ATI has officially launched its Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks integrated graphics chipset for Intel Pentium M, Celeron M, Core Solo and Core Duo Yonah and Merom processors. Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks was previously known internally as RS600M. This is ATI’s first integrated graphic chipsets with AVIVO video processing capabilities. Using a Radeon X700 derived graphics core the Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks delivers full DirectX 9.0 compatibility with support for vertex and pixel shader 2.0. ATI doesn’t mention the amount of available pixel or vertex shaders and core clock though.
The integrated AVIVO video processing engine provides hardware acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264 and WMV9. There’s no mention what H.264 video resolutions the Radeon Xpress 1250 supports, though it may only be limited to 480p like the current Radeon X1300. HDCP 1.1 is supported natively with the Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks while HDMI support requires a separate TMDS transmitter. With the proper HDMI TMDS transmitter a Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks solution can support HDMI 1.2. HDMI output capabilities include support for up to 1650Mbps/channel and a 165 MHz pixel clock rate.
In addition to HDMI other video output methods such as VGA and TV-out. There’s also support for dual independent displays for multi-monitor goodness. An integrated TV encoder provides the TV-out capabilities. The internal TV encoder is based on ATI’s Xilleon set top box solution and delivers Macrovision 7.1 copy protection with YPbPr component video output. Resolutions of 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p and 1080i are supported via component. DVI is also supported with an external TMDS transmitter much like HDMI support.
ATI’s Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks uses a unified memory architecture which allocates some system memory for a video buffer. The minimum amount of allocated memory is 16MB while the maximum is 512MB. As far as system memory goes a maximum of 16GB of DDR2 is supported in 400, 533, 667 and 800 MHz flavors. There’s no mention of dual-channel memory support though.
For manufacturers that wish to implement an external graphics card the Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks has one PCI Express x16 slot that’s fully compliant with PCI Express 1.1a for expansion capabilities. ATI expects manufacturers to pair the Radeon Xpress 1250 with its SB600 south bridge for 10 USB 2.0, four SATA II, one ATA133 ports, high definition audio and PCI.
As the Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks is a notebook chipset it has plenty of power management features. Features such as ATI’s PowerOnDemand, PowerExpress, PowerPlay and new PowerShift features are supported.
Availability of Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks is expected from NEC, though other manufactures might join NEC later on. The Radeon Xpress 1250 for Intel Notebooks is fully compliant with Microsoft’s Windows Vista Premium with aero glass interface. A desktop variant is expected for Intel and AMD processors in the near future.
