A source close to AMD has confirmed that the company plans to launch its 690G chip set later this month, potentially the first core logic chip set to integrate DVI and HDMI outputs.
The 690G, an AM2 socketed chip set designed for AMD Sempron, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon 64FX processors, was designed as a low-cost Vista Premium platform, with a cost to OEMs of about $80, the source said.
AMD currently is negotiating an integration plan, folding in its ATI graphics cores and chip set expertise together with AMDs own, much smaller, chip set resources.
The 690G chip set is made up of the AMD RS690G north bridge and the AMD SB600 south bridge, said to include the ATI “X1250” graphics core. However, although the chip set is aimed at the Vista platform and its DirectX 10 graphics, the integrated core is only DirectX 9.0-capable, the source said; specifically, it contains a 128-bit interface capable of 2048-by-1536 at 32-bit-per-pixel color depths. Features include 6-sample anti-aliasing support, indirect vertex OpenGL support, plus Windows Motion Video 9 support in hardware, an integrated TV encoder and component output, plus Macrovision 7.1 copy protection.