It looks like AMD will unveil its new southbridge SB850 in the fourth quarter 2009 and the perhaps most interesting is that it will support SATA 6Gbps. The SATA 3Gbps interface, also known as SATA 2 is getting outdated and the new Serial ATA interface will enable twice as high transfer rates. Surely needed considering the rapid development of the SSD technology. The new southbridge will also get two extra USB sports, adding up to 14. Alas most likely not USB3.0, but one can dream.
AMD’s SB850 southbridge will be paired with the RD890 and RS880D chipsets. The latter will house a RV620 graphics circuit with a 700MHz core supporting everything from DX10.1 to UVD2.0 and Hybrid CrossFire.
Already in the third quarter AMD is expected to expand the functionality of its integrated graphics circuits. The AMD 785G chipset comes with a 500MHz core and DX10.1 and UVD2.0 support. The graphics cores of 780G and 790GX “only” support DX10 and the first version of Unified Video Decoder.
