SB460 preps the field for SB600

TOMORROW'S LAUNCH of the Radeon Xpress 3200 is going to be mostly focused on the already available Asus motherboard with a curious name A8R32-MVP. You've been able to buy the board for quite some time.

Although the Asus board uses the ULI Nvidia south bridge, ATI used RD580 to quietly launch a small step for it, but a big step for motherboard engineers: an SB460 south bridge.

Although it is logically identical to SB450 (no SATA-II, USB 2.0 is still... Performance by ATI), the biggest change is the fact that it is pin-to-pin compatible with the upcoming SB600 south bridge chip, giving engineers enough time to play around with a production chip. The south bridge should remove the use for the Nvidia's M1575 chip and enable an ATI-only chipset. It ticks all of the missing checkmarks: S-ATA-II and Ultra ATA-133 interfaces, enhanced USB 2.0 performance and most of all - still features HD Audio, which is a real KO when compared to the relatively poor AC'97 codec of Nforce4 chipset fame.

The SB600 will launch in time with RS482 and RX485 chipsets for AMD Socket 939/AM2 and respectively. Bear in mind that the real AM2 chipset goes under the codename RX690 for discrete and RS690 for integrated graphics. What's most interesting about RS690 is the fact that it will be the first Windows Vista-ready integrated thing, featuring HDMI support and AVIVO video tech. This means, all of the HD video goodness integrated graphics can buy, probably accelerating 720p resolution. µ

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