ATi's Radeon IGP320M Chipset A New Chance For Athlon Notebooks

3. The Specifications Of Radeon IGP320M

Radeon IGP320M is the mobile Athlon chipset out of ATi's new IGP core logic range. Beside it, ATi also offers the Radeon IGP320 Athlon desktop chipset, the Radeon IGP 330/340 desktop Pentium 4 chipset and finally the Radeon IGP340M for mobile Pentium 4 systems.

Here is what all of ATi's IGP chipsets have in common:

Integrated AGP4x Graphics with 8-128 MB of adjustable frame buffer allocation size (from main memory) 3D engine is like "half a Radeon ", but without built-in T&L . It's got one rendering pipeline with three texturing units. The GRX-subsystem runs at 160 MHz, so the maximum pixel fill rate (single texturing) is 160 Mpixel/s and the highest texel fill rate (multi texturing) is therefore 480 Mtexels/s. Graphics features include HyperZ (ATi's z-occlusion culling), Hydravision (dual monitor support), PowerPlay (ATI's power saving features). 64-bit SDRAM/DDR-SDRAM PC100/PC133/PC1600/PC2100 Synchronous/Asynchronous Memory Interface, up to 1 GB of memory Integrated DVD-playback enhancements (motion compensation, iDCT) Integrated video-out encoder Integrated Master Clock Integrated LVDS Interface Two Alternative Southbridge Interfaces, either ATi's proprietary 266 MB/s A-Link interface for ATi's IXP200/250 southbridges, or classic PCI interface (133 MB/s) for 3rd party southbridges (as e.g. from ALi or VIA). Optional IXP200 or IXP250 southbridges with up to 6 USB 2.0 ports, built-in 3Com Ethernet MAC, enhanced AC97 audio with SPDIF out.

In case of Radeon IGP320M, those features are teamed up with an AMD Mobile Athlon XP processor. Basically, we have an integrated mobile chipset with reasonable 3D-capabilities, DDR-memory support, and enhanced DVD-playback capabilities that can be used with the ATi southbridge or with any classic PCI-connected southbridge to save development costs and time. With the Mobile Athlon chipset situation as grave as it is right now, the Radeon IGP320M looks like an excellent solution to make Mobile Athlon XP systems a lot more attractive.