ATI RD580: Dual x16 Crossfire Preview
by Wesley Fink on November 16, 2005 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Overclocking and Integrated Graphics
For the past year we have watched ATI evolve as a chipset maker for the AMD Enthusiast. Each subsequent chipset seems to get better and offer more options and features AMD hobbyists have asked for. So what's new for the Enthusiast on the RD580?First and foremost, the RD580 breaks the HTT barrier in overclocking. Overclockers are used to having to drop HTT to 3X or 600HTT for their highest overclocks because the limit on current AMD HTT is 1000. RD580 requires no drop in HTT for even the highest overclocks. We were able to achieve overclocks in excess of 300 with HTT set at 5X. Utilities which showed HTT frequency indicated we were actually running at greater than 1600 HTT at these settings.
It is clear ATI has found a way around the current AMD limitation of 1000HTT, which will be a breath of fresh air to those trying to squeeze the most performance from their Athlon 64 processor. So how well does RD580 overclock? We can't quote exact numbers, but we can tell you the RD580 BIOS has not yet been tweaked for memory compatibility or top memory performance. We also used our own known OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 dimms in testing since we are very familiar with how they perform. Even with the untweaked BIOS, we still reached overclocks even higher than the excellent performance of the Crossfire AMD Reference board! We can only speculate where this board might end up, but it is already a very exciting overclocker.
Integrated Graphics
Some may have noticed there is no small x in RD580, and they would rightly guess it means there is no Integrated Graphics version of the 580 chipset. RD580 will only exist as a Dual X16 chipset for discrete graphics.
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Calin - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Even if the CrossFire boards will be more expensive than the SLI boards, there could be enough reasons to buy one. After all, at $100 or $150, the mainboard has a small share of the total price of a new computer or total upgrade (mainboard, processor and video card). With the very good performance now ATI shows with their newest graphic cards, people could choose a ATI graphic card for some or other gaming reasons, and prefer a ATI board.I really hope to have more choice in the market, as this will drive down prices at all levels.
VERTIGGO - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
However, the price will drop, and we are talking about extreme high end equipment, which doesn't ultimately boil down to $50 advantages.Considering this generation with respect to the last, however, the most important advances are the bold moves into OpenGL territory, and remembering how the last generation panned out, ATi wound up with the best single cards in the end. This time around, I'm willing to wait and see if they can pull it off in the dual card arena.