AMD today introduced the AMD 690 series chipset, the company's first chipset to bring together the combined strengths of AMD CPU and platform technology with the industry-leading features of the ATI Radeon X1250 GPU. AMD's anticipated 690 chipset designed for Windows Vista and including integrated multimedia and graphics capabilities will be available on top-of-line motherboards in March. The 690 chipset, which comes in two flavors, the G and the V, will provide enhanced support for Windows Vista's high-performance graphics, 3-D capabilities and "Aero" user interface, as well as support for Microsoft's DirectX 9 advanced graphics APIs, the company said.

With support for ATI Avivo, dual digital outputs, dual-link DVI, HDMI and HDCP, AMD's 690 chipset brings more to the table than any other integrated chipset offering before it when it comes to features. But what about performance? Does AMD 690 have what it takes to dethrone NVIDIA's GeForce 6150 and how does it stack up against Intel's Core 2 Duo/G965 combo? The first performance preview can be found on FiringSquad and TechReport:

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.

TechReport: AMD has put together a very competent integrated graphics chipset in the 690G-one that will no doubt help the company push a holistic platform that consolidates processing, core logic, and graphics. With its low power consumption, Avivo video processing engine, and support for HDMI output with HDCP, the 690G seems particularly well suited to mainstream desktop systems tasked with multimedia playback. The 690G could also serve well in a dedicated home theater PCs for the living room. We do wish that CPU utilization with high-definition video playback were lower, though.

One might also be tempted to suggest the 690G to the casual gaming crowd. After all, it does have a fancy Radeon X1250 graphics core derived from a one-time mid-range GPU. Despite being faster than either of Nvidia's GeForce 6150 IGPs, though, it's still woefully underpowered for recent titles. If you're willing to turn Oblivion's detail levels all the way down then, yes, you can play the game. But Oblivion at its lowest detail setting isn't really Oblivion. Even Battlefield 2, which was released more than a year and a half ago, looks just awful with the in-game detail set to levels that are playable with the 690G's integrated graphics.