AMD ATI RV610 to support 'single-channel DDR only'

Reference board and chip specs emerge

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

Posted in PC Builder, 6th March 2007 12:17 GMT

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AMD's anticipated RV610 budget DirectX 10 graphics chip will only support single-channel memory configurations when it's launched this coming May, it has been claimed.

A report at Chinese-language site HKEPC, citing unnamed industry sources, alleged the 65nm chip will connect to memory across a 64-bit bus, though it will handle DDR 2, DDR 3, GDDR 3 and GDDR 4 memory types.

Like the RV630, the RV610 will be capable of working on PCI Express 2.0 add-in cards, though AMD's initial four RV610-based board reference designs are likely to operate with the current generation of PCIe. The report reckons AMD is readying two families of RV610 board: 'Antelope' and 'Falcon', each in full-height and low-profile forms. All four have HDMI, dual-link DVI support and s-video outputs, to which the full-height boards add a VGA port. All four boards support HDCP.

The Antelopes are designed around 128MB of DDR 2 memory, but can access system RAM too, to boost the overall frame buffer space. The Falcons have 256MB of GDDR 3 video memory. Video processing is apparently handled by an on-GPU Universal Video Decoder (UVD) chip, as per the RV630.

Only the full-height Falcon board is down as possessing an internal CrossFire connector - the other three boards do multi-GPU rendering over the PCIe bus.

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