ATI Radeon Xpress 200: Performance, PCI Express & DX9 for Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on November 8, 2004 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Radeon Xpress Family
The RX480/RS480 is the first ATI chipset for AMD. It is also the first ATI chipset available as a discrete chipset. Previous ATI chipsets have concentrated on integrated graphics for the Intel platform.
While the previous ATI chipsets brought interesting integrated graphics to the Intel platform, the performance never really threatened Intel's domination of the Pentium 4 chipset market. Without truly competitive performance as a chipset, there was no real reason for a discrete ATI chipset solution for Intel, although each generation of the ATI chipset for Intel brought more competitive performance. ATI firmly believes that RX480 for Athlon 64 has broken through the performance barrier, bringing competitive or better performance to Athlon 64.
To understand the current ATI lineup better, you need to take a closer look at how they will be branded and sold.
Radeon Xpress is ATI's name for the new PCI Express chipsets. The 480 series is aimed at AMD Athlon 64 and the future 400 series will bring ATI PCI Express to Intel. The current introduction is the A64 chipsets, with the chipsets for Intel targeted for the beginning of 2005. ATI believes clearly that there is a better market for AMD A64 solutions right now, which is why they have concentrated on the chipsets for AMD.
RX480 and RS480 are identical except for integrated graphics. RX480, called Radeon Xpress 200P, is the discrete Athlon 64 solution for PCI Express graphics cards. RS480, marketed as Radeon Xpress 200G, adds integrated DX 9 graphics to the 480 core. Both RX480 and RS480 are currently combined with the SB400 Southbridge.
The RX480/RS480 Northbridge supports dual or single channel DDR memory, PCI Express x16 for graphics, and up to 4 PCIe x1 slots. It is interesting that communication between North and South bridges (RX480/SB400) is handled by 2 additional lanes of PCI Express. This bring the total PCI Express lanes to 22. Communication with the CPU is available over a 1GHz (1000MHz) Hyper Transport. RS480 adds integrated DX9 graphics with both VGA and DVI outputs.
The current SB400 south bridge supports 8 USB 2.0 ports, 4 SATA 150 drives, 4 ATA-133 drives, PCI 8-channel AC '97 audio, and up to 5 PCI slots. SATA drives can be combined in RAID 0 and 1 configurations, but RAID 0+1 is not currently supported. The 2-chip design allows ATI to upgrade features just by using a new Southbridge. For instance, an SB450 Southbridge supporting High Definition audio appears on the ATI roadmaps. The SB450 should be available in early 2005.
Optional Integrated Graphics - Radeon Express 200G adds ATI's first DirectX 9 integrated graphics, which can be supported by both DVI (digital) and VGA (analog) outputs. The graphics core is a modified version of the discrete Radeon X300 core with only two rendering pipelines instead of four. Since the logic core is identical on RX480 and RS480, PCIe x16 support is also available. Graphics outputs from both internal and external graphics can be combined in ATI SurroundView.
LAN - The Radeon Express 200 series does not provide integrated LAN in the chipset. ATI claims that integrated Gigabit LAN offers no performance or cost advantage compared to Gigabit LAN supported by the PCI Express bus. PCI Express Gigabit LAN can deliver bi-directional 500MB/s total bandwidth per device. Gigabit or 10/100 Ethernet can be supported by the Northbridge PCI Express bus or the Southbridge PCI bus. This should allow manufacturers the option to implement LAN for top performance or for lowest cost.
SLI - ATI claims that this PCI Express 20-lane design is capable of supporting dual PCIe x8 slots for combining 2 graphics cards in an SLI configuration. Plans are already in place at ATI for an SLI version of RX480 to be introduced in early 2005.
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Maetryx - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
Soooo.... given the products that are on the horizon, and the holiday season, would a person be best off waiting until Q1 2005 to do a fairly comprehensive upgrade to their system... or is the stiff holiday competition and Black Friday going to be the right time to do a massive upgrade?I know it's slightly off topic, but everytime I start to visualize the right combination of parts and pieces, something new gets announced with a future ship date.... Oh well, at least my expensive hobby is still exciting.
DAPUNISHER - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
#21I have the ATi320M in my Compaq 900z and it is good for what it is. The only thing ATi has had trouble with till now is the memory controller's performance and A64 takes that out of the mix so that ATi can really show what they can do :-) For instance,They paired a POS ALi with my 320M that makes the bandwidth, even for 2100DDR terrible. Don't know why they couldmn't use ATi's version? Must have been cheaper=par for the course.
DAPUNISHER - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
"As you can see, the Halo score for nVidia on nVidia is about the same as our past tests of ATI on ATI. nVidia on ATI is about 3% slower than the nVidia on nF4. Far Cry continues the pattern of best performance on an ATI chipset and/or an ATI graphics card. Doom 3 and Aquamark 3 are also very slightly slower on nVidia/ATI than nVidia/nVidia, but the % change of 2% to 3% is hardly significant.The ATI Bullhead is equivalent to slightly slower with an nVidia PCIe card than an nVidia nForce4 chipset running the same nVidia card. nVidia has claimed that nVidia on nVidia is a faster combination than ATI on nVidia, but we can only conclude that these performance differences are so small as to be negligible. ATI/ATI and nVidia/nVidia are the fastest combinations in our comparisons, but the differences are so tiny that they really don't matter. You can run any of these in combination with each other without any concern that you have to match Athlon 64 chipset to Graphics chipset."
WOW! You can say that yet still push ram with tight timings despite similar small performance differences over slightly more conservatively timed but much cheaper ram?
landrew - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
What about sound and IDE performance? It seems you totaly ignored this! What about nVidia firewall and RAID? Does ATI do anything like that?I want ot know because I'll be buying an A64 soon and want the best motherboard.
mczak - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
"The RX480/RS480 is the first ATI chipset for AMD" - this is not true. IGP 320/320M was a chipset for Athlon XP, especially the mobile version was somewhat succesful.jamawass - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
Motherboards based on this chipset would be ideal for a cheap htpc. It would have been helpful if the reviewer had looked at video decoding performance for dvd and especially hdtv. Both the fusion gold hdtv and HDTV wonder require dx9 graphics.This forces a lot of people in the htpc community to purchase dx9 cards even though they don't game, just to improve hdtv performance.Wesley Fink - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
#14 and #17 - If you check older reviews you will see that ATI and nVidia perform very differently in Specviewperf 7.1 benches. The performance we see here is nothing unusual.We were trying to establish baselines for both PCIe cards for the future and to compare to the past. Comparing ATI and nVidia performance with Specviewperf doesn't really tell you much. Comparing ATI to ATI in specviewperf or nVidia to nVidia can be useful.
We will also be updating to Version 8 of Specviewperf for motherboard tests in the near future.
Wesley Fink - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
#2 - Corrected.#6 - We could have used the $1,020 3.46EE to compare to the $856 FX55, but the 3.6 P4 560 performs better in many benches. The 560 costs about $500 these days. As #14 said our goal was to compare top to top. We included the 560 for Reference. We did price/performance comparisons in our last CPU launch article.
#10 - I agree with you. The mfgs don't think ATI when they think AMD chipset. IF they look at RX480 they will change their minds, but that is a big IF.
#11 - We will do this in an upcoming nF4 retail review.
#12 - Cool'n'Quiet appears to be working properly with 2 or 4 dimms, but we did not focus on that feature. We will ask ATI about question 2.
#15 - ATI claims Gigabit PCI Express LAN is just as fast and just as cheap as on-chip Gigabit LAN. PCIe Gigabit LAN is fine, but PCI LAN can also be used with this chipset - an option the low-cost providers will probably exploit. Then again, some Tier 1 mfgs have been using PCI LAN with nForce3 Ultra to save costs.
#16 - ATI tells us the RX480 will be cheaper than the top Nforce4 Ultra chipset and more expensive than the VIA K8T890 chipset. ATI wants to underscut nVidia prices but still be a premium compared to the cheaper VIA boards.
ALL - some boards are already shipping. I have seen pics from Germany of a retail board exactly like the Bullhead except it is red. When we have more availability data we will post an update.
Ecmaster76 - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
Anyone know what is up witht the benchmarks on page 15? They look a little strange.knitecrow - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
what will make or break this product is the price.If mobo's based on the said chipsets are cheaper than nforce3/4 ... it can be a good budget overclocker.
No frills, just performance.