ATI Radeon Xpress 200: Performance, PCI Express & DX9 for Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on November 8, 2004 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
ATI Bullhead Reference Board: Basic Features
ATI calls their new ATI RX480 Reference Board the "Bullhead", and it even carries a logo of a Bullhead fish on the motherboard.
The Bullhead is an extremely wide-ranging variety of fish related to channel catfish. There is probably a lot more to the story.
| ATI RS480 Reference Board Specifications | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | RS480/SB400 |
| Bus Speeds | 200MHz to 320MHz |
| PCI Express Speeds | PCIe FIX at 100MHz to 200MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| Core Voltage | 1.0V to 1.7V in 0.025V increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | 4X-25.5X in 0.5X increments |
| CPU Auto Tuning | Off to 15% in 1% increments |
| HyperTransport Frequency | 1000MHz (1GHz) |
| HyperTransport Multiplier | 1X, 2X, 4X, 5X |
| DRAM Voltage | 2.6V, 2.85V |
| AGP Voltage | None available on Reference Board |
| HyperTransport Voltage | None available on Reference Board |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 4GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 x16 PCIe Slot 3 x1 PCIe Slots 2 PCI Slots 1 Dedicated Communications Riser |
| Onboard SATA/SATA RAID | 4 Drives by SB400 (RAID 0, 1) |
| Onboard IDE/IDE RAID | Two Standard ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by SB400 2 Firewire 1394A by VIA VT6306 |
| Onboard LAN | 1Gigabit Ethernet by Realtek 8110S-32 |
| Onboard Audio | AC '97 2.3 8-Channel by Realtek ALC655 |
| BIOS Revision | AMI AMBU-B10 11/02/2004 |
The ATI Bullhead Reference Board is truly unique among the Reference boards that we have tested. Normally, the Reference Board is devoid of BIOS adjustments and overclocking controls that may later appear on boards designed with the Reference chipset. The ATI Bullhead, on the other hand, is loaded with a huge range of controls that will make any enthusiast happy. It is very clear that ATI's goal was to demonstrate, on the front end, that their new chipset for AMD Athlon 64 can hold its own against any competition in the market. Given the enthusiast orientation of some other chipsets for Athlon 64, this was a very smart move by ATI. While ATI is well-known in the OEM market, this attention to flexible ranges and useful overclocking controls announces to the market that ATI intends to be a serious player in the Athlon 64 enthusiast arena.
As a result of the attention that ATI has lavished on the Bullhead, we have the capabilities of testing the overclocking capabilities and memory stress testing that are normally not possible with a Reference design.
The ATI Bullhead is generally very well laid out - much better than we normally see in Reference boards. The power connectors are in the best position on board edges to ease power cable routing. The Hard Disks and SATA locations are reasonable. Even the floppy connector is in a better mid-board location instead of the bottom location that creates a challenge on many new boards. Manufacturers would do well to copy the ATI Bullhead Reference design. No board is perfect in layout, but the Bullhead is very easy to work with in most cases.
ATI also included a full range of IO ports on the Bullhead Reference board. Additional audio connectors are available on a port header in the dedicated CNR slot. The range of options and ports is unusually complete for a Reference board. Once again, the Reference design is worth copying by manufacturers. Perhaps ATI realized that without the chipset history of nVidia or VIA, they would have to work harder to get the market to take ATI seriously as a chipset option. One clever way to accomplish that is to deliver a Reference board that can be put into production by manufacturers without much, if any, redesign. It works for graphics cards, and it can certainly also work for motherboards.
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flatblastard - Saturday, April 9, 2005 - link
Hmmmm, still no real availability even now...Looks like MSI may be our only chance at this chipset....what as bummer :(philpoe - Sunday, February 20, 2005 - link
Hmmm, after no real availability (in the US at least) as of Friday 2/18/05, there's suddenly a slew of shops selling the MSI board on pricewatch, including Newegg. Anyone know of a reason why the boards are so slow to trickle out?philpoe - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
Is it possible to purchase these reference boards? I seem to see them in retail-looking packages in reviews from Canada.If you can get your hands on one, are the BIOSes available to the public, or only to the select HW review sites?
Wesley Fink - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
PERFORMANCE WITH 4 DIMMS CORRECTED>We have added the following update to p.6:
"UPDATE 11/11/2004: ATI has provided an updated BIOS which corrects the issues of 333 timings with 4 double-sided dimms. With the new BIOS we were able to run 4X512MB DS OCZ 3200 Platinum Rev.2 at 2-2-2-10 timings at DDR400 with a 2T Command Rate. This performance matches the best we have seen with 4 DS dimms on an Athlon 64 motherboard."
Momental - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
#35: I'm right there with ya, bud. Just when I "think" I've made up my mind to do the complete overhaul, the next exit appears on the highway taking me that much closer to the "Best Soft Serve in Town"!!The ol' gut tells me to hold out until some time just after the ball drops in Times Square and we'll all be in Fat City, so to speak. ;)
callius - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link
Somewhat OT maybe:anyone seeing a reason that the next rev of A64 supporting SSE3 (in market Q1/05) coul not be plugged in a 939-mobo (nvid, ati or via) without problems (except any necessary BIOS update) ?
callius - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link
Only minus vs nforce4 is that the SB does not support SATA-II's NCQ (for Seagate's upcoming 7200.8 series). Maybe with next SB in Q1/05 though ???mlittl3 - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link
Completely off topic, but does anyone know why there are four chipsets (two actively cooled, one passively cooled and the other with no cooling) in the SLI Tyan motherboard that #33 gave a link for?xeper - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link
i can't seem to find ANY mention whatsoever of shared memory allocation. can someone help me out here?nserra - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link
Isn’t this very funny, I mean Ati was a very close partner to Intel, and they now bring to intel its one competition product but for the intel competitor.I see now no reason for Dell or other companies go for intel, because really intel had (has) the edge with integrated solutions.
A "part" I thought that there weren’t AMD IGP chipsets because it wasn’t possible to use the integrated memory controller for graphics, at least until AMD64 rev E0 came out?
If ati is going amd on pcie first, these shows that amd have the best processor and will continue for the time been. Even dothan can do much to turn it around again to intel side. And i bet that new p4 2mb is still with problems (performance, heat, …) and every one is running away from intel because already know this even intel, bringing dothan to the desktop market.