System chipsets aren’t updated as much as you probably want them to be so motherboard manufacturers tend to rely on add-on chips to do most of the work on newer connectivity standards. Thank goodness for updated chipsets.

AMD’s upcoming 890GX system chipset sports a speed bumped graphics core and, most importantly, SATA 6G support. AnandTech tests out an early motherboard which features its shiny goodness:

AMD’s 890GX chipset does support two PCIe x8 slots for running cards in CrossFire mode, but you do have one more option for flexibility. If you have a Radeon HD 5450 and happen to be running one of the following games: Battleforge, BioShock, Company of Heroes, HAWX, World in Conflict or 3DMark Vantage then the 890GX’s IGP will work in tandem with the 5450.

The CrossFire like setup could be interesting for those with a home theater PC setup needing a little gaming performance boost.

The thought of a computer using two graphics cards from very different graphics chip vendors would seem absurd, or even vaporware in the eyes of many…well it would seem we all have a bit of rethinking to do over the next few months.

AnandTech scoped out the Lucid Hydra 200 chipset which is set to allow for game acceleration by graphics cards from ATI and Nvidia, and perhaps Intel in the future, all at the same time:

There are three versions of the Hydra 200: the LT22114, the LT22102 and the LT22114. The only difference between the chips are the number of PCIe lanes. The lowest end chip has a x8 connection to the CPU/PCIe controller and two x8 connections to GPUs. The midrange LT22102 has a x16 connection to the CPU and two x16 connections for GPUs. And the highest end solution, the one being used on the MSI board, has a x16 to the CPU and then a configurable pair of x16s to GPUs. You can operate this controller in 4 x8 mode, 1 x16 + 2 x8 or 2 x16. It’s all auto sensing and auto-configurable. The high end product will be launching in October, with the other two versions shipping into mainstream and potentially mobile systems some time later.

Interesting technology which should make for some interesting testing with mixed and matched graphics boards.

The general idea behind the Intel Core i5 was to bring the company’s high-end Core i7 performance down to the mid-range level and cut some costs along the way. Oddly enough the changes they’ve made and improvements they’ve added, most notably an on-die PCI Express controller, makes the latest series of chips an interesting product even on the high end.

Here’s a number of links comparing the new processor and plenty of Intel P55 Express chipset powered motherboards tossed into the testing ring:

Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 @ AnandTech

Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 860, 870 on Asus P7P55D Deluxe @ bit-tech

Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 on Intel DP55KG Extreme @ Benchmark Reviews

Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 on Asus P7P55D Deluxe and MSI P55-GD80 @ HardOCP

Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 Gigabyte P55-UD6, Intel DP55KB, and Asus Maximus III Formula @ HotHardware

Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 on Asus Maximus III Formula @ PC Perspective

Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 on Intel DP55KG under Linux @ Phoronix

Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 on Gigabyte P55-UD6 @ The Tech Report

AMD has a habit of putting reasonably powerful graphics cores into a number of their chipsets. Their upcoming 785G is another example sporting a custom built Radeon HD 4200 core that might enable your low-power build to do something other than feed videos.

neoseeker has a look at the 785G powered ASUS 785TD-V EVO motherboard which just so happens to have 128MB of sideport memory added into the mix, they even go so far as to try out some overclocking. Here’s a peek:

The 785G also proved to be a great movie decoder, thanks to the Unified Video Decoder 2 technology. With it, great energy savings can be achieved, since the processor can throttle while the HD 4200 handles almost all the decoding. Even with both the CPU and GPU under full load, the system did not go over 137W.

Some peppy performance from their new chipset although don’t expect insanely high-res gaming from it.

It used to be that motherboard manufacturers would release their products and allow for the enthusiasts and tweakers to get the most out of their products, now they’ve started to take all of that fun for themselves before the boards even hit retail shelves.

Asus has been toying around with their new Intel P55 chipset based P7P55D motherboard series and has come up with some impressive overclocking performance with the upcoming Intel Core i5 processors. ExtremeTech has the details and photos to prove it:

What we saw were a handful of welcome design additions that demonstrate smart engineering and should aid ease of use, such as the new T.Probe, a chip that keeps heat levels uniform across the board by monitoring the temperature of the board’s mosfets in realtime. This chip can dynamically regulate their powerphases to ensure mosfets don’t run too hot, which prolongs their lifetime and that of your board. Other features: the Stack Cool3+ system (Asus has added extra layers of silicon and copper to certain areas of the board for more effective cooling and heat dissipation), and Turbo.V overclocking, a hardware system to ensure consistent and safe overclocking—I’ll describe it in a bit more detail shortly.

Impressive performance out of the gate although they are running some engineering samples which, almost always, perform better than their retail siblings.

Intel’s Atom processor and its antiquated chipset combination have made themselves quite popular by offering “good enough” performance for the netbook and nettop markets, of course users want something that’s quite a bit more powerful as time goes on.

According to AnandTech the future is Intel’s Pine Trail platform which is composed of a newer CPU codenamed “Pineview” and a south bridge for attaching devices and storage dubbed “Tiger Point”.

The Pineview processor will feature integrated graphics and an integrated memory controller which should improve performance and power consumption on the platform but will likely make the competition’s northbridge alternative, such as the Nvidia Ion, completely obsolete.

You’d think that the renaming old products as new scheme would get quite a bit old but given the shere number of computer buyers out there and the general level of knowledge needed to keep up with the changes…well you’re likely to get confused.

The Inquirer writes of the latest renaming shenanigans covering NVIDIA’s “new” nForce 980a SLI which is nothing more than a rebranded 780a chipset. It’s a bit harsh:

Yup, Nvidia did it, they slimed out another renamed product, just like
we said. Differences this time? Nothing as far as we can tell, they
just flashed the BIOS, redid the chip markings, and added 200.
Ironically, 200 is the series that the new, really, we mean it,
honestly, please believe us, please please please, G92 renamings are
using. What coincidence.

If you’re seeking a current state-of-the-art chipset for your next AMD build you just might need to go with the competition.

Integrated Graphics Processors are a great stop-gap measure, perhaps even a competent multimedia handling GPU, but it is by no means a gaming platform. Intel wants to change that and is launching a set of tools and asking developers to target their IGPs.

It is a bit laughable until you realize that they ship a massive number of chipsets for portable systems that include their graphics cores so they have at least a passing interest in gaming on their underpowered graphics chips. CNET has a few more details:

“Here’s your answer: Mercury Research showed that in 2008, for the first time, integrated graphics chipsets outsold discrete (graphics chips), and in 2013, we expect to see integrated graphics chipsets outsell discrete by three to one,” Davies said.

Here’s hoping they get some of their Larrabee magic into their chipsets.

Intel’s Nehalem architecture, commonly found in the company’s Core i7 desktop chips, has been tearing up benchmarks for a few months now completely outclassing the competition, and its own previous generation, by a wide margin.

The company has been working to bring the chip architecture to the workstation and server crowd which they’ve finally succeeded in with the release of their Xeon W5580 processor and the accompanying Intel 5520 MCH northbridge. The Tech Report has a look at what a pair of the chips can do:

The Nehalem Xeons’ truly astounding leap in performance over prior
generations, in a range of applications, speaks for itself. The largest
gains came in our scientific computing/HPC tests, where the Xeon W5580
proved to be between 50% and 100% faster than the Harpertown Xeon
X5492. We saw a massive performance increase in SPECjbb 2005, as well,
along with more modest but still substantial improvements everywhere
else.

It’s fair to say that you’ll be wanting a pair of these chips in your next workstation, and if they happen to place them into a server you’ll want to move that machine over to your desk and substitute your old computer in its place.