AMD's new AMD 890GX HD chipset announced, reviewed, lauded
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted March 3rd 2010 1:39PM
posted March 3rd 2010 1:39PM
AMD has officially announced the successor to its 790GX chipset, and the kids at Hot Hardware have not only put it through its paces but have been kind enough to let us in on their results. Apparently the two 890GX they tested should at least perform "on par" with previous AMD platforms, although the integrated Radeon HD 4290 graphics (performing at a none-too-shabby 700MHz, according to the company) were found to be "superior to any other AMD IGP," even surpassing the performance of Intel's HD Graphics solution in a number of tests. If that ain't enough for you, the Radeon HD 4290 natively supports DirectX 10.1 -- but not DirectX 11. That's what we call "tough love." But that ain't the whole sordid tale, not by a longshot: check out the plethora of links below if you dare, or simply peep the PR after the break.
AMD Unveils Versatile AMD 890GX Chipset for High Definition Entertainment on Virtually Any PC Budget
New Chipset Serves as the Foundation for 2010 Client Platforms Featuring ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 Graphics, Advanced SATA 3.0, and USB 3.0 Connectivity for an Outstanding Out-of-Box 3D Graphics and HD Entertainment Experience
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AMD (NYSE: AMD) and its motherboard partners today unleashed ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 Graphics with the AMD 890GX chipset, a versatile, affordable and exceptionally energy efficient solution for an incredible, high definition visual computing experience.
The AMD 890GX chipset redefines the way you play with versatile graphics configurations, including DirectX® 10.1 graphics on the motherboard and support for up to two high-performance ATI Radeon™ Premium Graphics cards with ATI CrossFireX™ technology. The same AMD 890GX motherboard which can be used to build an efficient and slim home theater PC using the integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics, can be augmented with ATI Radeon™ HD 5450 Graphics for a dual-graphics performance preview, or upgraded to a gaming powerhouse with ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 Graphics and the visual realism of DirectX® 11.
With Integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics, family and friends can enjoy accelerated and enhanced high definition and 1080p Blu-ray™ playback including dual-stream PiP (Picture in Picture) on Blu-ray™ 1.1.1 Standard DVD movies can be viewed in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling with post-processing to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on HD displays. ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 Graphics are designed to decode and play back Blu-ray™ and other HD content with support for MPEG2, VC-1, and H.264 formats.
The AMD 890GX chipset supports the SATA 3.0 6Gbps hard drive interface to help speed application performance, decrease boot times, and provide faster access to information, HD video, photos and more.2 SATA 3.0 technology on the AMD 890GX chipset can help speed application performance and Windows 7 data access speeds with high-bandwidth SATA 3.0 solid state drives and in multi-drive RAID configurations.
Many AMD 890GX-based motherboards feature SuperSpeed USB 3.0, quickly synchronizing and transferring digital media files on the new generation of USB 3.0 devices.2 With USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 support, these platforms are designed to be ready for a new generation of high-speed hard drives and high resolution digital camcorders and media players. The AMD 890GX chipset also includes support for Gigabit Ethernet, HyperTransport™ 3.0 technology, and PCI Express® Generation 2.0 to create a system designed to provide fast data flow resulting in speedier transfers of work, games, and entertainment files.
The first of the AMD 8-series chipsets, these technologies serve as the foundation for 2010 VISION technology for AMD desktop platforms that are scheduled to be announced in the second quarter of 2010 and are designed to be compatible with the upcoming AMD Phenom™ II X6 six-core processor.
Supporting Resources
* AMD At Home Blog With New Blogs on the 890GX Chipset
* AMD 8-Series Chipsets Product Page
* AMD 5000 Series Graphics Product Page
* AMD GAME! Web Site
* AMD Underground Do-It-Yourself Web Site
* Microsoft DirectX 11
* ATI EyeFinity Technology
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and technology partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Fusion, AMD Opteron, AMD Phenom, Radeon, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
1 HD capable monitor required and Blu-ray™ drive required for Blu-ray playback.
2 Additional hardware or software may be required.
New Chipset Serves as the Foundation for 2010 Client Platforms Featuring ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 Graphics, Advanced SATA 3.0, and USB 3.0 Connectivity for an Outstanding Out-of-Box 3D Graphics and HD Entertainment Experience
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AMD (NYSE: AMD) and its motherboard partners today unleashed ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 Graphics with the AMD 890GX chipset, a versatile, affordable and exceptionally energy efficient solution for an incredible, high definition visual computing experience.
The AMD 890GX chipset redefines the way you play with versatile graphics configurations, including DirectX® 10.1 graphics on the motherboard and support for up to two high-performance ATI Radeon™ Premium Graphics cards with ATI CrossFireX™ technology. The same AMD 890GX motherboard which can be used to build an efficient and slim home theater PC using the integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics, can be augmented with ATI Radeon™ HD 5450 Graphics for a dual-graphics performance preview, or upgraded to a gaming powerhouse with ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 Graphics and the visual realism of DirectX® 11.
With Integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics, family and friends can enjoy accelerated and enhanced high definition and 1080p Blu-ray™ playback including dual-stream PiP (Picture in Picture) on Blu-ray™ 1.1.1 Standard DVD movies can be viewed in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling with post-processing to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on HD displays. ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 Graphics are designed to decode and play back Blu-ray™ and other HD content with support for MPEG2, VC-1, and H.264 formats.
The AMD 890GX chipset supports the SATA 3.0 6Gbps hard drive interface to help speed application performance, decrease boot times, and provide faster access to information, HD video, photos and more.2 SATA 3.0 technology on the AMD 890GX chipset can help speed application performance and Windows 7 data access speeds with high-bandwidth SATA 3.0 solid state drives and in multi-drive RAID configurations.
Many AMD 890GX-based motherboards feature SuperSpeed USB 3.0, quickly synchronizing and transferring digital media files on the new generation of USB 3.0 devices.2 With USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 support, these platforms are designed to be ready for a new generation of high-speed hard drives and high resolution digital camcorders and media players. The AMD 890GX chipset also includes support for Gigabit Ethernet, HyperTransport™ 3.0 technology, and PCI Express® Generation 2.0 to create a system designed to provide fast data flow resulting in speedier transfers of work, games, and entertainment files.
The first of the AMD 8-series chipsets, these technologies serve as the foundation for 2010 VISION technology for AMD desktop platforms that are scheduled to be announced in the second quarter of 2010 and are designed to be compatible with the upcoming AMD Phenom™ II X6 six-core processor.
Supporting Resources
* AMD At Home Blog With New Blogs on the 890GX Chipset
* AMD 8-Series Chipsets Product Page
* AMD 5000 Series Graphics Product Page
* AMD GAME! Web Site
* AMD Underground Do-It-Yourself Web Site
* Microsoft DirectX 11
* ATI EyeFinity Technology
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and technology partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Fusion, AMD Opteron, AMD Phenom, Radeon, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
1 HD capable monitor required and Blu-ray™ drive required for Blu-ray playback.
2 Additional hardware or software may be required.
Wonder if this thing supports GPU assisted h.264 encoding? Good to see some decent graphics performance on board, can build a nice little HTC box after the price comes down a bit.
@holtcg 785G, the previous chip, does. Not for all h.264, but it works. I know because I just built an HTPC using 785G.
@holtcg
It supports simultaneously decoding multiple streams (good for picture in picture or watching 5 movies at the same time)
@holtcg the chip has 40 stream processors, so yes, it should encode video using ATI's Avivo video encoder.
Power consumption is awful.
@keplenk
I wouldn't say it's awful.The system with the AMD quad core 965 has the same idle power consumption as the dual core i5 661 PC.
"although the integrated Radeon HD 4290 graphics (performing at a none-too-shabby 700MHz, according to the company) were found to be "superior to any other AMD IGP," even surpassing the performance of Intel's HD Graphics solution in a number of tests."
What? so in other tests the Intel HD beats a 4290 onboard gpu? I rather get the much more reliable, proven and still affordable Intel based motherboard.
@Beastage
Intel's newest GPUs integrated in the i3 and i5 processors are doing quite well in synthetic benchmarks (in gaming they are still way below the nVidia and AMD IGP offerings).
@Beastage
Intel HD Graphics is slower in key tests like Call of Duty 2 and World of Warcraft. In other tests only Core i5 661 performed as well as AMD combo and i5 price tag is over $200.
@Beastage you mean the extremely reliable Intel IGP that was unable to load Left 4 Dead and Dirt 2, and severely underperformed in any game it did manage to load?
http://techreport.com/articles.x/18539/6
Anandtech said it performed exactly like the 790GX, which is sorta obvious, due to the same amount of SP, same clock frequency and manufacturing process.
It also traided blows with Intel HD graphics, winning in some games, losing in others.
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3755&p=2
Yeah... I wouldn't exactly say AnandTech's review "lauded" it, but it doesn't look TOO bad. Gonna see how the Phenom II X6 and an 890 mobo fair in a price/performance comparison to an i7-860 system before I make any purchasing decisions....
AMD/ATI needs to get with the picture and get their 5000 series GPU into the northbridge. Nvidia is starting to ship its G210-based ION2, and Intel has moved it's latest IGP into the CPU itself with Clarkdale. It stinks that AMD's "hot new" northbridge is still using last year's IGP. This probably means we won't see anything better on an AMD board until Bulldozer, 18 months from now.
Nvidia still doesn't have a GPU that can bitstream HD audio. ATI does, but they're too lazy to stick it in a northbridge. That means that anybody who wants to build a proper HTPC is stuck using an expensive H55 board with an expensive Clarkdale chip, or spend the extra money on a discrete video card. It's madness.
@Chip
Llano will be out before the end of the year. This is probably why AMD took a shortcut with the integrated solution.
One of the key features of a 790GX (I've got one in one of my rigs btw) is the ability to run the ATI Radeon HD 3300 IGP in hybrid Crossfire mode with a low-end ATI Radeon HD 3400 (we're talkin' $30 low end) discrete graphics card, producing some reasonably significant performance gains.
Of course, you could spend the extra 70 bucks or so instead of getting the 3400 and get a card that performs several times better than the both of them together. But it is an interesting concept, provides reasonable performance on a budget, and also provides a good option to drive a second display should you need it.
I hope that ATI has expanded upon this idea with the 890GX, and I'll be reading some reviews to learn more...
Its a good think I waited to build my system I'm going to use one of these newer boards just to give me a little future proofing.
God dammit, I just bought an MSI 790FX-GD70 board!
@MRCUR
I'm in the same boat, only I got mine a couple months ago. It's a great board, just don't try to use the "Hardware RAID" SATA ports (the blue ones). They're slower than the AMD controller and, in my case, caused write errors. AFAIK that's it's only problem. I'm fine with having a last-gen chipset as long as the features are the same and it supports AMDs six-core processor.
apparently these babies can UNLOCK a Phenom II X4 960T into a full fledged Phenom II X6