AM2 Motherboards-Part 4: ATI Crossfire Xpress 3200

SB600 and the Transitional SB460

The new ATI South Bridge SB600 was completely discussed and tested in the launch reviews for RD580 and the AMD Reference Board review. However, it is such an important part of making the ATI CrossFire 3200 competitive that it is worth detailing the SB600 features:

CPU Interface

• Supports the following Intel processors:
• Desktop: Pentium 4, Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition, Prescott, Celeron, Celeron D, Cedar Mill, Presler, Conroe, Allendale
• Mobile: Mobile Pentium 4, Pentium M, Mobile Prescott, Celeron M, Yonah, Yonah Celeron, Merom
• Supports the following AMD processors:
• Desktop: Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX, Sempron, Opteron, dual-core Opteron
• Mobile: Athlon XP-M, Mobile Athlon 64, Turion 64, Mobile Sempron

A-Link Xpress II interface to the Northbridge

• 1/2/4-lane A-Link Xpress II interface
• Dynamic detection of lane configuration
• High data transfer bandwidth

PCI Host Bus Controller

• Supports PCI rev. 2.3 specifications
• Supports PCI bus at 33 MHz
• Supports up to 6 master devices
• Supports 40-bit addressing
• Supports interrupt steering for Plug-n-Play devices
• Supports concurrent PCI operations
• Supports hiding of PCI devices by BIOS/hardware
• Supports spread spectrum

USB Controllers

• 5 OHCI and 1 EHCI Host controllers to support 10 USB ports
• All 10 ports are USB 1.1 ("Low Speed", "Full Speed") and 2.0 ("High Speed") compatible
• Supports ACPI S1~S5
• Supports legacy keyboard/mouse
• Supports USB debug port
• Supports port disable with individual control

SMBus Controller

• SMBus Rev. 2.0 compliant
• Supports SMBALERT # signal / GPIO

Interrupt Controller

• Supports IOAPIC/X-IO APIC mode for 24 channels of interrupts
• Supports 8259 legacy mode for 15 interrupts
• Supports programmable level/edge triggering on each channel
• Supports serial interrupt on quiet and continuous modes

DMA Controller

• Two cascaded 8237 DMA controllers
• Supports PC/PCI/DMA
• Supports LPC DMA
• Supports type F DMA

LPC host bus controller

• Supports LPC based super I/O and flash devices
• Supports two master/DMA devices
• Supports TPM version 1.1/1.2 devices for enhanced security
• Supports SPI devices

SATA II AHCI Controller

• Supports four SATA ports, complying with SATA 2.0 specifications
• Supports SATA II 3.0GHz PHY, with backward compatibility with 1.5GHz
• Supports RAID striping (RAID 0) across all 4 ports
• Supports RAID mirroring (RAID 1) across all 4 ports
• Supports RAID 10 (striping plus mirroring; 4 ports needed)
• Supports both AHCI mode and IDE mode
• Supports advanced power management with AHCI mode

IDE Controller

• Single PATA channel support
• Supports PIO, multi-word DMA, and Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 modes
• 32x32 byte buffers on each channel for buffering
• Swap bay support by tri-state IDE signals
• Supports Messages Signaled Interrupt (MSI)
• Integrated IDE series resistors

AC Link interface

• Support for both audio and modem Codecs
• Compliant with AC'97 codec Rev. 2.3
• 6/8 channel support on audio codec
• Multiple functions for audio and modem Codec operations
• Bus master logic
• Supports up to 3 codecs simultaneously
• Supports S/PDIF output
• Separate bus from the HD audio

HD Audio

• 4 independent output streams (DMA)
• 4 independent input streams (DMA)
• Up to 16 channels of audio output per stream
• Supports up to 4 codecs
• Up to 192kHz sample rate
• Up to 32-bits per sample
• Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) capability
• 64-bit addressing capability for MSI
• 64-bit addressing capability for DMA bus master
• Unified Audio Architecture (UAA) compatible
• HD Audio registers can be located anywhere in the 64-bit address space

Timers

• 8254-compatible timer
• Microsoft High Precision Event Timer (HPET)
• ACPI power management timer

RTC (Real Time Clock)

• 256-byte battery backed CMOS RAM
• Hardware supported century rollover
• RTC battery monitoring feature

Power Management

• ACPI specification 3.0 compliant power management schemes
• Supports C2, C3, C4
• Supports C1e and C3 pop-up (AMD platform only)
• Supports S0, S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5
• Supports SpeedStep^TM (Intel platform only)
• Full support for On-Now^TM
• Supports CPU SMM, generating SMI# signal upon power management events
• GPIO supports on external wake up events
• Supports CLKRUN# on PCI power management
• Provides clock generator and CPU STPCLK# control
• Hardware monitoring support
• Support for ASF

Hardware Monitor

• Supports 3 Independent Fan Control outputs
• Supports 4 thermal diode temperature sensing functions
• Supports 1 AMDSI function

Normally it is not worth the space to reprint feature information that is widely available elsewhere. However, we could not find SB600 and SB460 features available anywhere else and it took ATI several days to get the complete information to us. For those reasons it appeared worthwhile to provide as much detail as possible about the new ATI South Bridges.


SB460

You may also find lower cost boards based on the ATI chipsets that use SB460. SB460 is pin-compatible with SB600, meaning either chip can be used in the same design. This is an important consideration for manufacturers that will offer several motherboards based on the ATI chipsets.

SB460 is a low-power die-shrink of SB450. That means it only supports SATA1 hard drives and it still has the same issues with USB 2.0 performance that we have found in past SB450 reviews. The good news is manufacturers now have a lower cost (and lower performance) South Bridge to use with current ATI North Bridges - both CrossFire Xpress 3200 (RD580) and CrossFire Xpress 1600 (RD480).

CPU Interface

• Supports the Intel Pentium 4, Prescott, Mobile Pentium 4, Mobile Prescott, Banias, and Dothan processors
• Supports the AMD Sempron 64, Athlon 64, and Athlon 64 FX processors

A-Link Express interface to the RADEON IGPs

• 2 / 4-lane A-Link Express interface to RADEON IGPs
• High data transfer bandwidth

PCI Host Bus Controller

• Supports PCI bus at 33MHz
• PCI Rev. 2.3 specification support
• Supports up to 6 bus master devices
• Supports 40-bit addressing
• Interrupt steering supported for Plug-n-Play devices
• Concurrent PCI operation support

USB Controllers

• 2 OHCI and 1 EHCI Host controllers to support 8 USB 1.1/2.0 devices
• All 8 ports are USB 1.1 ("Low Speed", "Full Speed") and 2.0 ("High Speed") compatible
• ACPI S1 ~ S5 supported
• Legacy Keyboard/Mouse support

SMBus Controller

• SMBus Rev. 2.0 compliant
• Support SMBALERT # signal / GPIO

Interrupt Controller

• Supports IOAPIC/X-IO APIC mode for 24 channels of interrupts
• Supports 8259 legacy mode for 14 interrupts
• Supports programmable level/edge triggering on each channels
• Supports serial interrupt on quiet and continuous modes

DMA Controller

• Two cascaded 8237 DMA controllers
• Supports PC/PCI DMA
• Supports LPC DMA
• Supports type F DMA

LPC host bus controller

• Supports LPC based super I/O and flash devices
• Two Master/DMA devices supported
• Support for TPM version 1.2 devices for enhanced security

SATA Controller

• Supports four SATA ports, complying with the SATA 1.0 specification
• Speeds up to 1.5 GHz (150MB/s data throughput)
• Integrated Silicon Image^TM controller and PHY interface
• RAID Striping (RAID 0) support
• RAID Mirroring (RAID 1) support

IDE Controller

• Supports 1 (One) IDE controller (Primary Channel)
• Supports PIO, Multi-word DMA, and Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 modes.
• 32x32 byte buffers on each channel for buffering
• Swap bay support by tri-state IDE signals
• Supports Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI)
• Integrated IDE series resistor

AC Link interface

• Support for both audio and modem codecs
• Compliant with AC'97 codec Rev. 2.3
• 6 / 8 channel support on audio codec
• Multiple functions for audio and modem codec operation
• Bus master logic
• Up to 3 codecs are supported simultaneously
• Support S/PDIF output

HD Audio

• 4 Independent output streams (DMA)
• 4 Independent input streams (DMA)
• Up to 16 channels of audio output
• Up to 16 channels of audio input
• Support up to 4 codecs
• Up to 192kHz Sample Rate and 32-Bit Audio
• Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) capability
• 64-bit addressing capability for DMA Bus Master
• 64-bit addressing capability for MSI
• HD registers can be located anywhere in the 64-bit address space

Timers

• 8254 compatible timer
• Microsoft High Precision Event Timer (HPET)
• ACPI power management timer

RTC (Real Time Clock)

• 256-byte battery-backed CMOS RAM
• Hardware supported century rollover
• RTC battery monitoring feature

Power Management

• ACPI specification 2.0 compliant power management schemes
• Supports C2, C3, C4
• Supports S0, S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5
• Wakeup events for S1, S3, S4/S5 generated by:
• Any GEVENT pin
• Any GPM pin
• USB
• Power Button
• Internal RTC wakeup
• SMI# event
• Support for SpeedStep^TM
• Full support for On-Now
• CPU SMM support, generating SMI# signal upon power management events
• GPIO supports on external wake up events
• CLKRUN# supported on PCI power management
• Provides clock generator and CPU STPCLK# control