AMD's 780 chipset is here! Now, AMD have always been pretty good at the whole chipset thing, and over the years they've released some very capable platforms, most recently the 690G socket AM2 platform. Now with the release of the 780 chipset, they've moved to the socket AM2+ platform in order to support their new K10 architecture of CPU's which are the new Phenom CPU's.

You may have heard some bad press about the Phenom CPU's, and while some of it has been justifie, a lot of it has not. AMD are going after the home user with this platform, and the home user doesn't bench SuperPi or even know the CPU's can be overclocked. This makes the out-of-the-box performance, and supporting features key.

Check out the video posted on YouTube.

From the video, it appears to play Half Life 2 very smoothly, as well as the albeit slightly dated Far Cry on Very High settings - which is no mean feat. The Hybrid Crossfire feature is a welcome one as well, allowing for a useful high powered GPU to aide the CPU when needed, but to be powered down when it isn't, saving power.

All in all, this seems like another well thought out, and well implemented chipset by AMD who are playing to their strengths. No doubt I'll try and get my hands on a 780 chipset motherboard in order to realise a HTPC project I've had in mind for a while, so watch this space!

What do you make of this? Silly integrated graphics nonsense, or an actually useful platform? As always -  the forums.

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