CrossFire Xpress 3200: RD580 for AM2
by Wesley Fink on June 1, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Overclocking
The initial reference BIOS supplied by ATI was plagued with several issues that limited overclocking. Since RD580 is known to be an excellent overclocker, ATI looked into the issues and supplied a new 5/30/2006 BIOS which corrected the timing issues that had limited overclocking in the first BIOS.
With the Build 15 BIOS, the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 is an outstanding overclocker - the best we have seen at both stock and reduced multiplier overclocking. We made no attempt to maintain memory speed, but instead selected memory ratios that would allow the Corsair test memory to run at the optimal 3-3-3 timings at around DDR2-800. With the DDR2 memory controller on the processor with the AMD AM2, ratios should not really carry performance penalties as they do on chipset based memory controllers.
No attempt was made to run at x8 or x7 multipliers, which theoretically could yield 380x8 or 400 (highest bus speed option) x7 if the processor speed could be maintained. ATI was absolutely correct in their assessment of our early BIOS bug issues. Overclocking with the updated Build 15 BIOS was effortless, with almost no special OC skills required. Most settings were left on auto, except for a slight boost in HTT voltage and a drop to 4X HT. 5x HTT reached to just over 1500 HTT (302) before requiring a drop to 4x. In all cases base memory speed was reduced to a setting that would yield somewhere around DDR2-800 at OC and timings were left at 3-3-3-13 at 2.147v. We did not even need to boost processor voltage until we reached just over 3.0GHz. The AM2 CPU handled the 3.0 GHz speed at stock voltage. These overclocking results are superb.
Power Usage
It has been reported that the ATI RD580 chipset consumes up to 40 watts less power than the feature-comparable nForce590. We attempted to verify these results with our standard Model P4400 Kill-a-watt meter. The Kill-a-watt plugs into the wall and measures wattage of the entire system. We compared near identically configured Foxconn NVIDIA 590 and ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 systems at idle and under stress.
While the ATI system used less power at idle and when stressed, we could not match the 40W difference some others have reported. We did find the ATI system a bit more power efficient running the NVIDIA 7900GTX or the ATI X1900 XT. Even full CrossFire X1900 XT consumed less power in the ATI AM2 board than NVIDIA SLI 7900GTX required in the NVIDIA 590 board.
Power consumption goes up dramatically during overclocking. At the standard 12X multiplier and 255 clock speed (3.06GHz), running X1900 XT Crossfire, power consumption measured over 500 Watts during load conditions. Whether SLI or Crossfire, ATI or NVIDIA, please keep in mind that two top video cards and overclocking require tremendous amounts of power for stable operation.
| ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 Overclocking Testbed |
|
| Processor: | AM2 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz, 1MB Cache per core) |
| CPU Voltage: | 1.4V (default 1.3V) |
| Cooling: | AMD Stock Heatpipe FX62 Cooler |
| Power Supply: | OCZ Power Stream 520W |
| Memory: | Corsair Twin2x2048-PC2-8500C5 (2x1GB) (Micron Memory Chips) 2 DIMMs in dual-channel mode |
| Hard Drive: | Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM SATA2 8MB Cache |
| Maximum OC: (Standard Ratio) |
255x12 (5x HT, 3-3-3-13) 3060MHz (+28% CPU Overclock) |
| Maximum FSB: (Lower Ratio) |
338 x 9 (4x HT, 3-3-3-13) 3042MHz (+69% Bus Overclock) |
The initial reference BIOS supplied by ATI was plagued with several issues that limited overclocking. Since RD580 is known to be an excellent overclocker, ATI looked into the issues and supplied a new 5/30/2006 BIOS which corrected the timing issues that had limited overclocking in the first BIOS.
With the Build 15 BIOS, the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 is an outstanding overclocker - the best we have seen at both stock and reduced multiplier overclocking. We made no attempt to maintain memory speed, but instead selected memory ratios that would allow the Corsair test memory to run at the optimal 3-3-3 timings at around DDR2-800. With the DDR2 memory controller on the processor with the AMD AM2, ratios should not really carry performance penalties as they do on chipset based memory controllers.
No attempt was made to run at x8 or x7 multipliers, which theoretically could yield 380x8 or 400 (highest bus speed option) x7 if the processor speed could be maintained. ATI was absolutely correct in their assessment of our early BIOS bug issues. Overclocking with the updated Build 15 BIOS was effortless, with almost no special OC skills required. Most settings were left on auto, except for a slight boost in HTT voltage and a drop to 4X HT. 5x HTT reached to just over 1500 HTT (302) before requiring a drop to 4x. In all cases base memory speed was reduced to a setting that would yield somewhere around DDR2-800 at OC and timings were left at 3-3-3-13 at 2.147v. We did not even need to boost processor voltage until we reached just over 3.0GHz. The AM2 CPU handled the 3.0 GHz speed at stock voltage. These overclocking results are superb.
Power Usage
It has been reported that the ATI RD580 chipset consumes up to 40 watts less power than the feature-comparable nForce590. We attempted to verify these results with our standard Model P4400 Kill-a-watt meter. The Kill-a-watt plugs into the wall and measures wattage of the entire system. We compared near identically configured Foxconn NVIDIA 590 and ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 systems at idle and under stress.
While the ATI system used less power at idle and when stressed, we could not match the 40W difference some others have reported. We did find the ATI system a bit more power efficient running the NVIDIA 7900GTX or the ATI X1900 XT. Even full CrossFire X1900 XT consumed less power in the ATI AM2 board than NVIDIA SLI 7900GTX required in the NVIDIA 590 board.
Power consumption goes up dramatically during overclocking. At the standard 12X multiplier and 255 clock speed (3.06GHz), running X1900 XT Crossfire, power consumption measured over 500 Watts during load conditions. Whether SLI or Crossfire, ATI or NVIDIA, please keep in mind that two top video cards and overclocking require tremendous amounts of power for stable operation.
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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.