Meet Thy Maker
Officially, the AMD 890GX chipset is AMD’s most versatile desktop solution, enabling a high definition entertainment experience while incorporating forward looking SATA 3.0 drive connectivity, integrated DirectX 10.1 graphics and HD video processing technology, and many motherboards incorporating SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity. It is designed to be an ideal foundation for building a sleek home theater PC, a powerful small form factor gaming PC, or an affordable performance desktop.
Unofficially, while many “threw the PC beans out the window” and went to sleep, it branched into high definition entertainment, grew bandwidth toward the world-wide cloud, and intertwined with a future of gadgets and screens that we can barely imagine. If you wake up with a vision to build a PC that will defy your expectations and help you explore the future, motherboards with an AMD 890GX chipset may be the best place to start.
The AMD 890GX chipset has integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 4290 graphics and new connectivity technology for building a sleek and quiet home theater PC. It includes a second generation Unified Video Decoder, dedicated hardware that decodes and plays back Blu-ray™ and other HD content with support for MPEG2, VC-1, and H.264 formats.1,2 The UVD engine has high quality video scaling, able to process algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display. It is also able to process video on-the-fly with Dynamic Contrast which automatically adjusts video contrast and brightness. This is without a separate discrete graphics card! With motherboard USB 3.0 support, an HTPC is expected to have peak speeds almost 10x that of USB 2.0, speeding a future where high-definition video moves between your media players, portable storage, and your home theater with speed and ease. In combination with the AMD Phenom™ II X2 processor at only 65W you can start to build a sleek HTPC with a platform starting below $250.3
The Author seeks to defy reality as he upgrades to an AMD890-GX based motherboard. The ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card is as long as the Author’s custom SFF case. Fortunately, a pair of ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards fit.
For a more powerful HTPC, the combination of ATI Radeon™ HD 5400 series and higher graphics and the AMD 890GX chipset adds state-of-the-art home theater audio and video. Enthusiasts have already discovered bitstream technology, channeling advanced, high-definition 7.1 channel audio formats to home theater receivers on a range of ATI Radeon HD 5400 and higher series graphics and software including Cyberlink PowerDVD 9. This combination also supports hardware decoding for multiple High-Definition video streams, so you can have multiple videos or players open while retaining hardware-enabled playback. Add high-end gaming capability and this HTPC can be a home entertainment nexus merging gaming, high definition theater, and high-speed connectivity to web-based HD entertainment and a new age of high-speed gadgets.
Behold! The MSI’s 8900GXM-G65 is a uATX motherboard with two PCIExpress slots supporting ATI CrossfireX™ technology. Obscure components include an external passively cooled power supply and audio breakout box.
There is no PC building experience more challenging than building a high-end gaming small-form-factor PC. For those who share this passion, Behold! A micro-ATX board with two GPU slots. The 890GX supports ATI CrossFireX™ technology for dual graphics support, so your frame rates will be limited “only by your will to dominate other gamers” and, well, physical constraints. With an upgrade on your AMD 890GX motherboard to the the acclaimed performance of ATI Radeon HD 5400 and higher series graphics, the emergence of multi-screen gaming with ATI Eyefinity technology, and the only DirectX 11 graphics cards available today you should be well prepared for a future of incredible PC gaming.
The 890GX chipset is ready for a future of continued home theater innovation and gaming entertainment with support for forward looking technologies and tremendous versatility. If you want to know more about building a PC and the new 8-series chipsets we have assembled a list of resources below. For more on building a PC check out Jay’s HTPC build guide and videos and Simon’s step-by-step guide to building a PC from scratch.
XtremeSystems.org Thread on Small Form Factor and HTPC Builds Based on the AMD890GX Chipset
AMD 8-Series Chipsets Product Page
ATI Radeon HD 5400 and Higher Series Graphics Product Page
AMD Underground Do-It-Yourself Web Site
How to build your own AMD Desktop PC with Dragon technology, a combination of AMD Phenom™ II processors, ATI Radeon™ HD graphics and AMD 7-Series chipsets. In this video demonstration AMDs Simon Solotko builds a wicked new AMD technology-based PC from scratch and demonstrates many of the steps in PC assembly. Be sure to take proper precautions including grounding yourself and PC to diminish the risk of static discharge and refer to the installation manuals of your components.
Follow Simon Solotko on Twitter (Twitter Needs Techies…)
Simon Solotko is a Senior Advanced Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
POSTED IN: Home Theater
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COMMENTS: 5
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What I generally miss on 890GX coverage is what the IGP for GPU accelerated apps (photoshop, video editing, etc) for the home user can do compared to an all Intel solution of the same price range/class.
Also I read about XFire tech that would allow to use 890GX in addition to a high class 5xxx series graphics card. What is there to expect? e.g. can the 890GX take care about all the Physics FX in games in upcoming titles, or would it just make the decisive FPS difference when combined with a passive cooled 5xxx series graphics card?
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I like how the guy built that Awesome computer is less than an hour. It usually takes me an entire day to build one.
For anyone that is interested in building the httpc system make sure before you install windows that you set the sata controller to raid mode and not ahci if you get the gigabyte board it has a cool feature to allow the os to be on a nonraid sata port 300 while leaving your 6 sata 3 ports available to use as a port multiplier aware. By buying a 5 dollar bracket you plug your internal ports and change them to external increasing your hard drive capability to a max of 90 hard drives although 5 is most you can connect to a single cable without losing performance. It too me forever to find out how to enable the fis port multiplier on this chipset. I now have 8 terrabytes on my httpc machine with 5 sata 3 ports not being used )