AMD's 690G vs Intel's 965G head-to-head
Author: Grga Curkovic
Date: 28 Feb 2007

Since AMD acquired ATi, they have been pretty quiet about many things but - they are now able to offer a complete platform, not just the CPU's. Today we are presenting the first fruits of joint labor of ATi and AMD to produce a complete platform. With a complete platform AMD can now offer what Intel has been offering for quite some time. Of course the struggle to take over a piece of market Intel has been holding firm for quite some time won?t be easy, and in order to do that AMD will have to come up with some darn good products. The first chipset they are presenting is called RS690, and has two versions available at the moment, the AMD 690G and AMD 690V. These chipsets are paired with a well known SB600 southbridge and are AMD?s player for the mainstream match. The chipset has integrated graphics, ATi Radeon X1200 in AMD 690V chipset, and ATi Radeon X1250 in AMD 690G. The most important difference between the two is that the 690G supports HDMI. These chips are here to compete against Intel 965G, and its X3000 integrated graphics. It is also interesting to note that this is the first chip to support AVIVO technology that should enhance video experience.

ATi claims that it can support up to 1.07 billion colors versus the standard 16.7 million colors. The graphics chip has two independent display controllers and therefore you can connect two displays in various configurations. This is a well known feature from the graphics card world, but it is the first on board graphics card that supports this feature. Another interesting feature is that the integrated graphics can work parallel with an PCI-Express graphics card and if that?s the case you can hook up to 4 monitors. The SB600 supports up to 10 USB2.0 ports, 4 SATA and a PATA channel. The features look really good on paper, especially if you consider the fact that there are about dozen partners that have the boards ready. The predicted prices of these boards run around 80 euros versus Intel?s 965G boards that run around 130 euros. Now consider the fact that AMD has had several price cuts lately, and it?s clear that AMD is aiming for a good price/performance ratio. We got AMD?s Athlon 64 +5200 with the board, and it is what AMD is recommending as a best buy at the moment. It?s a pretty strong CPU, the equivalent of FX-60 on socket AM2.