AMD 690 Chipset

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AMD 690 Chipset

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
AMD
Mar. 1, 2007

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We'd like to thank Foxconn for providing us with their MCP61SM2MA motherboard for testing purposes on such short notice.

Board Layout

This board is smaller than your standard mATX motherboard, and that's not really a good thing. Not that it's light on features, but the extra half-inch of width that was shaved off could have come in real handy: the chipset heatsink obstructs the CPU heatsink retention bracket. It may not affect all heatsinks, but there is only a little over a quarter inch between the bottom of the CPU mount to the side of the chipset's heatsink. This would be less of an issue if the chipset's heatsink was shorter, but it's at least an inch tall. To the sides, the power regulation capacitors are intrusive, as well.

The battery on the board is just in front of the second PCI slot, which is probably OK; this board's BIOS isn't itching to be tweaked. A long video card will undoubtedly interfere with the RAM clips, too. The M2A-VM does support four sticks or RAM, so the gig-at-a-time people are covered there.

There are three fan connections, which is nice; it's not uncommon for mATX boards to come with just two. Another well-placed set of connections are for SATA drives. They're far away from the video card, at the bottom front corner.

This board completely lacks FireWire -- nothing at the back and no headers. FireWire devices are uncommon, but it seems a bit odd to axe them like a legacy connection. Especially when legacy devices are otherwise fully supported by this motherboard. Also, and this might be because of the early board sample, but the power, reset, LED, and speaker connections aren't color-coded, so they're hard to differentiate from one another.

Otherwise, nothing besides the ASUS-amber PCB sticks out.

Bundle and Extras

As our motherboard is an early release, it did not come with any kind of retail packaging.

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Page 2 of 5

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Page 1: Introduction, About the RS690
Page 2: Board Layout, Bundle & Extras
Page 3: General Benchmarks
Page 4: Graphics Benchmarks, Overclocking
Page 5: Conclusion

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