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
ATI Bullhead Reference Board: Basic Features
ATI calls their new ATI RX480 Reference Board the "Bullhead", and it even carries a logo of a Bullhead fish on the motherboard.
The Bullhead is an extremely wide-ranging variety of fish related to channel catfish. There is probably a lot more to the story.
| ATI RS480 Reference Board Specifications | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | RS480/SB400 |
| Bus Speeds | 200MHz to 320MHz |
| PCI Express Speeds | PCIe FIX at 100MHz to 200MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| Core Voltage | 1.0V to 1.7V in 0.025V increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | 4X-25.5X in 0.5X increments |
| CPU Auto Tuning | Off to 15% in 1% increments |
| HyperTransport Frequency | 1000MHz (1GHz) |
| HyperTransport Multiplier | 1X, 2X, 4X, 5X |
| DRAM Voltage | 2.6V, 2.85V |
| AGP Voltage | None available on Reference Board |
| HyperTransport Voltage | None available on Reference Board |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 4GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 x16 PCIe Slot 3 x1 PCIe Slots 2 PCI Slots 1 Dedicated Communications Riser |
| Onboard SATA/SATA RAID | 4 Drives by SB400 (RAID 0, 1) |
| Onboard IDE/IDE RAID | Two Standard ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by SB400 2 Firewire 1394A by VIA VT6306 |
| Onboard LAN | 1Gigabit Ethernet by Realtek 8110S-32 |
| Onboard Audio | AC '97 2.3 8-Channel by Realtek ALC655 |
| BIOS Revision | AMI AMBU-B10 11/02/2004 |
The ATI Bullhead Reference Board is truly unique among the Reference boards that we have tested. Normally, the Reference Board is devoid of BIOS adjustments and overclocking controls that may later appear on boards designed with the Reference chipset. The ATI Bullhead, on the other hand, is loaded with a huge range of controls that will make any enthusiast happy. It is very clear that ATI's goal was to demonstrate, on the front end, that their new chipset for AMD Athlon 64 can hold its own against any competition in the market. Given the enthusiast orientation of some other chipsets for Athlon 64, this was a very smart move by ATI. While ATI is well-known in the OEM market, this attention to flexible ranges and useful overclocking controls announces to the market that ATI intends to be a serious player in the Athlon 64 enthusiast arena.
As a result of the attention that ATI has lavished on the Bullhead, we have the capabilities of testing the overclocking capabilities and memory stress testing that are normally not possible with a Reference design.
The ATI Bullhead is generally very well laid out - much better than we normally see in Reference boards. The power connectors are in the best position on board edges to ease power cable routing. The Hard Disks and SATA locations are reasonable. Even the floppy connector is in a better mid-board location instead of the bottom location that creates a challenge on many new boards. Manufacturers would do well to copy the ATI Bullhead Reference design. No board is perfect in layout, but the Bullhead is very easy to work with in most cases.
ATI also included a full range of IO ports on the Bullhead Reference board. Additional audio connectors are available on a port header in the dedicated CNR slot. The range of options and ports is unusually complete for a Reference board. Once again, the Reference design is worth copying by manufacturers. Perhaps ATI realized that without the chipset history of nVidia or VIA, they would have to work harder to get the market to take ATI seriously as a chipset option. One clever way to accomplish that is to deliver a Reference board that can be put into production by manufacturers without much, if any, redesign. It works for graphics cards, and it can certainly also work for motherboards.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
45 Comments
View All Comments
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.