ATI's Multi-GPU Solution: CrossFire

The Problematic South Bridge

While it's hardly talked about outside of Taiwan, ATI's South Bridge is quite buggy. The chip that is responsible for providing the motherboard's SATA and USB ports, as well as PCI slots is no where near final and many manufacturers are skeptical of ATI's ability to finish their own South Bridge in time. Note that ATI's own South Bridge does not support SATA-II or NCQ, regardless of actual bugs with the chip.



Luckily, ATI has partnered with ULi to offer working South Bridges that are compatible with ATI's CrossFire North Bridge. We've tested ULi's South Bridges and they seem to be problem-free, and our sentiments are echoed by many motherboard manufacturers who have decided to use ULi South Bridges with their ATI CrossFire motherboards.



However, ATI is pushing most of their partners to use ATI's own South Bridge despite its problems and is convinced that the problems will be sorted out in time. So a number of manufacturers at Computex are showing off CrossFire solutions with ATI's South Bridge, despite their complaints to us about the South Bridge.

At least this time around, it may be better for motherboard manufacturers to use ULi's South Bridge until ATI has had more time to get all of the kinks out of their solution. ULi's South Bridges have been in use for the past generation of ATI's chipsets, thanks to issues with ATI's South Bridges, and so far, we have not heard of any complaints.

ATI should be focused on the overall platform, not necessarily building up support for their South Bridge. Although, we do think that it is a bit embarrassing to have to turn to another chipset vendor to provide working South Bridges for your motherboard partners. It would be one thing if this were ATI's first chipset, but it most definitely is not.