ATI RD580: Dual x16 Crossfire Preview
by Wesley Fink on November 16, 2005 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Our Take
ATI's chipset Engineering team seem determined to take ATI chipsets to new levels to grab the attention of AMD hobbyists. They seem right on target, since the AMD market has been, and continues to be, driven by the computer enthusiast. Our preview of RD580 on the ATI Manta Reference board showed us some exciting developments are on the way from ATI. Dual x16 video capabilities in a single chip 44 PCIe lane package certainly performed extremely well compared to the just released Dual x16 from nVidia.The possibility of HTT ratio-free overclocking will also interest the real overclockers out there. Running over 300FSB with a 5X HTT multiplier with current Athlon64 chips seemed an impossibility until we saw it working for ourselves in RD580. We are also glad to see ATI continue their commitment to quality audio on the AMD platform with continued support for High Definition audio codecs. Audio is one area where ATI is clearly outperforming nVidia.
In the comparison of the RD580 Dual x16 motherboard with X1800XT Crossfire to Asus A8N32-SLI with 7800GTX Crossfire, X1800XT Crossfire won every benchmark. That means if RD580 and X1800XT Crossfire were shipping today the graphics war would be on and plenty hot. The reality, however, is that X1800XT Crossfire and X1800XT PE are "coming soon", while nVidia's offerings are available today. ATI RD580 will likely land in early to mid January. We also expect the nest generation ATI R580 GPU to land about the same time. ATI is also hard at work on Socket M2 offerings to be launched with that AMD socket.
Based on what we have seen in this RD580 preview, the worries at ATI right now are more about the present than the future. Future solutions look very competitive and exciting to the market. ATI seems to be caught in a release "Twilight Zone", but as they work their way through current release nightmares, the future looks as if it could be very bright again for ATI. Certainly the upcoming RD580 Dual x16 chipset, X1800XT Crossfire, and X1800XT PE look more than competitive. Add to that R580 is just around the corner and it looks as if ATI has the goods coming to erase the last nine months of disappointment
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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.