690
Latest
Vivitar rolls out 690 HD camcorder: waterproof, 720p, $60
Vivitar may have bad-mouthed newfangled digital cameras last year, but that hasn't stopped it from selling them. The company's latest is the 690 HD, a compact, Flip-like camcorder that records 720p video and is rated for use up to ten feet underwater. You'll also get an SD card slot for storage and a 2-inch LCD 'round back, but you'll have to make do without other niceties like an optical zoom or HDMI port -- compromises that shouldn't be too hard to take considering the $60 price tag.
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.
AMD integrates ATI Radeon X1250 into Vista-certified 690 chipset
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]
