AMD 690G/V Series Chipset Preview and Performance Evaluation

It has been a long time since we saw a chipset released under the AMD name and the 690 series appears to be a solid offering in the IGP market. However, it does appear that AMD is still playing catch-up with NVIDIA, as the nForce 430/61xx series has been out for quite a while and NVIDIA is poised to release their MCP68 in the not too distant future. With the promise of an integrated GeForce 7 class graphics engine in three variations, in addition to adding integrated DVI/HDMI support, the MCP68 should end up being a more apples to apples comparison to the 690G in the end. We should also consider that NVIDIA's future MCP72 may include DirectX 10 ready graphics. Though, as the saying goes, you can't compare unreleased products to a product that is here today.

Regardless what the future holds, the AMD 690 series stacks up well compared to what is currently available on the market. However, with new offerings on the horizon from NVIDIA, we hope AMD is already looking ahead to the next evolution from the 690 series to maintain and grow in the IGP space.