14 DAY TRIAL // The next-generation of processors from Advanced Micro Devices, namely Athlon X4, Phenom II X3 and Phenom II X4, have already been announced to receive a new chipset from the company at a certain point in the second half of the next year. To be more precise, the part will be an AM3 chipset, manufactured under the 55nm fabrication process, and it is expected to hit the market in the third quarter of 2009.
According to the latest news on the Web, the chipset will be named AMD 880G and is supposed to be part of the AMD Live! "Pisces" platform. The RS880 should include a lot of innovations in several areas like performance, HD video capability enhancements, scalability or energy efficiency.
The AMD 880G chipset comes with an integrated Radeon HD 3450 (RV620) graphics core, DirectX10.1 compliant, DDR3 support, as well as support for other AMD technologies like HyperTransport 3.0, Universal Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2), or Hybrid Crossfire, which allows a discrete Radeon HD 3450 graphics core to be added through a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot.
The part also features Display Port, HDMI, DVI, and SurroundView support, while being paired with the AMD SB710 Southbridge to provide 12 USB ports and six SATA ports. As it is manufactured using the 55nm process technology, the AMD 880G chipset also sports low power needs and low noise output levels. Specification charts of the RS880 and "Pisces" platform can be seen here.
The Sunnyvale chip manufacturer is also stressing on its new OverDrive 3.0, which comes with support for AM3 platforms featuring Smart Control, able to offer users a way to boost clocks on demand. In addition, the new AMD Overdrive 3.0 includes an easy to use interface and offers personalized experience options to users. It has Application Specific Profiles offering simple solutions for system setting optimization upon application detection, along with an improved Hardware Monitoring support and adjustable fan control.