AMD 700 chipset series

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 This article contains information about scheduled or expected future computer chips.
It may contain preliminary or speculative information, and may not reflect the final specification of the product.
AMD 700 chipset series/
AMD 7-Series Chipsets
CPU Supported Phenom series
Athlon 64 series
Sempron series
Socket supported Socket F+/F (790FX/DSDC)
Socket AM2+, AM2
Desktop/Mobile chipsets
Enthusiast segment 790FX
Performance segment 790X, 790GX,
RX780H, M780T (Mobile)
Mainstream segment 770, 780G, M780G (Mobile)
Value segment 740, 740V, 740G
M740G (Mobile), 780V
Miscellaneous
Release date(s) November 19, 2007 (790FX, 790X, 770)
March 5, 2008 (780G, 740G)
April 28, 2008 (780V)[1]
June 4, 2008 (M780G)
IGP Direct3D support 10.0 (790GX, 780G, 780V)
9.0b (740G, 740V)
Predecessor AMD 690 chipset series
Successor AMD 800 chipset series
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The AMD 700 chipset series (also called as AMD 7-Series Chipsets) is a set of current and upcoming chipsets designed by ATI for AMD Phenom processors to be sold under the AMD brand. Several members were launched in the end of 2007 and the first half of 2008, others are scheduled to launch throughout the rest of 2008.

The existence of the chipsets was proven on October 2006 through two hardware websites in Chile [2][3] and Spain [4] which posted the leaked slides of an ATI internal event, "ATI chipset update". In the slides, ATI has shown a series of RD700 series chipset logics. Codenamed RD790, RX790, RS780 and RS740 respectively. A codenamed SB700 southbridge was also mentioned in the event. The 790X (codenamed RD780) chipset was spotted in Computex 2007, exhibited by ASUS [5], while the SB750 southbridge was reported by VR-Zone [6]. The RS780D was first reported by HKEPC [7] while the RX780H was first seen on ECS internal presentations. [8]

After the acquisition of ATI Technologies, AMD started to participate in the development of the chipset series. And as a result, the first performance and enthusiast segment chipsets products under the AMD brand, The 790FX, 790X and 770 chipsets were launched on November 19, 2007 as part of the Spider codenamed desktop performance platform. The 780 chipset series, first launched in China on January 23, 2008, and released worldwide on March 5, 2008 during CeBIT 2008 [9], while the others will be released in the first half of 2008, including mobile chipsets (M740G, M780G and M780T chipsets), aimed at Q2 availablilty.

Contents

[edit] Line-up

[edit] 790FX

  • Codenamed RD790, final name revealed to be "AMD 790FX chipset" [10]
  • Dual-socket (Quad FX, Dual Socket Direct Connect (DSDC) Architecture) or single AMD processor configuration
  • Maximum four physical PCI-E x16 slots and discrete PCI-E x4 slot [11], the chipset provides a total of 42 lanes solely in the Northbridge
  • HyperTransport 3.0 with support for HTX slots [11] and PCI Express 2.0
  • ATI CrossFire X
  • AutoXpress
  • AMD OverDrive
  • Energy efficient Northbridge design
    • 65 nm CMOS fabrication process manufactured by TSMC
  • Extreme overclocking, reported to have achieved about 420 MHz bus for overclocking an Athlon 64 FX-62 processor [12], from originally 200 MHz.
  • Optional discrete chipset cache memory of at least 16 KB to reduce the latencies and increase the bandwidth [11]
  • Supports Dual Gigabit Ethernet, and teaming option [11]
  • Reference board codenamed "Wahoo" [13] for dual-processor system reference design board with three physical PCI-E x16 slots, and "HammerHead" for single-socket system reference design board with four physical PCI-E x16 slots, also notable was the reference boards includes two ATA ports and only four SATA 3.0 Gbit/s ports (as being paired with SB600 southbridge), but the final product with SB700 or SB750 southbridge should support up to six SATA ports
  • Enthusiast discrete multi-graphics segment

[edit] 790X

  • Codenamed RD780, final name revealed to be "AMD 790X chipset" [14]
  • Single AMD processor configuration
  • Two physical PCI-E x16 slots
  • HyperTransport 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0
  • ATI CrossFire
  • AutoXpress
  • AMD OverDrive
  • Energy efficient Northbridge design
    • 65 nm CMOS fabrication process manufactured by TSMC
  • Mobile version (codenamed RD780M) planned, supporting CrossFire for two AXIOM/MXM discrete mobile GPUs [15]
  • Performance discrete multi-graphics segment

[edit] 790GX

[edit] 780G/780V

[edit] RX780H

[edit] 770

  • Codenamed RX780 [32], final product name revealed by ECS [33]
  • Single AMD processor configuration
  • One physical PCI-E x16 slot
  • HyperTransport 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0
  • AutoXpress
  • Energy efficient Northbridge design
    • 65 nm CMOS fabrication process manufactured by TSMC
  • Mobile version (M780T), supports discrete graphics, and support for "add-on" graphics solution, via external PCI-E cabling [34]
  • Mainstream discrete single-graphics segment

[edit] 740G/740V

  • Codenamed RS740, value version codenamed RS740C
  • Single AMD processor configuration
  • Rename from the AMD 690G chipset
  • Integrated graphics: Radeon 2100 [20]
  • One physical PCI-E x16 slot and one PCI-E x4 slot
  • HyperTransport 2.0 and PCI Express 1.1a
  • Pin-to-Pin compatible to RS690C
  • Mobile version (M740G, codenamed RS740M) available
  • Value DirectX 9.0 IGP segment

[edit] 740

  • Codenamed RX740 [35]
  • Single AMD processor configuration
  • One physical PCI-E x16 slot
  • HyperTransport 2.0 and PCI Express 1.1a
  • Energy efficient Northbridge design
  • Value discrete single-graphics segment

[edit] Southbridges

Besides the use of SB600 southbridge for earlier releases of several members in late 2007, all of the above chipsets can also utilize newer southbridge designs, the SB700, SB710 and the SB750 southbridges. Future server chipsets will also utilize the server version (SB700S/SB750S) of the southbridges. The SB710 was reported to be cancelled and all features are integrated into the SB750 southbridge. [36] Features provided by the southbridge are listed as follows:

[edit] SB700

[edit] SB710

  • SB700 internal clock generator malfunction fix [39]
  • Super I/O
  • Support for AMD OverDrive 3.0 [20]
  • Reportedly cancelled [36]

[edit] SB750

  • All features of SB700
  • RAID 5 support [6]
  • SB700 internal clock generator malfunction fix [39]
  • Super I/O
  • Support for AMD OverDrive 3.0
    • Enhanced overclocking [36]

[edit] SB700S

[edit] SB750S

[edit] Key features

[edit] Multi-graphics

Four card CrossFire X setup
Four card CrossFire X setup

The ATI CrossFire X technology supports multiple video cards to be connected to enhance the visual display and 3D rendering capabilities of the system, using AFR mode and/or scissor mode. Alternatively, systems with multiple video card CrossFire X setup will support multiple display monitors up to eight.

For the AMD 790FX chipset, the CrossFire X [40] technology allows up to 4 video cards to be connected, made possible as the chipset supports four physical PCI-E x16 slots [11]. The PCI-E lanes can be configured for 4 slots at x8 bandwidth or 2 slots at x16 bandwidth (16x-16x, 8x-8x-8x or 8x-8x-8x-8x CrossFire X setup). Reports indicate 2.6 times the performance with triple-card CrossFire than that of a single card,[41] and more than 3.3 times the performance increase for quad-card CrossFire [40]. Gigabyte have revealed in a leaked product presentation that the four card CrossFire X setup does not require CrossFire connectors [42]; the data will be exchanged among the PCI-E slots which is monitored and controlled by Catalyst drivers.

For the performance segment, CrossFire on the AMD 790X chipset has two physical PCI-E x16 slots [11] with one operating at x8 bandwidth (dual-card 16x-8x CrossFire), supporting up to four display monitors.

Multi-graphics is also supported for the 790GX IGP chipset, named as Hybrid CrossFire X.

[edit] AMD OverDrive

Another feature is AMD OverDrive, an application designed to boost system performance through a list of items in real-time, without a system reboot, as listed below:

  • Real-time Overclocking:
    • Novice mode for users not familiar with system tuning, includes a slider of level 0 to 10 for easy system tuning
    • Advanced mode for more familiar enthusiasts to fine tune various system parameters including: Clock frequencies – independent clock frequencies for independent processor cores (Phenom processors only), PCI-E lanes, system bus frequency; Multipliers for each of the CPU cores and HyperTransport links (downward direction only); And voltages for CPU (VID and VDDC), CPU HyperTransport, DDR2 Memory (VDDQ and VTT), northbridge core (VCore) and Northbridge PCI-E
    • "Auto Clock" for automatic fine-tuning and overclocking
  • Memory fine-tuning – DDR2 Memory parameters
  • System monitoring:
    • System information
      • Simple mode – Windows Task Manager like CPU cores usage histogram, with CPU core clock Frequencies, CPU Multipliers, CPU core voltages (VCore), CPU Temperature; GPU details including GPU core frequency, video memory frequency; and system parameters including system bus frequency, southbridge frequency, PCI-E lanes frequency and memory frequency
      • Detailed mode – include all system information items presented in the simple mode, with the addition of CPU caches, CPU voltages, memory details including memory frequencies and SPD settings, HyperTransport frequency and link width
    • System Monitor
    • (Optional) System benchmark, resulting a value to reflect relative system performance, tests include: integer computation, floating-point computation, memory speed, cache speed
    • (Optional) Processor stability test, normally runs for one hour, can also be run for a minimum of 1 minute or a maximum of seven days, to identify whether the system becomes unstable for use after fine-tuning under full-loading condition. Tests include: integer (integer units) calculations and stack operations test for each processor core, floating-point (128-bit FPU) calculations test for each processor core, calculation test (Phenom processors only), MCA registers checking test
  • Maintenance/User-friendly functionalities:
    • Profile(s) saving and loading capabilities
    • Log records output

The application will support all members of the AMD 700 chipset series, including the 740 series chipsets which are aimed at value markets, and AMD processors including Phenom and Athlon 64 family of processors, but due to architectural limitations, independent clock frequency settings for different processor cores (a feature implemented in the K10 microarchitecture) will not function on Athlon 64 family of processors (except for Athlon X2 6000 series which is based on K10).

[edit] AutoXpress

The AutoXpress technology, is a set of automatic system tuning features to enhance system performance, which were revealed by members of ChileHardware when investigating the BIOS for AMD 790FX, 790X and 770 chipsets [43]. AutoXpress will be available on AMD 790FX (codenamed RD790) chipset, with AMD 790X (codenamed RD780) and AMD 770 (codenamed RX780) chipsets implementing a subset of all the features. The AutoXpress technology is similar to the LinkBoost capability presented on NVIDIA nForce 500/600 chipsets.

The feature must be enabled via BIOS, options appeared in the BIOS includes ON/OFF/Custom, which choosing the "Custom" option will open up three further options, namely "CPU", "XpressRoute" and "MemBoost" with ON/OFF options, and ON as default. Details about the AutoXpress features are listed as follows:

AutoXpress
CPU
Availability CPU supported Other hardware Particulates
790FX, 790X, 770 AMD Phenom family N/A Change CPU ClkDivisor to “Divide-by-1” mode,
allowing 1 MHz frequency intervals tuning
XpressRoute
Availability CPU supported Other hardware Particulates Overclocking frequencies
Min. Default Max. possible
790FX, 790X All AMD Processors
(Socket AM2+/AM2
and Socket F+/F)		 Radeon R580 and
Radeon R600 based
video cards		 PCI-E clock overclocking, to accelerate
data transfer to and from video cards
by increasing PCI-E bandwidth		 100 MHz 125 MHz 150-160 MHz
All CrossFire-enabled
(software/hardware)
Radeon video cards		 Allowing point-to-point transfer between
multiple-video card setup		 N/A
HT 1.0-enabled processors
(All K8-based processors,
including Opteron 1000 series)		 All Radeon video cards Double pumping graphics data
across the CPU HyperTransport link
MemBoost
Availability CPU supported Other hardware Particulates
790FX, 790X All K8-based processors DDR2-800
memory modules		 Tweaking CAS latencies, as follows:
tRC, tWR reduced by 2; tRRD, tWTR reduced by 1;
tREF set to 7.8 μs from originally 3.9 μs; Enabling "Bank Swizzle Mode"; and
Increase Bank Bypass Maximum to 7x
All AMD processors
(Socket AM2+/AM2
and Socket F+/F)		 DDR2 memory modules Disable the "PowerDown" mode of
DRAM modules (setting the register to "0")
790FX Read performance SPD settings of high-end modules and
set as default, giving maximum performance

[edit] Energy efficiency

One of the major focus of the chipset series is the energy efficiency of the chipsets. The need for energy-efficient chipsets have risen since chipsets starts including more features and more PCI Express lanes, to provide better system scalability by using PCI-E add-on cards.

But one issue is that chipset circuitries were usually made on a larger fabrication process nodes compared with the latest CPU process node, making recent chipsets to consume more and more power than their predecessors. Recent examples including the Intel X38 chipset Northbridge (MCH), labelling 26.5 W TDP with a maximum idle power of 12.3 W [44], which results in the world's first Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS) design over the chip to help heat spread evenly, with ASUS even adding water cooling block directly on top of the heaksink of the X38 Northbridge as a part of the motherboard heatpipe system. Although the aforementioned figures may be small compared to the TDP figures of a performance CPU, there is a growing demand for computer systems with higher performance and lower power consumption. While Intel focuses only on the energy efficiency of its processors, NVIDIA's upcoming chipset, the nForce 780i, requires an overall power consumption of 48 W with the northbridge, southbridge and the nForce 200 PCI-E bridge [45].

In response to this, all discrete northbridges of the chipset series were designed on a 65 nm CMOS process, manufactured by TSMC, aimed at lowering power consumptions of chipsets. According to internal testing and various reports, the Northbridge of the AMD 790FX chipset (RD790) runs at 3 W when idle, and maximum 10 W under load [41], nominal 8 W power consumption, the northbridge was seen on reference design of the AMD 790FX chipset with single passive cooling heatsink instead of connecting to heat pipes which are frequently used on current performance motherboard offers [45], the chipset on the whole (the combination of RD790 Northbridge and SB600 Southbridge) consumes nominally less than 15 W [46]

The integrated graphics northbridges were also benefited, as most of the IGP northbridges were made on 55 nm process manufactured by TSMC with the inclusion of ATI PowerPlay technology, allowing dynamically changing the core clock frequency to minimum 150 MHz [16]. The 780G Northbridge, sporting DirectX 10 support, consumes only 11.4 W on full load [20], 0.94 watt when idle [47]. This is also smaller than the TDP figures of the Intel G35 chipset Northbridge at 28 W with the maximum idle power of 11 W [48].

[edit] ATI Hybrid Graphics

Main article: ATI Hybrid Graphics

The ATI Hybrid Graphics technology applies to all or some of the integrated graphics chipsets of this chipset series, technologies including Hybrid CrossFire X, SurroundView and PowerXpress. Reports confirmed that the 790GX IGP (codenamed RS780D) chipset will be able to handle dual video card and IGP as a CrossFire X setup [7].

[edit] I/O acceleration technologies

All chipsets paired with either SB700, SB710 or SB750 southbridge will support two I/O acceleration technologies, as listed below:

[edit] Hybrid Drives

The southbridges also support hybrid drives via SATA or supported ATA ports, which is compliant with the requirements of the Windows ReadyDrive technology. Basically conventional hard drives with embedded NAND flash modules.

[edit] HyperFlash

The HyperFlash, basically a NAND flash module on a card, originally planned as a device connected to the supported IDE/ATA 66/100/133 channel, to speed up system performance [49] through the Windows ReadyBoost and Windows ReadyDrive functionality.

A HyperFlash module consists of two parts, the first part is a HyperFlash memory card which are flash memory chips on a small PCB (dimensions similar to a Canadian quarter 25¢, with diameter 23.88 mm, but rectangular in shape) with contacts similar to SO-DIMM modules. The other part is a flash controller on a ATA connector, with similar latches/socket ejectors as SO-DIMM sockets. The HyperFlash memory card is inserted into the flash controller and then directly plugged into the motherboard ATA connector. The memory chips used on the HyperFlash memory card will be Samsung's OneNAND flash memory modules with maximum four-die configuration (four-die in a single package), running at 83 MHz frequency [50], providing a bandwidth of 108 MB/s on a 16-bit bus width. Since the flash controller is designed to be compatible with ATA pin-out definitions (also to fit the ATA motherboard connector) and is designed by Molex, this allows OEMs to produce their own brands of HyperFlash modules while at the same time providing maximum compatibility between HyperFlash modules.

Three variants will be available for HyperFlash modules, with capacity of 512 MiB, 1 GiB and 2 GiB respectively, with expected DVT samples in November 2007, mass-production is expected in December 2007 (supported by Beta motherboard drivers) and official motherboard driver support planned in February 2008. [51] However, it was reportedly cancelled. [52]

[edit] RAIDXpert

The RAIDXpert is a remote RAID configuration tool, for changing the RAID level of the RAID setup connected via SATA 3.0 Gbit/s ports (connected to SB600, excluding extra SATA 3.0 Gbit/s ports through additional SATA chip on some motherboard implementations), including RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1.

[edit] Integrated graphics

Some of the members of the AMD 700 chipset series, specifically the 780 and 740 family of chipsets and the 790GX chipset, have integrated graphics onboard (IGP), as well as supporting hardware video playback acceleration at different levels. All IGP northbridges are pin-compatible to each other and even predecessors (690 series), to lower the product cost for each PCB redesign due to pin incompatibility and maximize the product lineup. These IGP features are listed below:

IGP features
Chipset/
Codename		 Gfx model
(Radeon)		 DirectX API supported Video playback
acceleration		 Video formats
decoding support		 Multi-graphics Other video features Native video output support SurroundView
(Multi-display)
AVIVO AVIVO HD+
UVD+AVP		 MPEG-2 H.264 VC-1 DisplayPort
(with DPCP)		 HDMI 1.2a
(with HDCP)		 DVI
(with HDCP)		 D-Sub
790GX/RS780D HD 3300 10.0 Yes Yes Partial Full Full Hybrid CrossFire X Dual video stream1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
780G/RS780 HD 3200 Yes Yes Partial Full Full ATI Hybrid Graphics Dual video stream1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
780V/RS780C 3100 Yes No Partial Partial Partial No N/A No Yes Yes Yes Yes
RX780H ? ? ? ? ? ? ATI Hybrid Graphics N/A No No No No No
740G/RS740 2100 9.0 Yes No Partial Partial Partial No N/A No Yes Yes Yes No
740V/RS740C Yes No Partial Partial Partial No N/A No No No Yes No
Notes:
  1. Dual video stream may include the followings at a maximum total bitrate of 40 Mbit/s:
    • 2 HD video streams OR
    • 1 HD video stream + 1 SD video stream + 1 HD audio stream

[edit] "Remote IT"

For the enterprise platform, the "Remote IT" technology (temporary name) was reported to be released by the end of 2007 or early 2008. The platform comprised of an AMD 780V chipset with an SB700 southbridge, and chips from Broadcom, Realtek and Marvell [38]. It was reported to have incorporated the Broadcom BCM5761 managed NIC controller with Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) 1.5 manageability standard [53], together with DASH 1.0 specification (DASH page on DMTF) support of the SB700 and SB750 southbridges, and reported support additional management and security technologies such as IDM (Intelligent Device Management) and TPM 1.2 (Trusted Platform Module). [38]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ AMD Business Class Press Release, retrieved June 7, 2008
  2. ^ ChileHardware report on "ATI chipset update"
  3. ^ ChileHardware discussion thread
  4. ^ MadBoxPC reporting "ATI chipset update"
  5. ^ OCWorkBench Computex 2007 coverage, retrieved January 3, 2008
  6. ^ a b VR-Zone report
  7. ^ a b c d (Chinese) HKEPC report: AMD touts Hybrid Crossfire X technology, combining IGP and GPU, available in Q2 2008. Retrieved December 12, 2007
  8. ^ a b (Chinese) "RS780 and MCP78 to be released soon. ECS talks about Black Series Motherboards.", Hong Kong: PCweekly, 2008-01-17. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  9. ^ DigiTimes report, retrieved January 25, 2008
  10. ^ Fudzilla report, retrieved October 8, 2007
  11. ^ a b c d e f g (Spanish) ChileHardware discussion thread
  12. ^ VR-Zone report, retrieved October 24, 2007
  13. ^ a b TG Daily report, retrieved July 27, 2007.
  14. ^ TechConnect Magazine report, retrieved October 17, 2007
  15. ^ The Inquirer report, retrieved January 31, 2008
  16. ^ a b (Chinese) "First look at Hybrid CrossFire. AMD RS780+SB700 enters the stage.", Hong Kong: PCWeekly, 2008-01-24. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  17. ^ a b (Spanish) ChileHardware report, retrieved January 17, 2008
  18. ^ Fudzilla report, retrieved October 4, 2007
  19. ^ a b (Chinese) HKEPC report, retrieved October 25, 2007
  20. ^ a b c d e f (Chinese) HKEPC review, retrieved January 29, 2008
  21. ^ Fudzilla report, retrieved March 6, 2008
  22. ^ Fudzilla report, retrieved October 4, 2007
  23. ^ HKEPC image, retrieved February 19, 2008
  24. ^ ChileHardWare thread
  25. ^ Bit-Tech report
  26. ^ C|Net Interview with AMD Fellow Maurice Steinman
  27. ^ The Inquirer report, retrieved August 13, 2007
  28. ^ RegHardware report
  29. ^ RegHardware report
  30. ^ dailyTech repotr, retrieved March 25, 2008
  31. ^ (Chinese) HKEPC review, retrieved February 28, 2008
  32. ^ DailyTech report
  33. ^ ECS products page, retrieved on October 4, 2007
  34. ^ Fudzilla report
  35. ^ DailyTech report, retrieved on October 8, 2007
  36. ^ a b c Fudzilla report, retrieved May 2, 2008
  37. ^ X-bit labs report, retrieved October 26, 2007
  38. ^ a b c DigiTimes report, retrieved July 21, 2007.
  39. ^ a b c d DigiTimes report: AMD has upper hand in next IGP chipset battle with Nvidia, according to motherboard makers. Retrieved January 3, 2008
  40. ^ a b VR-Zone report, retrieved October 12, 2007
  41. ^ a b Fudzilla report
  42. ^ VR-Zone report, retrieved October 25, 2007
  43. ^ ChileHardware discussion thread, retrieved October 4, 2007
  44. ^ Intel Thermal and Mechanical Design Guidelines – For the Intel 82X38 Memory Controller Hub (MCH). September 2007, Revision -001, page 14 PDF (2.38 MiB), retrieved November 23, 2007
  45. ^ a b The Inquirer report, retrieved October 12, 2007
  46. ^ The Inquirer report, retrieved October 17, 2007
  47. ^ (Chinese) PCZilla report. Test results according to AMD. Retireved March 7, 2008
  48. ^ Intel Thermal and Mechanical Design Guidelines – For the Intel 82G35 Graphics and Memory Controller Hub (GMCH). August 2007, Revision -001, page 14 PDF (1.42 MiB), retrieved November 23, 2007
  49. ^ DailyTech report
  50. ^ Samsung OneNAND product identification guide, retrieved October 25, 2007
  51. ^ (Chinese) HKEPC report, retrieved October 25, 2007
  52. ^ TGDaily report, retrieved June 4, 2008
  53. ^ DailyTech report, retrieved August 1, 2007

[edit] External links

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