're all used to seeing these days. Putting the resources of the ATI / AMD merger to full use, the 690 family claims to be the first chipset from the pair that supports ATI's Avivo technology, which purportedly makes your multimedia experiences within Vista a smooth ordeal. AMD's latest should be available right now for an undisclosed price, but we'd wait for a few hands-on opinions before rushing out and skipping over a dedicated GPU in your next rig.[Via 64-Bit-Computers]
You can see performance and features here: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=370&pid=2
i thought the whole point was that integrated graphics were bad - what if you want to change your graphics card? If they put in one that's good enough for Vista, but its not the one you want, then you paid all that money for nothing.
At least, that's what all the Windows users tell me when i buy a Mac.
If you ever wanted to upgrade just but a new video card and plug it in. All computers have integrated graphics... This one just comes with a good one.
This is actually a great idea and I believe it will sell like hot cakes. Anyone other than moderate to hardcore gamers can benefit from this.
Looks like another garbage chip to me. I don't see what use this chip is to anyone without DX10. Besides, Lately all we've seen from ATI on the mobile end has been shared memory chipsets. Lets see some chips with dedicated memory and some support for DX10 so buying Vista for a laptop acually makes sense...
This is what interests me -
"...hardware acceleration for MPEG-2/4 and WMV9..."
These are the codecs used in Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
If anyone out there has ever tried to play back HD content, encoded in these codecs, on their PC you know how demanding a task it is (can pin even a multi-core CPU).
Off-load it to hardware I say. Good stuff.
Ho-hum for a gamer, but perfect for the HTPC world...
--Bill
You all have to remember....there are people out there who only use computers for email, web surfing, and possibly a little gaming here and there
Having a low(er) cost onboard graphics chip that can display one of Vista's main improvements/selling points is a great thing.
I wouldn't have expected this. I thought the whole reason behind the ATI aquisition was because AMD is planning to put GPU's embedded into it's multicore CPU's. This is not very exciting at all.
@ken
You would take the two most memory bandwidth intensive chips in a pc and combine them to share a single memory pipeline in order to increase performance?
If that's a joke you need to work on your sarcasm.
Performance? Why does everything embedded turn into a performance arguement? This is about offering an upgradable embedded solution. The whole bandwith issue is irrelevant considering the concepts of graphics processing would be entirely different with this architecture. And if I am not mistaken, AMD's CPU's have the memory manager built on the die.
"If they put in one that's good enough for Vista, but its not the one you want, then you paid all that money for nothing."
Jesus Jumping Christ not every chipset is designed for fps nerds to gather round and jerk off to.
This chipset specifically addresses the HTPC segment.
I have been waiting for this for months.
I'm gonna toss out my perfectly good abit nf-m2 for this.
"At least, that's what all the Windows users tell me when i buy a Mac."
Oh I didnt realise this was incredibly poor troll.
I was under the impression that AMD's chips also had inferior architectures, that's why they're currently lagging behind Intel's.
wow. now that this is out, I might actually build a really good, quiet, dedicated HTPC/file server for my apartment, centered around this chipset and take that load off of my current desktop (and devote it to just gaming). Awesome.
oh, and Blake, while you're right (from what I've heard), I think that the performance difference between the Intel and AMD chipsets won't actually mean anything to the market sector that this is aimed at.
The whole key at the end of the review:
"The AMD 690's best features are the built-in support for HDMI and DVI right from the graphics logic. I tested the output of the HDMI with an LCD HDTV I have in the office and it worked flawlessly with the Catalyst driver 7.2 provided for our testing. Having this option for users looking to build an HTPC system should be a big plus -- with one caveat. **The X1250 does NOT support HD-DVD or Blu-ray decoding. The GPU core is just not fast enough to handle the H.264 off loading and as such I feel the HDMI and HDCP support is really just fluff.** Sticking with VGA and DVI would have been fine for most users." (my added emphasis)
So.. what's the point then? Same as the 6150 pretty much (which is also mentioned/compared against in the article).
Almost, AMD/ATI... but not quite there... :(