Live from Taiwan: ATI RD580 Motherboards

Bottom Line

ATI seemed to turn the corner in having product available at launch with their recent introduction of the X1900XT chipset video cards. Our conversations with Taiwan motherboard manufacturers in late February clearly showed that today's launch of the RD580 chipset will also be accompanied by retail products you can actually buy. It is good to see that ATI is finally able to consistently deliver product at launch. They seem to have turned the corner from the paper launches of 2005.

With the introduction of RD580 ATI has a single-chip dual x16 PCIe Corssfire solution to compete with nVidia's top-of-the-line dual x16 PCIe chipset. With a competitive chipset, the fastest current video card in the X1900XT, and the end of paper launches, ATI has had a great start to 2006. The ATI position is further enhanced by the fact that the ATI RD580 is fully compatible with the upcoming AMD AM2 processors alted for relese late in the second quarter.

The Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe will be widely available for purchase today. Street prices are targeted to provide good value in a dual x16 PCIe chipset, with a selling price lower than the nVidia dual X16 A8N32-SLI. The DFI RD580 will follow in 10 days to a week, the Sapphire ships March 20th, and the Abit AT8-32X arrives later in March.

In addition to the Socket 939 RD580 boards, motherboard manufacturers were shpowing a number of AM2 designs based on the ATI RD580 chipset. Many of these prototypes and working models will be on display at Cebit in a couple of weeks. Since RD580 was designed to support AM2 as well as Socket 939 you will see more manufacturers offering the RD580 chipset when AM2 launches in about 3 months.