by Kirill "ALT-F13" Balalin
03/02/2007 | 02:07 PM
AMD 690 chipset family is the first experience of joint AMD-ATI Company in terms of new product development. However, of course, AMD 690 is the ATI heritage in the first place, as ATI started working on this core logic set before the merger. AMD quit the desktop PC chipset market in the times of Socket A platforms, although even in those days their chipsets boasted pretty modest marketing potential: their primary goal was to make sure that the new platform gets sufficient supply of reference chipset at the time of launch, while later on most of AMD’s hopes were with the third-party chipset developers, such as VIA, SiS and Nvidia.
However, Intel’s business model in terms of being the major chipset supplier for their own processors turned out too attractive to pass. On the other hand, ATI’s system logic with great performance and technical specifications didn’t manage to win a big market share so far. It is not that surprising, actually, as ATI was the last one to enter the system chipset business and hence didn’t have much free market to occupy. However after the AMD-ATI merger the joint company got every chance to strengthen its positions as a chipset supplier.
Of course, it is much more beneficial from the market prospective to have the chipsets and CPUs branded similarly. Therefore, even though the graphics division of AMD retains the ATI brand at this time, even the existing chipsets, such as Xpress 3200 were renamed according to the new AMD branding strategy.
Our today’s hero is the first AMD chipset that has no analogues among the previous ATI chipset product range.
The first retail solution that we managed to get our hands on was the ECS mainboard called AMD690GM-M2. It belongs to the budget ECS product family that is why is has minimal accessories bundle, and its functionality is strictly determined by the chipset features. The only additional onboard controller is the Ethernet adapter.
Since Intel hasn’t yet released the new drivers for their G965 chipset that should ensure the support of a few important 3D functions by the GMA X3000 core, we will refrain from performing a full-scale side-by-side platforms comparison this time. We will compare the AMD 690G based mainboard against the Foxconn MCP61SM2MA-ERS2H on the budget Nvidia nForce 405 chipset with the integrated GeForce 6100 graphics core. It is priced very similarly to the new ECS solution, unlike the majority of other more expensive models out there.
AMD 690G chipset is designed according to classical schematics and consists of two microchips – RS690 North Bridge and SB600 South Bridge. They are connected with one another via PCI-Express x4 bus.
The North Bridge ensures proper work with any contemporary Socket AM2 processors. It is also responsible for work with PCI-Express expansion cards and High Definition Audio codec. Besides that it contains integrated graphics adapter.
SB600 South Bridge supports PCI bus, 10 USB 2.0 ports, four Serial ATA II channels (with RAID 0, 1 and 10 arrays option) and one IDE.
The key feature of the AMD 690 chipset family is the relatively powerful integrated graphics core from the Radeon X1200 Series. There are two models in the product family at this time: AMD 690G and 690V, which differ only in the integrated graphics part. The top 690G solution features Radeon X1250 graphics core and supports HDMI output, while the AMD 690V features an integrated Radeon X1200 and doesn’t support HDMI output accordingly.
The forefather of the Radeon X1250 was the Radeon X700 announced in 2004. However, since the best ATI graphics used to be represented by the integrated Radeon X300 core, this is a significant step forward, anyway. Here I have to point out that even though Radeon X1250 is based on X700 core, it was provided with a few technological enhancements, so that it would meet the contemporary requirements. The major enhancement was the support of Avivo (advanced features for media content processing, including HD-video), which is an exclusive feature of the Radeon X1000 Series. So, even though it looks like the developers have simply added another chip, as a successor to Radeon X1050, the new Radeon X1250 has every right to be called a new-generation solution thanks to the new features typical of the X1000 family. The clock speed of Radeon X1250 is 400MHz, and up to 1GB of system memory can be allocated for the needs of the graphics subsystem.
AMD 690G is the industry’s first chipset supporting HDMI-Out. And we are talking about fully-fledged support here: with HDCP and audio. But what is even more important for most PC users is the monitor connectors that will be laid out by default on all mainboards based around this chipset. They will have two monitor connectors, including one DVI. There are only a few isolated competitors’ offers with similar functionality out there these days, however this type of connection is definitely much more preferable for LCD monitors. Moreover, AMD 690G supports SurroundView function that allows connecting four monitors to the system with an additional discrete PCI-E video card installed.
The chipset is certified for Windows Vista Premium and as the practical tests proved works perfectly fine with Aero interface as well as in 3D games running under this operating system.
Just like any other chipset with integrated graphics, AMD 690G is positioned for mainstream and budget mainboards with the recommended price around $80. The mainboard makers were pretty positive about this chipset (despite numerous analysts’ claims that it will be hard for AMD to take off promoting their own branded chipsets). And on the launch day already we learned that there are over 10 mainboard vendors who will be offering their AMD 690G/V based solutions.
ECS AMD690GM-M2 mainboard is shipped in a compact box with beautiful the exterior design, which is absolutely not typical of the budget products from this mainboard maker. From the aesthetics standpoint, this box is one of the best I’ve seen over the past year:
The bundled accessories are not numerous, as we have already mentioned above:
Inside the box you can find the ECS AMD690GM-M2 mainboard, a slot blade with the COM port, a PATA cable, a SATA cable, a user’s manual and a CD disk with the drivers and accompanying software.
However, since the price of this product is only $63 we shouldn’t complain about the modest selection of bundled accessories.
The mainboard is designed in MicroATX form-factor. All components are placed quite conveniently. Although there is one thing that has already become typical of the ECS boards: the additional 4-pin power supply connector is almost in the middle of the PCB.
Two of the four DDR2 slots haven’t been laid out and this is pretty surprising, I should say. The chipset microchips are covered with tiny black heatsinks, however they are more than enough thanks to minimal power consumption of the new AMD 690G. Even under long-term 3D workload, they heat up only a little bit higher than the room temperature.
The expansion slots selection is optimal for a MicroATX mainboard: there is one PCI Express x16 and one PCI-Express x1 slot, and two PCI slots.
The layout of the mainboard back panel is quite standard, except for the two monitor connectors – DVI and VGA. Unfortunately, the budget ECS AMD690GM-M2 doesn’t feature the HDMI Out.
The CPU voltage regulator corresponds to the class of the product we are talking about. Nevertheless, when we ran the tests with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ processor working at 3GHz speed, we didn’t reveal any problems.
The BIOS looks quite unusual:
There are no options for memory timings adjustment:
There are minimal reserves for processor Vcore and DDR2 voltage adjustment:
The maximum for the processor bus frequency is only 232MHz. Overall, the mainboard BIOS is not overclocking-friendly at all (which is expected from the products of this market segment). Despite all that, the page with the settings for the integrated graphics adapter allows overclocking it:
It also contains some exotic parameters, which we will discuss in our upcoming articles.
Our testbed was configured as follows:
Here are the results we obtained during our brief test session:
The performance comparison performed against Foxconn MCP61SM2MA-ERS2H on Nvidia MCP61 chipset with GeForce 6100 graphics core allows us to make the following conclusions. AMD/ATI did a great job on the new 690G core logic set, its performance in all tasks we looked at is at least on the same level as that of the competitors in the same category. As for the 3D operation, AMD is a definite winner here: their new solution boasts the today’s best integrated graphics adapter. Of course, it may not be powerful enough for contemporary games, but it can easily satisfy at least the needs of Windows Vista and some 2-3 year old games.
Avivo support will be a nice addition for those who intend to use their PC as a media center. However, one of the most convincing arguments in favor of AMD 690G is the DVI connector that will ensure high-quality image on your LCD monitor, which you can’t get from the majority of solutions with integrated graphics at this time. So, the first try of the new AMD division turned out a success.
Now we have to wait and see what Nvidia has to say in response to this. They should be launching the competitor to AMD 690G at CeBIT 2007 in just a few weeks from now.
As for the ECS AMD690GM-M2 mainboard, at first glance it looks like a very good inexpensive product, especially if you are planning to install Windows Vista. With the price tag of only $63, there will hardly be that many competitors to this ECS board: the new Radeon X1250 graphics core will make it look better even against the background of more expensive solutions based on other chipsets.
Highs:
Lows: