New AMD Chipset Integrates ATI Logic

When AMD acquired graphics card producer ATI last year, the immediate expectation was that the two companies would converge toward a common platform - specifically a notebook CPU/graphics/networking platform that could hold its own against Intel Centrino. But whether the combined entities would propel AMD into the integrated desktop chipset market was uncertain, especially with Intel both leading that market and languishing in it - it's not that company's major revenue-producer by a long shot.

This morning, AMD took its own long shot by announcing its introduction of a desktop-level integrated chipset that will combine its designs for systems and peripheral bus controllers with ATI's graphics logic, all in one package. AMD's announcement this morning specified only one chipset, the 690, though enthusiast sites everywhere with sources in the motherboard community are actually expecting two versions: the 690G which uses ATI's X1250 logic, and the 690V to address the value market with X1200 graphics logic.

What's the difference? Perhaps a very few dollars and a scintilla of a performance point, which may be why today AMD is only referring to the 690 as a single platform.

Chipsets with integrated graphics help large manufacturers produce low-priced PCs in volume, with decent features but also with a minimum of headaches for OEMs. In recent years, however, the relative performance of discrete graphics cards made by both ATI and nVidia has distanced itself from that of integrated graphics from Intel, by an almost laughable margin.

So while AMD's vice president and general manager for chipsets, Phil Eisler, called the 690 today "the first in a line of innovative, high-performance AMD chipsets that we'll introduce to address every sector of the market," the reality is more likely that the 690 (whether it has one or two versions) will address the low "better" end of the traditional three-tier, "good/better/best" scenario.

To give you a clue as to why: Although the X1250 has a four-digit number and a big "X," it's actually a modified version of the chipset that ATI has shipped with its X700 graphics cards since 2004. In under three years' time, graphics performance has exploded in the discrete end, from both ATI and nVidia. Using a battery of performance tests from one enthusiast site, a computer model shows ATI's Radeon X1900 XTX graphics card, introduced at the top of its product line last August, produces on average 462% better graphics throughput than an X700 XT card produced just over two years earlier.

But high-end gaming won't be where the 690 is put to use; instead, AMD is aiming for producers of media center PCs. One of the prizes AMD acquired from ATI is its Avivo streaming display technology, which included a 10-bit-per-color processor that delivers 64 times the color resolution of typical graphics processors - even on the upper edge of "better" - along with built-in MPEG-2, H.264, and VC-1 codecs. It's worth noting that AMD is touting the Avivo brand today rather than the "AMD Live" brand it had previously developed to counter Intel's Viiv platform for media center PCs.

With the 690's introduction, AMD finds itself in a curious position: It has to compete against Intel for a bigger share of a business that isn't exactly booming. On the other hand, AMD promises to maintain its relationship with ATI's rival nVidia, going ahead with Better-by-Design (BBD) platform projects that mix AMD CPUs and chipsets with nVidia graphics - though typically for a higher-end customer than the 690 addresses.

How does AMD plan to pull this off? BetaNews asked AMD's Mark Welker, senior member of its client performance analysis staff, whose job has been not only to gauge the relative performance of AMD products to one another, but to act as a liaison with ATI, nVidia, and other BBD partners.

"Intel has had more time in the integrated graphics industry," Welker told us, not surprisingly. "They've not necessarily been leading-edge, but they have had volume. There was a point when it was fairly high volume, simply because they had their chipsets that allowed them to get the volume that way. It's never been high-performing. ATI and nVidia have always done excellent integrated graphics."

From here, it gets interesting: "BBD is not just about us and ATI or us and nVidia," Welker told BetaNews, "it's us and anybody that'll be good at it." Commandeering a new noun for use as a cool adjective for performance, he continued, "It's 'scoreboard' for the end user; we're trying to get to them what the best possible solution [would be]. Yes, ATI will have access to some of our tools that they didn't before [but] we will not cast aside our relationship with nVidia. It will still be there; as long as they will work with us, we will work with them and give them the information we can to help their systems get better, because [nVidia is] more than just a graphics company. They too have integrated chipsets.

"It's old-fashioned capitalism at its best," he went on. "We're trying to give [consumers] as many choices as possible, rather than, 'You have to buy from us top-to-bottom.' There are people who say, when you buy top-to-bottom, you know where [your platform] is and you know it's stable. It's mediocre, and that's alright, you know it will work. But it might not be the best value."