AMD's 690G Chipset Arrives - ECS AMD690GM-M2 Motherboard

AMD 690G

Unfortunately while writing this review AMD/ATI still has the full details of the AMD 690 architecture under wraps of a typical NDA. However we have gotten a few titbits of info out from other sources on the web.

First off the AMD 690 will have a series of chips to come out of the works. So far only the 690G has popped up. This chip has an integrated ATI Radeon X1250 graphics core that can use up to 512MB of system memory for its frame buffer. Compare that to nVidia's GeForce 6150 that can only support up to 256MB.

All of the 690 series chipsets will support the full line of AMD Socket AM2 based Athlon 64 series processors. At this stage it is unknown if any of them support HT3, AMD's upcoming interconnect between the next generation Athlon 64 CPU and the external Northbridge's.

The Southbridge being used for the 690 series at this stage is ATI's SB600. Being the most advanced chip available from ATI, it has now gained some popularity. Using the same A-Link interconnect as the previous generation Southbridge, in theory any new Southbridge using this connection can be substituted into the mix.

So far this is all the data we have on this chipset. We will endeavour to gain more info and update this article as possible, for right now this is all the info we can supply.

Let's move onto the ECS motherboard itself now.