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AMD’s decision to integrate memory controller into the K8 CPUs is disputable from a lot of points. It brings a number of difficulties to AMD itself, including yield issues; it makes harder to transit platforms to newer memory types, DDR-II, for instance; but there are a couple of things about integrated memory controllers that are very positive: built-in memory controllers ensure high performance and allow core-logic makers to build cheaper chipsets.
NVIDIA Corporation used to be the only company to provide a single-chip core-logic for AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron processors earlier this year. But only NVIDIA thinks about ways to lower manufacturing costs of its products: today ALi demonstrated its M1689 solution at Computex Taipei 2003. It is not only single-chip logic, but it even can boast with Serial ATA-150 support, a feature than nForce3 150 solutions lacks.
As we know, the nForce3 Pro 150 supports basic features, such as AGP 8x, PCI, 3 ATA-33/66/100/133 channels with RAID 0,1 and 0+1 support, 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, USB 2.0, AC’97 audio and so on. The more advanced nForce3 Pro 250, due this Fall, is expected to support Gigabit Ethernet as well as Serial ATA-150 ports. Our Editor in Chief – Anna Filatova – reports from
Considering feature-set of ALi M1689 as well as ALi’s pricing policy, we can conclude that the novelty may become a very interesting solution for AMD Athlon 64 or even Opteron-based PCs. It is a pity that ALi did not specify availability timeframes for its new product since in case M1689 comes before NVIDIA’s nForce3 250, it has all chances to become quite successful; however, if the newcomer will emerge later than competing solution, its broad adoption is under concern, especially keeping in mind that ALi has been out from mainstream and high-end chipset market for some time now.
