The Inquirer just wrote up a quick review of the new ATi Xpress 3200 (RD580 Skeletor) chipset. For the first time ever it's safe to say that ATi has a motherboard chipset that's worthy of being installed in the highest end enthusiast systems. I don't know how they did it, but if you ask me based on our own tests - they must have locked some engineers in rooms 24/7 and told them to come out with something good or they're dead. Let's just say they succeeded.
15 blogger comments:
Come on, give ATI SOME Credit - While most RD480 boards are indeed garbage, Asus' A8RMVP managed to work quite nicely :)
My Sapphire board is rock solid. Only time I had any problems with it was when I was alittle greedy on my OC.
Yes yes, RD480 is great, but RD580 is amazing in all aspects.
A very impressive chipset, but whether the SB600 could be as great is another matter. After all, the RD480 boards' main weakness is not in the northbridge but in the SB450 southbridge.
You should have answered me. I would have cleaned up your awkward constructions and improved your grammar, as well as punching up the prose. Why couldn't your candidates have been honored with an email, even a massmarket message?
Indeed. That's why many companies like ASUS opted for a ULI southbridge instead.
Perhaps this is an alternative to locking some engineers in rooms 24/7 and telling them to come out with something good or they're dead?
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/12/05/ati_macci/
Come on, give ATI SOME Credit - While most RD480 boards are indeed garbage, Asus' A8RMVP managed to work quite nicely :)
The Asus is the one we use because they chose the right southbridge - but the RD580 is certainly much better than the RD480.
My Sapphire board is rock solid. Only time I had any problems with it was when I was alittle greedy on my OC.
Hmm, I've never tested a Sapphire motherboard. I thought they were all video cards?
A very impressive chipset, but whether the SB600 could be as great is another matter. After all, the RD480 boards' main weakness is not in the northbridge but in the SB450 southbridge.
Yes, agreed - and that, and the RD580 is good all around.
You should have answered me. I would have cleaned up your awkward constructions and improved your grammar, as well as punching up the prose. Why couldn't your candidates have been honored with an email, even a massmarket message?
Who are you? ...and what are you talking about?
Perhaps this is an alternative to locking some engineers in rooms 24/7 and telling them to come out with something good or they're dead?
That's really cool actually. It doesn't surprise me at all.
Yes Sapphire has motherboards. I have the PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480. It unfortunately doesn't support Crossfire but I bought it for the looks and because its a very good overclocker. They also have the A9RD480Adv which supports Crossfire. They annouced their RD580 based boards yesterday.
Took a look over at Futuremark's Hall of Fame.
Until a while ago there were almost no CrossFire systems on the top ten of any of the lists.
Apparently with the release of the Xpress3200 X1900 CF systems started to take over the top systems - practically completely dominating 3DMark05's top results.
So congratulations ATI, you can finally claim enthusiast status for your products.
Agreed! The ASUS A8R32-MVP has me eyeing a mobo upgrade, but I think I'd better splurge for the X1900XT first ;) I'll be able to make up my mind once I see the slew of AM2 board benches in the next few weeks.
Yes Sapphire has motherboards. I have the PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480. It unfortunately doesn't support Crossfire but I bought it for the looks and because its a very good overclocker. They also have the A9RD480Adv which supports Crossfire. They annouced their RD580 based boards yesterday.
In my opinion the RD580 is a huge step up for Crossfire and a worthwhile upgrade for those with RD480.
Took a look over at Futuremark's Hall of Fame. Until a while ago there were almost no CrossFire systems on the top ten of any of the lists.
Apparently with the release of the Xpress3200 X1900 CF systems started to take over the top systems - practically completely dominating 3DMark05's top results.
Yeah, the boards are highly overclockable as well.
[rodney] said...
Agreed! The ASUS A8R32-MVP has me eyeing a mobo upgrade, but I think I'd better splurge for the X1900XT first ;) I'll be able to make up my mind once I see the slew of AM2 board benches in the next few weeks.
Try few months, but yes - it will be interesting.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1818789&enterthread=y
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1936577,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532
QUAD SLI! Take that Voodoo
Well not taking light away from ATI CF3200... but it took them a lot of time to get it rolling... NVIDIA got it right with NF4 (First AMD-PCIE Chipset from them) and we have seen so many posts regarding doing 300HTT and 400HTT over last year. So after studying all of it, ATI started tweaking the chipset specially to run at those speeds and beyond.. does not impress me much. Dec '04 NF4 SLI roled out Oct/Nov 05 CF rolled out.. speaks a lot about Nvidia's original capabilities.
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