AMD Makes A Graphic Move

"We were impressed, a thumbs-up," said Ned Yousefzadeh, president of Los Angeles-based Micro League, who found the images vivid and the appearance of applications solid on a 690G-based Vista machine.

The integrated chip is the result of AMD's $5.4 billion acquisition last year of ATI Technologies. The move gives it an answer to the 950G chipset from Intel, which held a market-leading 37.4 percent share of the graphics processor market in the fourth quarter, according to Jon Peddie Research. ATI trailed at 23 percent, behind Nvidia at 28.5 percent, and industry watchers are primed to see how AMD's chipsets will alter the picture as the industry moves toward even deeper integration of graphics into the CPU.

System builders, though, may be more interested in what's inside the chipset today. The 690 family has two variants: The mainstream 690G features the ATI Radeon X1250 graphics processor and the value-based 690V, the ATI Radeon X1200 processor.

Both share up to 1 Gbyte of system memory and offer a new video decode block and HDMI output for high-definition video. They also include hardware decoding for MPEG2, the video compression technology used with DVDs, which means PCs will use less CPU power when playing DVDs.

Another feature of particular interest to system builders is ATI's Avivo technology, which supports Microsoft Vista's Aero user interface, and the chipsets support up to 1.07 billion colors, a big step up from the standard 16.7 million colors.

The main difference between the two chipsets is that the higher-end 690G chipset supports integrated DVI output. Yousefzadeh said the 690G chipset is particularly good for HD video and digital multimedia, as well as for a gaming unit. While integrated chips often hiccup on the demands made by 3-D games, that was not the case for the 690G. He also noted there was no lag time in playing HD video, the colors were vibrant and the playback smooth.

Other system builders are looking forward to the reduced costs and fewer integration hassles of an integrated graphics processor.

Next: AMD's integrated graphics outlook

Joe Stopski, vice president at Centennial, Colo.-based Fusion Microsystems, which builds systems for digital signage applications, said not having to worry about a graphics card is the reason he is interested in the 690. He is hoping for cost savings of 20 percent to 30 percent over a similar configuration that requires a graphics board.

Another welcome feature is that the 690 chip has two independent display controllers, allowing two displays to be connected simultaneously. While this is fairly common among standard graphics cards, it's not common for an on-board graphics chip. In addition, since the chipset supports VGA along with HDMI, there are several possible configurations. For even more heavy graphics usage, system builders can add a graphics card to connect four monitors simultaneously.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD's current challenge is to position itself against Intel's product portfolio, and the 690 chipset will do that, said Todd Swank, director of marketing at system builder Nor-Tech, Burnsville, Minn. In the past, it was easier to differentiate between AMD and Intel products but that's no longer the case, and customers will appreciate the synergy behind an AMD motherboard with AMD chips, he said.

System builders will appreciate the synergy, too. When both the graphics chip and the processor are made by AMD, the two work seamlessly, Yousefzadeh said. Not having to worry about what components will work with the processor is the "main advantage of integrated chipsets," he said.

A handful of manufacturers have announced motherboards under AMD's Validated Solutions program with the 690 chipset: Asus, EliteGroup, Gigabyte Technology and Micro-Star International.

While AMD has stressed the chipset's Vista certification, Linux solution providers may have to wait a bit for driver concerns to be worked out.

Leon Kaliski, director of Kaliski Speaks Solutions, a New York services firm, said he had trouble loading a SUSE 10 desktop system on the machine with an Asus M2A-VM motherboard because of issues with video drivers. AMD, however, is working with major Linux distributors, including Novell and Red Hat, to ensure chipset support, said Gerald Youngblood, program manager for AMD Validated Solutions.

This is just the beginning for AMD's integrated graphics plans. Swank called the 690 a forebear of AMD's Fusion initiative, aimed at combining the microprocessor and graphics functions onto a single chip. AMD has said that it plans to complete development in two years.