Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
WhileIntelchipsetsarecloselytailoredtoparticularIntelprocessorfamilies,AMDNorth
Bridge and South Bridge components can be mixed and matched. Thus, you may find
motherboards based on the same North Bridge component to have different features de-
pending upon the South Bridge component used.
AMD (ATI) 480X and 500-series Chipsets
The 480X, 570X (aka 550X) and 580X chipsets were the last chipsets developed by ATI
before the AMD takeover. All three can be used with the ATI-developed SB600, although
the 480X can also be paired with the ULi M1575 South Bridge. All chipsets in this fam-
ily include some level of support for ATI (now AMD) CrossFire dual-GPU rendering, but
only the 580X supports both PCIe x16 slots running in x16 mode. See
Table 4.31
for de-
tails.
When paired with the SB600, these chipsets include 7.1 High-Definition Audio, 10 USB
2.0 ports, one PATA/133 port, and four SATA 3Gbps ports. The SATA ports can be oper-
ated in RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and RAID 10 modes. See
Table 4.35
for a comparison of AMD
(ATI) South Bridge chips.
AMD 690 Series
AMD's690seriesofchipsetsincludesthe690Vand690G.Bothsupportintegratedvideo,
but the 690G offers faster integrated video with support for HDMI, dual-link DVI-D out-
put, and support for HDCP encryption for Blu-ray and HDTV playback. The 690V sup-
ports only VGA output. These chipsets also use the SB600 South Bridge. See
Table 4.31
for details.
