Advanced Micro Devices took a step closer to the introduction of its upcoming Cartwheel and Puma chip packages with the introduction of its 780 series chipset at the Cebit exhibition in Hanover, Germany.

Designed to operate with the Phenom 9000 quad-core processors and Athlon 64 X2, the 780G chipset is notable for the integration of an ATI Radeon graphics core that supports Direct X 10 and high-definition video. The chipset's graphics core can also work in tandem with an external ATI-based graphics card to boost overall 3-D graphics performance, a feature that AMD calls ATI Hybrid Graphics.

AMD also touted the 780's energy efficiency, saying the chipset -- which is manufactured using a 55-nanometre process -- offers three times as much performance as its previous offering but consumes less power when idling.

The 780 chipsets are now shipping and motherboards based on the chipset are available from Asustek, Gigabyte, Micro-Star International and Elitegroup Computer Systems, among others, AMD said. PCs based on the 780 will be available during the second quarter.

The 780 chipsets will also ship with AMD's upcoming Cartwheel desktop chip package and Puma, a chip package for notebooks. Cartwheel is built around AMD's upcoming Toliman and Kuma desktop processors, while Puma is based on the upcoming Griffin mobile processor.