In another week or so, AMD will launch yet another chipset for the AM3 processors. The pair is known as AMD 880G north bridge and can be paired with south bridge SB810 or SB850.
Actually the 880G north bridge is quite similar to the 785G and 890GX. The 880G comes integrated with Radeon HD 4250 Graphics which supports DirectX 10.1, UVD2 and other specifications with a core frequency of 560MHz. It somewhat falls between the higher end 890GX and the to be replaced 785G. Most implementations will pair up the 880G with SB850 as SB850 supports RAID 5 in addition to 0,1,0+1.
Unified Shader architecture still remained 40 stream processors, 8 Texture Address Unit, 4 Texture Filiting Unit, 4 ROP. The motherboard also supports PCI 16X mode PCI-E 2.0 graphics card and support 8X +8 X Crossfire technology
| 785G | 880G | 890GX | |
| Transistor Count | >205million | >205million | >205million |
| Core codename | Radeon HD 4200 | Radeon HD 4250 | Radeon HD 4290 |
| Manufacturing Process | 55nm | 55nm | 55nm |
| SP Number | 40 | 40 | 40 |
| DirectX | DirectX 10.1 | DirectX 10.1 | DirectX 10.1 |
| Shader Model | SM 4.1 | SM 4.1 | SM 4.1 |
| Core clock | 500MHz | 560MHz | 700MHz |
| Memory mode | UMA/UMA+SidePort | UMA/UMA+SidePort | UMA/UMA+SidePort |
| Onboard Memory Type | GDDR2/GDDR3 | GDDR2/GDDR3 | GDDR3 |
| Onboard Memory Bus Width | 16bit | 16bit | 16bit |
| Technical name | UVD 2 | UVD 2 | UVD 2 |
| H.264 decoding | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| VC-1 decoding | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HDMI | 1.3 | 1.3 | 1.3 |
| DisplayPort | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The AMD 880G still supports HDMI 1.3 specification. It has built-in HDCP key support HD-DVD and Blu-Ray high-definition video playback. It also has embedded HD Audio codec, support 7.1-channel HDMI audio output , support ing Dolby Digital Plus and True HD audio technology.
Some manufacturers will also add on USB 3.0 support with NEC USB 3.0 chipset. Just like the AMD 890GX, AMD has disabled the loop hole that enables users with dual or tri core processor to enable the 4th core.
So far, ASRock, ASUS has AMD 890GX chipset based solutions which can unlock the hidden cores. I am sure the 880G would have similar implementations and it is all left to the manufacturers to think of ways to make their product stand out among the various brands and models.