CrossFire Xpress 3200: RD580 for AM2
by Wesley Fink on June 1, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
ATI was late to the AMD chipset wars. When they arrived the market was already owned by NVIDIA. The early ATI Rx400 and Rx480 chipsets were promising, but they really didn't grab the attention of manufacturers and consumers. Finally in RD580, for both Socket 939 and AM2, ATI seems to have reached the level of maturity where their chipsets are providing the kind of compelling AMD performance that can't be ignored.
The only real roadblock from the past has been the ATI SB450 Southbridge, which with AM2 is finally replaced with the long-awaited and much improved SB600. It is also good that SB600 is just in time, since the ULi M1575 Southbridge most manufacturers used with 939 RD580 has been in shorter supply since NVIDIA bought ULi. We like the ULi Southbridge, but frankly the SB600 strikes us as better integrated. Everything about the RD580/SB600 combo worked very smoothly. The complete ATI chipset is a nice combination that provides enough features that there is no longer any reason to choose ULi instead.
The puzzle with ATI AM2 then, is why they couldn't capitalize on what appears on the surface to be a very strong position. When RD580 was launched several months ago, ATI told anyone who would listen that RD580 was also for AM2. ATI did not need to develop a new chipset for the new Socket AM2. Why then has it been so difficult for ATI to have AM2 chipsets ready for launch? It seems once again ATI has missed a golden opportunity while NVIDIA has their new 500 family chipsets coming at the market from all directions. Time will provide answers, but with such a short life for AM2 dominance before the launch of Conroe, we wonder why someone at ATI was not lighting fires.
ATI and NVIDIA are worthy competitors in the AM2 market. NVIDIA has added many new features, auto overclocking, some slick LAN features, and a few more bells and whistles, but in the end enthusiasts care about performance. Nothing NVIDIA has added really improves performance, and that is an important point. ATI has a superb overclocker in their CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2, even better than RD580 939, and the chipset has every option an enthusiast can dream of. NVIDIA also has readdressed the enthusiast in this round of nForce, with boards that perform just as well overall as the ATI. So which is better - ATI or NVIDIA AM2?
The answer depends on what you want in a motherboard. Both are excellent choices. If you really need killer LAN built-in then you may tilt to NVIDIA, which features two Gigabit LAN on-board that can be "teamed". Since you can't really utilize 1Gb on your broadest broadband connection you may find the feature is more about bragging rights, but it is there if that is an important concern in your buying decision. If you're new you might also choose the NVIDIA "LinkBoost" - overclocking for the common man - but just be aware that the items LinkBoost overclocks have almost no effect on performance at all. In fact, we find it just as easy to get great overclocks on the ATI leaving most choices at "Auto" as we do on the fanciest NVIDIA 590 chipset AM2.
On the other hand if you admire simplicity you may be attracted to the ATI AM2 chipset where the Northbridge controls both X16 PCIe video slots and there is no worry about the communication speed between the two chips used to provide the same capabilities to NVIDIA 590. We could not measure any real difference in our tests between ATI or NVIDIA, but we do know NVIDIA is combining their own chips into one for later this year. NVIDIA was very clear, however, that this was in the interest of economy and not performance. The ATI AM2 has all anyone needs and everything worked exactly as it should in our tests. The NVIDIA has more features, but most of them are of questionable usefulness to general desktop users.
In the end, if you want ATI CrossFire video you must choose ATI AM2 and if you want NVIDIA SLI you must choose NVIDIA nForce5. We hope that will change in the near future, but that is the current state. Whatever you choose you will win, by having a choice between two really excellent AM2 chipsets. For that reason alone we would tilt a bit to ATI. NVIDIA owns most of the AMD chipset market, and without choice features and prices tend to stagnate. We like having ATI and NVIDIA competing and providing compelling solutions for the new AM2 processors.
ATI was late to the AMD chipset wars. When they arrived the market was already owned by NVIDIA. The early ATI Rx400 and Rx480 chipsets were promising, but they really didn't grab the attention of manufacturers and consumers. Finally in RD580, for both Socket 939 and AM2, ATI seems to have reached the level of maturity where their chipsets are providing the kind of compelling AMD performance that can't be ignored.
The only real roadblock from the past has been the ATI SB450 Southbridge, which with AM2 is finally replaced with the long-awaited and much improved SB600. It is also good that SB600 is just in time, since the ULi M1575 Southbridge most manufacturers used with 939 RD580 has been in shorter supply since NVIDIA bought ULi. We like the ULi Southbridge, but frankly the SB600 strikes us as better integrated. Everything about the RD580/SB600 combo worked very smoothly. The complete ATI chipset is a nice combination that provides enough features that there is no longer any reason to choose ULi instead.
The puzzle with ATI AM2 then, is why they couldn't capitalize on what appears on the surface to be a very strong position. When RD580 was launched several months ago, ATI told anyone who would listen that RD580 was also for AM2. ATI did not need to develop a new chipset for the new Socket AM2. Why then has it been so difficult for ATI to have AM2 chipsets ready for launch? It seems once again ATI has missed a golden opportunity while NVIDIA has their new 500 family chipsets coming at the market from all directions. Time will provide answers, but with such a short life for AM2 dominance before the launch of Conroe, we wonder why someone at ATI was not lighting fires.
ATI and NVIDIA are worthy competitors in the AM2 market. NVIDIA has added many new features, auto overclocking, some slick LAN features, and a few more bells and whistles, but in the end enthusiasts care about performance. Nothing NVIDIA has added really improves performance, and that is an important point. ATI has a superb overclocker in their CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2, even better than RD580 939, and the chipset has every option an enthusiast can dream of. NVIDIA also has readdressed the enthusiast in this round of nForce, with boards that perform just as well overall as the ATI. So which is better - ATI or NVIDIA AM2?
The answer depends on what you want in a motherboard. Both are excellent choices. If you really need killer LAN built-in then you may tilt to NVIDIA, which features two Gigabit LAN on-board that can be "teamed". Since you can't really utilize 1Gb on your broadest broadband connection you may find the feature is more about bragging rights, but it is there if that is an important concern in your buying decision. If you're new you might also choose the NVIDIA "LinkBoost" - overclocking for the common man - but just be aware that the items LinkBoost overclocks have almost no effect on performance at all. In fact, we find it just as easy to get great overclocks on the ATI leaving most choices at "Auto" as we do on the fanciest NVIDIA 590 chipset AM2.
On the other hand if you admire simplicity you may be attracted to the ATI AM2 chipset where the Northbridge controls both X16 PCIe video slots and there is no worry about the communication speed between the two chips used to provide the same capabilities to NVIDIA 590. We could not measure any real difference in our tests between ATI or NVIDIA, but we do know NVIDIA is combining their own chips into one for later this year. NVIDIA was very clear, however, that this was in the interest of economy and not performance. The ATI AM2 has all anyone needs and everything worked exactly as it should in our tests. The NVIDIA has more features, but most of them are of questionable usefulness to general desktop users.
In the end, if you want ATI CrossFire video you must choose ATI AM2 and if you want NVIDIA SLI you must choose NVIDIA nForce5. We hope that will change in the near future, but that is the current state. Whatever you choose you will win, by having a choice between two really excellent AM2 chipsets. For that reason alone we would tilt a bit to ATI. NVIDIA owns most of the AMD chipset market, and without choice features and prices tend to stagnate. We like having ATI and NVIDIA competing and providing compelling solutions for the new AM2 processors.
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Gary Key - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
Wes's original hard drive met an untimely death during testing. However, the chart is incorrect as the Maxtor drive has a 16MB cache also and in our IPEAK tests the two drives are very comparable if not the same. We did not see any differences in the game scores and PCMark was off about 20 points, well within the margin of error for testing for this application.