Posted on Wednesday, January 31 2007 @ 16:17 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
The upcoming AMD 690G chipset (previously codenamed ATI RS690)
has some tweaks to improve battery life on laptops.
Instead, the main point is that the K8, with its on-die north bridge, cannot go into a proper sleep mode when idle as a shared memory graphics controller needs to continuously access the memory. With the RS690T, this is no longer a problem as it can use the local store and let the CPU drop into the lower power state.
The next neat trick is something that this hack's Sony laptop half-heartedly implements. When you're doing 90% of your work, then the chances are you do not need lightning fast 3D performance, so integrated graphics is fine - especially if it can cope with Vista's Aero Glass malarkey, if that's your bag. And it will use a lot less power. However, try to play a reasonably modern game, then you're going to be watching a slideshow.
One of the other cool features of the AMD 690G chipset is the ability to hot-switch between the built-in X1250 GPU and an external graphics card. This gives you the ability to increase battery life in specific cases when you don't need the extra horsepower.
