AM3 Reference Diagram Disclosed

psyph3r writes "Chilehardware has released what appears to be a confidential image showing the future customer desktop AM3 reference boards for AMD and ATI. Here is an English site talking about this reference design image and the features it enables. 'The biggest improvement for this generation of chipsets is the audio and video capabilities integrated into the motherboard. The new features packed into these chipsets are beginning to look like standalone platforms. The RS780 supports DirectX 10 and has a UVD, which is similar to most High-end cards of today.'"

In other words, integrated

[Applekid]

Hasn't integrated audio and video been around forever?

Supporting DirectX 10 and all that is great and all, but, how fast will it be? I remember getting an nForce 4 integrated video board for my folks some time ago and it supported the latest DirectX versions and, while it ran all the nVidia eyecandy demos, it sure was slow.

I mean, TFA makes reference to Hypertransport 3.0 and all, but memory bandwidth is only part of pretty pixels.

Wasn't this "Confidential"?

[dilute]

OK, flame me and mod me -1, but if the Slashdot editors had good reason to believe this was actually confidential (and based on the translation of this article, this pretty plainly appears to be the case), and an unauthorized disclosure, why the editors here decide to carry the story? If someone submitted a story that said, "Here are documents I STOLE from Microsoft by breaking into the building" would Slashdot carry that? Where do you draw the line? Why does AMD's stuff have to be outed like this as a consequence of someone violating their confidence? Or maybe it's a deliberate leak (???)

Re:In other words, integrated

[Svartalf]

What makes an IGP slower is a couple of things.

In the case of Intel, it's the memory bandwidth coupled with a distinct lack of Vertex Shader support.

In the case of AMD, it's the memory bandwidth coupled with a dramatically reduced/nonexistent support for Vertex Shaders.

In the case of NVidia, it's the memory bandwidth.

In the case with many IGPs, the combination of having to share RAM with the machine on it's own bus, along with no Transform, Clipping, and Lighting hardware acceleration (Little to no Vertex Shader hardware...) means for a very slow GPU overall. Now, having said this, the Hypertransport 3.0 interface may help on the bus speed, and if you're looking at the Unified Shader requirements for DX10, you might find that this may be a little better performer. It's not going to be like a PCI-E add-in card, but it may be serviceable for light to medium duty 3D stuff by itself because of those two things.

Re:Wasn't this "Confidential"?

[wwahammy]

Why wouldn't they? This is a news site isn't it? And isn't this news?

Re:In other words, integrated

[moderatorrater]

I don't understand the assumption that they can't embed a high-end graphics card in a motherboard

I assume that it can be done but it hasn't. The reason I assume it hasn't been done is that the resulting motherboard would then have to go through testing and the video card would have to get integrated. In the meanwhile, the GPU market is moving forward and releasing new cards and marking down existing ones. In addition, the video card industry moves faster than the motherboard industry generally speaking, so while a good motherboard is useful 6 months later at roughly the same cost, a video card isn't. Most motherboard manufacturers would rather let enthusiasts with higher graphics requirements purchase the card separately and embed low-quality GPUs for people who don't need a better one.

Re:Wasn't this "Confidential"?

[rilister]

Does this:
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/02/12/2114228.shtml [slashdot.org]
answer your question?
(Slashdot's most visited story of all time, btw)

Re:In other words, integrated

[Chosen Reject]

It used to be there were several games a year that required rigs that were insane. Now there's maybe 1 or 2.

I haven't noticed that. What I've seen is that usually games will reach a plateau for a while (maybe a plateau with a slight incline) and then suddenly jump forward. For example, Doom 3 and Half Life 2 were both released withing a few months of each other, and Unreal Tournament 2004 was released only a few months before Doom 3 (UT2k4 required enough of a boost over UT2k3 that I included it). But then there wasn't much after that for a while. But this year we have BioShock, Crysis, and UT3, which all go towards upping the requirements quite a bit. Granted that is for all the eye-candy they can offer (which is what a $500 video card is for).

However, there has been a general trend in computing power in the last few years where people aren't upgrading that often. Some attribute it to computers being fast enough to run just about everything. Personally I think it's because we've been with Windows XP for so long, which is an argument for a another time. However, regardless of the reasons why people aren't upgrading that often, game developers are realizing that a lot of their money is coming from people still running DirectX 8 video cards and they had better make their games at least playable to them. Another reason is that the costs of producing a game are soaring, and developers also realize they cannot entirely rely on the hardware-upgraders for sales like they could in ye olden days of 10 years ago. So they let the market grow by allowing people with non-top-of-the-line computers to run their games. It's not a large expansion, but it is a growth nonetheless.

Nevertheless, people willing to put out "insane" amount of money for a good mobo and GPU, are not typically going to be the kind of people that would pay that same amount for the two to be one unit.