Live from Taiwan: ATI RD580 Motherboards

Abit AT8-32X

Abit was showing their new RD580 chipset motherboard, called AT8-32X, at their Taiwan headquarters. Abit hopes this product, and future AM2 and Broadwater designs they were demonstrating, will fuel the revitalization of Abit. With USI as their new financial partner and many new designs on the way, Abit plans to return to their roots as an enthusiast motherboard maker.

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Like most other manufacturers of RD580 boards, Abit uses the ULi M1575 south bridge to provide support for 4 SATA2 3Gb/s ports and competitive USB performance. Abit is also using a heat-pipe passive cooling design on their new RD580 board. Abit tells us the RD580 chipset is very cool compared to competitors chipsets, allowing a much simpler and more effective silent cooling solution.

The Abit AT8-32X will also fully support the latest uGuru overclocking and system management features. Abit did not have a final price for the AT8-32X and the board will soon be released to production. The Abit AT8-32X will not be available for the March 1 launch, but should appear in the market in "several weeks".

Sapphire

While we did not have the opportunity to meet with Sapphire during our Taiwan visit, we did see their RD580 motherboard at CES. The Sapphire version is a virtual copy of the ATI Manta Reference design and is expected to mirror the performance and overclocking capabilities of the Reference board.

Sapphire officially launched the Sapphire RD580 on March 1. According to Sapphire marketing the Sapphire RD580 will start shipping March 20th. Their RD480 motherboard is widely available in Europe but took months to reach the US market and is still a limited availability item in the US. We hope their new RD580 board will be more widely available.