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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Saist - Friday, June 2, 2006 - link
to quote"short life for AM2 dominance before the launch of Conroe"
Um. Anandtech, if you actually do believe that Conroe's performance numbers are going to hold up in multithreaded applications that exceed 4megabytes of cache data, I think you need to redo you're calculations. After intel's showing of Conroe behind closed doors during E3, I think you should also be aware that the performance numbers are not adding up. Intel might finally be competitive, but even when Intel chips have been competitive in the past, AMD chips have won on price. AM2 may not be the only game in town come this fall, but to say it has a short life? Makes me wonder if you actually bothered even asking the game developers what they are getting out of the processors.
JarredWalton - Friday, June 2, 2006 - link
...multithreaded applications that exceed 4megabytes of cache data..."We believe in real world testing. I'm sure there will be applicaitons where AMD still comes out ahead, but synthetic scenarios don't really count. If http://techreport.com/etc/2006q2/woodcrest/index.x...">Intel wins in encoding tests, 3D rendering, gaming, office... and loses in a few specific benchmarks that require lots of memory and low latency RAM access, does it really mean AMD is competitive? I mean, there are still a few specific scenarios where P4 can beat A64, but you don't see us trumpeting those as being representative.
What it comes down to is what most people will get out of each platform, and so far it's looking like a pretty clean sweep for Core Duo 2. Woodcrest vs. Opteron in HPC applications might be a different story (I doubt it), but that's really only relevant if you're running server workloads. As far as pricing, http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/1556_large_conr...">last I saw the $300+ prices of dual core AMD chips are going to have a difficult time competing with $185-$225 Intel chips. Overclocks are also looking promising as well, so a $185 chip running 2.8 GHz will be a force to be reconned with.
R3MF - Friday, June 2, 2006 - link
can you tell me the what and the when of this amzing revelation?Slaimus - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
You can run CrossFire on 975X as well. It should be a competitive platform once the new CPUs come out.
Axbattler - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
Umm, the article made no mention of the Sil3132 performance on the A8R32-MVP, which I believe is bugged.Trisped - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2767&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2767&am...First chart, #1 is the Silicon Image 3132 SATA2 (ATI) performance rating.
Axbattler - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
I saw that. But if you look at the second graph, the performance of the Sil 3132 in the MSI board is considerably worse than in the ATI reference board.That is still quite usable, but the one from the Asus A8R32-MVP is basically unusable (slower than what modern drives are capable).
Wesley Fink - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
We retested Sil3132 on the ATI and some other controllers for this review, and the other 3132 data should have been deleted. Now corrected. We are not aware of the 3132 issue with the A8R32-MVP. The Sil3132 is one of the best SATA2 controllers on the market, and it is a much better performer than the Sil3114.Axbattler - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
The result does shown in the review does suggest a solid performance from the Sil3132 controller. However, this is what I have been experiencing:- http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burst4dh....">http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burst4dh.... (Sil controller)
- http://img71.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burst27ja....">http://img71.imageshack.us/my.php?image=burst27ja.... (ULi controller)
Two motherboard bioses were tested (0311, 0404), as well as all the drivers from 1.0.9.0 (bundled with the motherboard installation CD, to the latest 1.0.16.0
The poor HDTach performance is reflected in real world application too, gaming loading, file copying are all slowed down to horrendous level.
I believe that Gary was able to replicate this issue (not sure if he eventually found a way around it), although I suppose that based on the result of the other board, it is an issue specific Asus board (perhaps the A8R32-MVP). Is there any chance you could run a test to confirm this?
Very few people in forums that I've visited use the Sil controller, perhaps due to the positioning of the SATA socket (which is actually optimal to where my Raptor is installed: on a 5.25" drive bay).
Trisped - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
ATI AM2.jpg is a bit blurry when blown up. You might want to set the camera on the highest quality setting so that doesn’t happen.0X looks like a typo
Why did the Audio Performance charts not have any NVIDIA solutions?