AMD's 690 chipset put through its paces

AMD has some high hopes for its 690 chipset, the first to bring those in-house ATI graphics to bear on an integrated setup, and supposedly destined to leapfrog Intel in the budget space. After some substantial delays, they've finally got it out the door, and now bit-tech.net has put the chipset through its paces. Perks like HDMI 1.3 with HDCP, integrated TV encoder and dual discrete displays make the chipset plenty lovable off the bat, but unfortunately the graphics aren't going to blow anyone away. The folks at bit-tech found a few high-end games playable at a paltry 640 x 480 resolution -- games that wouldn't even run on the minimal integrated graphics from Intel -- but it's clear that if you want a truly modern gaming experience, you're still going to need to spring for a PCI-Express card. General performance was pretty comparable to Intel offerings, but what has bit-tech especially excited is the prospect of this sort of integrated tech making into ultraportable laptops, and the Intel processor-based chipsets that AMD is promising as well.

[tekdroid @ Mar 4th 2007 6:45AM]

HDCP has become a perk?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP

I'll pass on the budget ATI-based boards, tho I imagine they will sell quite a few of these.

[kucau.net @ Mar 4th 2007 6:47AM]

ermm , amd should ditch out pcie and put high end graphics integrated. that way , they will surely win this battle

[AKBlade13 @ Mar 4th 2007 7:28AM]

If they did that I'd invest in that mobo quicker than you could say Winteldia (Windows Intel nVidia).

AKBlade13

[Galley @ Mar 4th 2007 8:42AM]

It's nice to see HDMI 1.3 support.

[AbleJames @ Mar 4th 2007 9:37AM]

@tekdroid: Haha--I was thinking the same thing. "Wow, this motherboard comes with a pair of handcuffs I have to wear all the time while using it! And other perks!"

[ginnal @ Mar 4th 2007 12:10PM]

THIS BOARD IS NOT FOR PLAYING GAMES!

The HDCP and Onboard HDMI should be a simple clue, along with the matx form factor, this board is for HTPCS, no one cares that this budget board can't compete with a $200 video card.

[Revrant2394 @ Mar 4th 2007 1:01PM]

Foolish people who seem to think an integrated solution is viable right now, just knock it off, it isn't, but this is a step towards making it that way, maybe in a year or two we'll have something comparable to a new budget PCIe card release.

As for AMD offering up the chipset for Intel processors, You Go Girl.

[buggsuperstar66 @ Mar 4th 2007 1:10PM]

Someone tell me how your gonna put a sound card on this board? The PCIX will cover both of those pci slots and there is no pcix x1 sound cards yet that I know of.

[Paul @ Mar 4th 2007 4:19PM]

The only thing good about this is tht since AMD is making "innovation" (albeit ina cheap and crapy sense) the mere offering of this kind of integration means that Intel will have to do the same thing. Of course Intel will do it better, and this is when the real "good" happens

[Nova @ Mar 4th 2007 5:45PM]

One day, AMD's CPUs will be the size of a ATX board. Maybe... bigger!