Conclusion

There’s a lot to like about AMD’s new 690 chipset. The most obvious feature that stands out in our opinion though is its Radeon X1250 graphics.

Thanks to Radeon X1250, AMD 690 can drive two digital displays simultaneously. And as we mentioned previously, the integrated graphics engine supports dual-link DVI; the chipset had no problems running Dell’s 3007WFP at 2560x1600. This is great news for IT professionals in an environment with a wide range of PCs, the integrated graphics engine inside AMD 690 is so versatile it can drive any display, whether it’s a 10-year old 15” CRT running off VGA, or the latest 30” LCD off DVI.

Meanwhile, home theater PC users will appreciate the fact that both HDMI and component video outputs are also supported, provided the motherboard provides the right connections. And with the addition of Surroundview, just pop in a Radeon graphics card and you’re ready for up to four displays! Media center PC users will also appreciate the addition of Avivo, we ran a quick test of HQV and confirmed that the 690 chipset is capable of delivering a score of 80. Now technically the GeForce 6150 with Purevideo is capable of slightly higher scores, but Purevideo isn’t always bundled with NVIDIA hardware and starts at $19.99 for the Bronze version. With AMD 690 you’re getting good video quality out-of-the-box for free.

AMD’s 690 chipset also outperformed GeForce 6150 in our gaming tests. AMD 690 outran the GeForce 6150 in all of the games we tested, with the 690 chipset running nearly two times faster than GeForce 6150 in Company of Heroes and F.E.A.R. at 1280x1024. The GeForce 6150 platform ran faster in our DivX conversion and Windows Media Encoder 9 tests though, as well as Cinebench 9.5 and PCMark 05. Both PCMark 05 and HDTach also revealed a slight performance advantage in the storage subsystem for GeForce 6150. The GeForce 6150 platform was also more power hungry than AMD 690, particularly under load.

And how did AMD 690 stack up against its archrival, Intel’s G965? Here we’re giving AMD 690 the edge once again in gaming, although the encoding tests favored the Intel platform. Let’s explain…

Intel’s G965 platform was able to outrun AMD 690 in two of our gaming tests, Quake 4 and 3DMark 06, but we’re giving the edge to AMD due to its overall compatibility, in addition to its 3D performance. The G965 platform had serious performance and rendering problems in Half-Life 2 Lost Coast, and couldn’t even run Oblivion – every time we attempted to launch the program we got an error message. Intel’s G965 platform has run into so many issues Intel has to provide a webpage outlining which games do and don’t work with G965. In comparison, with AMD’s 690 chipset it’s simple – everything just works.

Where Intel’s platform shines however is in the encoding tests. These tests are basically testing the CPU more than the chipset itself, and here Intel’s Core 2 Duo E6400 essentially outran the X2 5000+ we used for testing. AMD would argue that since the AMD 690 platform is $40 cheaper than G965, that money can be spent on a faster CPU like the X2 5200+, which runs anywhere from 3-5% faster than the 5000+, we believe the money saved though would be even better spent on a discrete graphics card like the Radeon X1350LE or Radeon X1550.That’s the real value of AMD’s platform right now in our opinion.

Overall AMD’s got a nice product on their hands with the 690 chipset, but they could have had a killer product had they shipped back in Q3 or Q4 of 2006. The AMD 690 chipset has got all the right features, including the most versatile array of display options on the market, as well as very good 3D performance -- it’s the best integrated platform for gaming right now, but this really could have been huge had it been available when ATI originally intended. In a matter of months the 690 chipset will be going up against Intel’s next-generation Bearlake-G chipset, which is rumored to have DVI and HDMI just like AMD 690, as well as DX10 graphics, and NVIDIA is also expected to have integrated chipsets of their own later this year.

In other words, AMD’s got the best integrated platform today, but this is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary upgrade from the previous bar that had already been established with GeForce 6150. If they want to remain on top, they’d better not rest on their laurels…