Register Hardware

Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/07/09/ati_rd790_details/

Low-power AMD 'RD790' said to support 'triple CrossFire'

By Tony Smith
Published Monday 9th July 2007 11:06 GMT

AMD's RD790 chipset will support three-way graphics card co-operative rendering, it has been claimed. The allegation matches details of the chipset's capabilities (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/03/20/amd_chipset_roadmap/) that leaked out in March this year.

The latest claim comes courtesy of Taiwanese motherboard-maker moles cited (http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/news.php?tid=821124) by Chinese-language siter HKEPC. The sources don't give much away: they suggest the chipset will support what they call "triple CrossFire".

As we reported in March, leaked roadmaps from that time pointed to RD790's support for either two x16 PCI Express slots or four x8 slots. It's the latter that would appear to enable "triple CrossFire", with the fourth slot left over for a GPU running physics calculations.

As HKEPC notes, RD790 will support HyperTransport 3.0 and AMD's Socket AM2+, but then how else is it also to support AMD's next-generation gaming and desktop processors, the so-called 'star' series? Again, that's something revealed in the earlier leak, which also said the chipset will use AMD's aging ATI SB600 southbridge chip.

The RD790 northbridge is understood to be fabbed using a 65nm process, with the die measuring 27 x 27mm.

RD790 has already won its PCI Express compatibility certification. (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04/02/amd_rd690_confirmed/)

New information provided (http://www.chilehardware.com/foro/especificaciones-termicas-rd790-t102089.html) by Spanish-language site ChileHardware points to RD790 consuming no more than 15W and operating on 1.1V. That said, HKEPC claims RD790 consumes no more than 10W. Either way, it's still less than the 35W maximum Intel's upcoming X38 chipset is said to consume.