Benchmark Results: Integrated Graphics And SATA 6Gb/s
AMD claims 3D performance superiority for the integrated Radeon HD 4290 graphics controller of its new 890GX northbridge, but we think it looks amazingly like the 790GX, save for the DirectX 10.1 update. With much of its focus on media centers, we wanted to find out whether it could also support modern games at the common 720p resolution.
Performance between the new Radeon HD 4290 integrated GPU looks remarkably similar to that of its predecessor’s Radeon HD 3300 core. If you can live with film-speed frame rates, you’ll at least find two of these games playable at their lowest settings.
Our original assessment was that AMD’s SB850 southbridge was the biggest news of today’s release, with the only integrated SATA 6Gb/s controller on the market. Let’s see how today’s motherboards compare to the previous generation’s SATA 3Gb/s part.
Though none of the integrated solutions could exceed the former standard’s 300 MB/s limit, all of them outpace the former chipset’s controller. We expect the lower SB850 scores to go up after a few BIOS improvements.
