CrossFire Xpress 3200: RD580 for AM2
by Wesley Fink on June 1, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
It will be several weeks until ATI AM2 retail motherboards are available. As a result ATI AM2 testing is confined to the ATI "Sturgeon" reference board. Somebody at ATI Engineering is apparently a fisherman, since all the recent ATI reference boards have carried fish names during development.
Whatever the reasons for ATI's delay in launching chipsets for retail ATI AM2 boards, ATI is not in a very good market position at AM2 launch. With the RD580 arriving months later than expected, at the end of socket 939 development, we really expected RD580 AM2 to be quickly out the gate. Instead NVIDIA has retail AM2 boards available from a host of manufacturers at AM2 launch and ATI is sampling a reference board.
As discussed in past reviews, reference boards are a breed apart. They are designed for manufacturer qualification, and rarely see the light of day in the retail market. The ATI reference boards are a bit different since Sapphire has marketed reference boards under their own brand name in the past. They are expected to do the same with Sturgeon.
Since the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 was designed for qualification, not much time will be spent on layout. Features, other than integrated chipset features, will not be an overriding concern. Additional features can be selected by manufacturers based on their intended market and price point.
Some notes from using the reference board. Loaded with X1900 CrossFire, there are still 2 usable PCIe x1 slots. However, there is no usable PCI slot if CrossFire is installed. Since users who spend over $1000 for video will likely want to use a standalone audio card, this would be a real issue in a retail board. Similarly, with CrossFire installed, the CMOS jumper is hidden under a video card with X1900 XT cards. ATI did users a great service in making dual-channel memory occupy alternate DIMM slots. This provides for much easier cooling of DDR2 DIMMs, which can become very hot when pushing for fastest memory timings.
Basic Features
Reference boards are used mainly for qualification and development by board partners. As a result you will generally see very extensive BIOS options that may or may not appear on retail motherboards. An option of particular interest is the DQS Signal Training option which replaces a wide range of manual DQS skewing options for both memory channels. This worked well in our testing, and made it much simpler to accomodate different memory on this board than the manual skewing controls seen on some other Enthusiast boards.
ATI has aimed their discrete chipset AMD boards squarely at the computer enthusiast. This clearly continues with the CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2. The range of options and features is the best so far on any ATI motherboard for AMD. This pays off in the tweaking options and performance of the new ATI RD580 AM2.
Whatever the reasons for ATI's delay in launching chipsets for retail ATI AM2 boards, ATI is not in a very good market position at AM2 launch. With the RD580 arriving months later than expected, at the end of socket 939 development, we really expected RD580 AM2 to be quickly out the gate. Instead NVIDIA has retail AM2 boards available from a host of manufacturers at AM2 launch and ATI is sampling a reference board.
As discussed in past reviews, reference boards are a breed apart. They are designed for manufacturer qualification, and rarely see the light of day in the retail market. The ATI reference boards are a bit different since Sapphire has marketed reference boards under their own brand name in the past. They are expected to do the same with Sturgeon.
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| Click to enlarge |
Since the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 was designed for qualification, not much time will be spent on layout. Features, other than integrated chipset features, will not be an overriding concern. Additional features can be selected by manufacturers based on their intended market and price point.
Some notes from using the reference board. Loaded with X1900 CrossFire, there are still 2 usable PCIe x1 slots. However, there is no usable PCI slot if CrossFire is installed. Since users who spend over $1000 for video will likely want to use a standalone audio card, this would be a real issue in a retail board. Similarly, with CrossFire installed, the CMOS jumper is hidden under a video card with X1900 XT cards. ATI did users a great service in making dual-channel memory occupy alternate DIMM slots. This provides for much easier cooling of DDR2 DIMMs, which can become very hot when pushing for fastest memory timings.
Basic Features
| ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 | |
| CPU Interface | Socket AM2 |
| Chipset | ATI RD580 Northbridge - ATI SB600 Southbridge |
| Bus Speeds | 200 to 400 in 1MHz Increments |
| Memory Speeds | DDR2 at 400, 533, 667, 800 |
| PCIe Speeds | 100 to 200 in 1MHz Increments |
| PCI/AGP | Fixed at 33/66 |
| Core Voltage | Auto, 0.8V to 1.45V in 0.025V increments |
| CPU PWM Level | 1 to 25 in 1 increments |
| VTT PWM Level | 0.807v to 1.149v in .007v to .014v increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | 4x-25x in 1X increments |
| DRAM Voltage | 1.541V to 2.804V in .05v increments |
| HyperTransport Frequency | 1000MHz (1GHz) (Stable in overclocking to 1500+ HT) |
| HyperTransport Multiplier | Auto, 1X to 5X |
| RD580 HT Drive Strength | Auto, Optimal |
| HT Receiver Comp. Ctrl | Auto, Optimal |
| RD580 HT PLL Speed | Auto, High Speed, Low Speed |
| Radeon Xpress (NB) Voltage | 1.143v, 1.201v, 1.260v, 1.299v, 1.348v, 1.406v, 1.455v, 1.504v |
| HT Link Voltage | 1.143v, 1.201v, 1.260v, 1.299v, 1.348v, 1.406v, 1.455v, 1.504v |
| PCIe 1.2 Voltage | 1.143v, 1.201v, 1.260v, 1.299v, 1.348v, 1.406v, 1.455v, 1.504v |
| SB Voltage | 1.143v, 1.201v, 1.260v, 1.299v, 1.348v, 1.406v, 1.455v, 1.504v |
| GFX1/2 (PCIe) Link Width | X16, X8, X4, X2, X1 |
| GFX and/or SB Payload | 64, 32, or 16 Bytes |
| GFX PCIe Link ASPM | Disabled, L0, L1, L0 & L1 |
| GPP PCIe Link ASPM | Disabled, L0, L1, L0 & L1 |
| GFX 0 and/or 1 Slot Power Limit | 0 to 255 watts in 1 watt increments |
| GPP Slot Power Limit | 0 to 255 watts in 1 watt increments |
| AHCP 2.0 (AMD Cool'n'Quiet) | Enabled, Disabled |
| DDR Drive Strength (N) and/or (P) | 0 to 8 in 1 increments |
| DQS Signal Training | Enabled, Disabled |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR2 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 4GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 2 PCIe X16 2 PCIe X1 1 PCI |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 4 SATA2 Drives by SB600 (RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 10, JBOD) PLUS 4 SATA Drives by 2 Silicon Image 3132 (RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD) |
| Onboard IDE/IDE RAID | One Standard ATA133/100/66 (2 drives) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 10 USB 2.0 ports supported by SB600 2 Firewire by VIA VT6307 |
| Onboard LAN | PCIe Gigabit by Marvel Yukon 88E8052 PHY |
| Onboard Audio | Azalia HD Audio by Realtek ALC880 codec |
| BIOS Revision | AMI Build 15 - May 30, 2006 |
Reference boards are used mainly for qualification and development by board partners. As a result you will generally see very extensive BIOS options that may or may not appear on retail motherboards. An option of particular interest is the DQS Signal Training option which replaces a wide range of manual DQS skewing options for both memory channels. This worked well in our testing, and made it much simpler to accomodate different memory on this board than the manual skewing controls seen on some other Enthusiast boards.
ATI has aimed their discrete chipset AMD boards squarely at the computer enthusiast. This clearly continues with the CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2. The range of options and features is the best so far on any ATI motherboard for AMD. This pays off in the tweaking options and performance of the new ATI RD580 AM2.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
And you thought LinkBoost was fast! ;)Typo fixed, thanks.
Stele - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
A main attraction of HD audio over AC'97 other than 100.1 setups is probably better sound quality. As such, perhaps Anandtech needs to develop a test method and/or utility with which to assess precisely this aspect of motherboards' sound subsystems. Low CPU utilisation is well and good but ultimately it's reaching the point where these figures are fairly meaningless, as this review underscored.Instead, besides just testing CPU utilisation, Anandtech could test/measure characteristics such as SNR ratio, THD at a reference frequency etc. at the output ports. The test can then be rounded off with subjective hearing tests through reference speakers or headphones, e.g. for irritating crossover noise from the mouse (A7N8X anyone?) or some other EMI source, and so on.
That way, we can judge if a motherboard manufacturer's implementation and motherboard design are sound (pun intended) because ultimately, it's about what you hear, not see; an 8.1 with terrific speakers, built in DTS/AC3/etc and other paper-spec niceties isn't going to cut it if the codec was, say, jammed right next to the CPU PWM controller with barely any grounding.
Gary Key - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
We are still debating our "subjective" results and comments for the audio section. However, at some point this summer we will expand our testing to include additional testing outside the CPU utilization and game results.
Stele - Friday, June 2, 2006 - link
Subjective is, understandably, subjective. Thus such results are bound to differ depending on the person assessing the product as well as the circumstances under which the test was done. IMHO, it should therefore only play a small part in the extended test, complementing the objective, measured figures which should play the dominant role in an extended audio test.Indeed, accurately measuring such performance characteristics (SNR, THD, no-signal background noise level) would probably be more useful because even if the subjective part of the test is completely left out, the figures would generally be a sufficient gauge of the quality of the components and implementation (circuit design, manufacture etc).
Having said that, the subjective opinions do give the review a human perspective and a broader picture which numbers alone may not fully convey - another good example being noise level measurements. Again, nice to have but won't be fatal without it.
Just my 2 cents' :)
Beenthere - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
...and you can be certain that production mobos will NOT perform as well as the reference mobo. Expect Asus to use a hack design, DFI to have a pretty good design less proper ports, Sapphire to not have a clue at copying the ATI reference mobo, Abit to talk shitza but not deliver, etc. and the prices will be sky high. Ya gotta wonder how much longer people are going to buy crap mobos just because they have a good chipset?Stele - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
Perhaps it's because there're aren't many seriously viable choices - if any - other than the 'crap mobo' brands you listed? The manufacturers know this too, and rest in the relative comfort of the knowledge that since no brand's perfect, buyers aren't likely to suddenly all jump ship in a hurry. They're probably expecting people to grumble and complain, as always, but buy from one of them anyway... as always.xsilver - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
Does ATI have license to product intel chipsets either now or in the future?or was their some exclusivity when nvidia made their cross licensing agreement?
Gary Key - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
ATI has been producing Intel compatible chipsets for a few years now and we should see a "RD580" type chipset for Conroe later this summer.
fzkl - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
Why are the setups using different hard drives? The ATI system has a 16MB buffer whereas the Nvidia system has an 8 MB buffer. Does that contribute to any performance difference?peternelson - Thursday, June 1, 2006 - link
I spotted that too. I imagine the HD might change the PCMark result.