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  • flatblastard - Saturday, April 9, 2005 - link

    Hmmmm, still no real availability even now...Looks like MSI may be our only chance at this chipset....what as bummer :(
  • philpoe - Sunday, February 20, 2005 - link

    Hmmm, after no real availability (in the US at least) as of Friday 2/18/05, there's suddenly a slew of shops selling the MSI board on pricewatch, including Newegg. Anyone know of a reason why the boards are so slow to trickle out?
  • philpoe - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link

    Is it possible to purchase these reference boards? I seem to see them in retail-looking packages in reviews from Canada.
    If you can get your hands on one, are the BIOSes available to the public, or only to the select HW review sites?
  • Wesley Fink - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link

    PERFORMANCE WITH 4 DIMMS CORRECTED>

    We have added the following update to p.6:

    "UPDATE 11/11/2004: ATI has provided an updated BIOS which corrects the issues of 333 timings with 4 double-sided dimms. With the new BIOS we were able to run 4X512MB DS OCZ 3200 Platinum Rev.2 at 2-2-2-10 timings at DDR400 with a 2T Command Rate. This performance matches the best we have seen with 4 DS dimms on an Athlon 64 motherboard."
  • Momental - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link

    #35: I'm right there with ya, bud. Just when I "think" I've made up my mind to do the complete overhaul, the next exit appears on the highway taking me that much closer to the "Best Soft Serve in Town"!!

    The ol' gut tells me to hold out until some time just after the ball drops in Times Square and we'll all be in Fat City, so to speak. ;)
  • callius - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link

    Somewhat OT maybe:

    anyone seeing a reason that the next rev of A64 supporting SSE3 (in market Q1/05) coul not be plugged in a 939-mobo (nvid, ati or via) without problems (except any necessary BIOS update) ?

  • callius - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link

    Only minus vs nforce4 is that the SB does not support SATA-II's NCQ (for Seagate's upcoming 7200.8 series). Maybe with next SB in Q1/05 though ???
  • mlittl3 - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link

    Completely off topic, but does anyone know why there are four chipsets (two actively cooled, one passively cooled and the other with no cooling) in the SLI Tyan motherboard that #33 gave a link for?
  • xeper - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link

    i can't seem to find ANY mention whatsoever of shared memory allocation. can someone help me out here?
  • nserra - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link

    Isn’t this very funny, I mean Ati was a very close partner to Intel, and they now bring to intel its one competition product but for the intel competitor.

    I see now no reason for Dell or other companies go for intel, because really intel had (has) the edge with integrated solutions.

    A "part" I thought that there weren’t AMD IGP chipsets because it wasn’t possible to use the integrated memory controller for graphics, at least until AMD64 rev E0 came out?

    If ati is going amd on pcie first, these shows that amd have the best processor and will continue for the time been. Even dothan can do much to turn it around again to intel side. And i bet that new p4 2mb is still with problems (performance, heat, …) and every one is running away from intel because already know this even intel, bringing dothan to the desktop market.
  • ImJacksAmygdala - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Good job Wesley and Anandtech staff, very nice article! Thanks for answering all the questions Wesley...

    Things are really heating up for AMD64 chipsets... I might just have to wait for Q1 2005, but then dual core CPUs will be the rage of rumor and HL2 is right around the corner ARGH!!!!!!

    I might just bite the bullet and pull the trigger on an AMD64 3500+ with a Nforce4 or ATI chipset this holiday season because I really can't run HL2.... I cannot continue to wait for the next best thing. I have been waiting to upgrade since dual DDR was just a rumor... LOL!

  • xsilver - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Are these going to be shipping mainly for s754 or s939? I think determining factor will be price, cheaper than nforce 4 ultra? isnt that going to be $150+? I think they need to get closer to $100 for any serious challenges..
  • Penty - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    I don't know, I still want Tyan's new dual Opteron with dual SLI board.

    http://my.so-net.net.tw/brandon640410/NF41/004.JPG
  • Zebo - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Nice article. But I'm afraid, like the out-standing SiS ref board, these may never see light of day but in budget off brand products like ECS, FOXCONN, MATSONIC etc nVidia just seems to dominate the enthusiast sector.:(
  • Wesley Fink - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    #29 - A new Sounthbridge, called SB450, is due to debut the first of the year. It will feature High-Definition audio and other updates.

    RAID - Here is the reply from ATI regarding RAID on the Rx480/SB400:
    "Your Raid answers are as follows:

    Our Raid implementation will support up to 8 SATA devices. This is limited by ODM implementing appropriate amount of SATA channels on pcb.

    1) Currently SB400 supports RAID on SATA, not on IDE (PATA).

    2) IDE cannot be combined with SATA in RAID. Limited to SATA only.

    3) We only support RAID 0 and RAID 1.

    4) We do support hot swap for RAID 1. We can replace the failed hard disk and rebuild a new driver in RAID 1"

    The review will be updated.

  • keitaro - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Here's a hardware question for you folks. Given that SLI is becoming more and more of an option, I'd like to know if the scenerio I thought up can be possible. Also, a general question is "What can a HyperTransport link be used? Is it specifically a link from CPU to north/south-bridge or is it a general link for general access?"

    The above question will basically determine if the scenerio I thought of is possible. Basically have a HT link big enough for an additional chip where it supports additional PCI Express lanes for 1x, 2x, or 4x slots. I see current chipsets designed with 20 lanes, or in ATi's case 22 lanes, and it got me to wondering if such a scenerio is truly possible that a full dual 16x instead of dual 8x can be a reality. If you can explain or answer this, that'll be great.
  • mctmcpoop - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    The main problem of the ATI chipset will be the compatibility of south bridge ... Their south bridge sucks and that's why some of the RS350 motherboard use ULI south bridge instead of their solution ...

    http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-xpress...

    You can check with the USB performance ... That can be called the most worst that I have ever seen ... And we still do not know if there is any compatibility issue of the USB interface unless there is a lot of ATI chipset based retail board hit the market …

    And a preview board of chipset vendor is nothing important ... Where is the highly phrased SiS 755/755FX chipset based and good quality motherboard we can buy ? Sometimes there is something inside the chipset that we can reveal from the demo board if all the motherboard maker does not have the solution …

    Anyway , time will tell …
  • FinalFantasy - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    #27 I doubt ATI is doing that. If the mobo's that ship are noticealbe different (performance wise) from the one's ATI are sending out for review, I know that there will be a huge backlash from the hobbyist community and ATI knows this.
  • blckgrffn - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Is no one else suspicious that ATI shipped out hand picked, thouroughly tested MOBO's that may not be representative of shipping boards? I will wait until I see a review of boards using this chipset in the future before I make up my mind.
  • FinalFantasy - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Wow...ATI really stepped it up with their new chipset and integrated graphics solutions. This chipset should really give nVidia's NF4 a run for it's money. Also I agree w/#22...let's see some HDD performance benchies and what about an integrated software firewall or on-board RAID controller (article says similar to NF4's "Any-Drive")...how do these components compare to NF4's or does ATi's chipset even have them.

    I know I was skeptical about ATI coming out with an A64 chipset, but they've really gone above and beyond what I've expected with their "first" board. I am VERY impressed with their OC'ing performance.

    I don't want to say that this new chipset is the best thing since sliced bread (I'm sure nVidia has a response to ATI's chipset in the works), but when it comes time to buy my 90nm A64 rev E0, ATI looks like they might have my business/money/whatever the hell you want to call it ;D.
  • Maetryx - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Soooo.... given the products that are on the horizon, and the holiday season, would a person be best off waiting until Q1 2005 to do a fairly comprehensive upgrade to their system... or is the stiff holiday competition and Black Friday going to be the right time to do a massive upgrade?

    I know it's slightly off topic, but everytime I start to visualize the right combination of parts and pieces, something new gets announced with a future ship date.... Oh well, at least my expensive hobby is still exciting.
  • DAPUNISHER - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    #21

    I have the ATi320M in my Compaq 900z and it is good for what it is. The only thing ATi has had trouble with till now is the memory controller's performance and A64 takes that out of the mix so that ATi can really show what they can do :-) For instance,They paired a POS ALi with my 320M that makes the bandwidth, even for 2100DDR terrible. Don't know why they couldmn't use ATi's version? Must have been cheaper=par for the course.

  • DAPUNISHER - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    "As you can see, the Halo score for nVidia on nVidia is about the same as our past tests of ATI on ATI. nVidia on ATI is about 3% slower than the nVidia on nF4. Far Cry continues the pattern of best performance on an ATI chipset and/or an ATI graphics card. Doom 3 and Aquamark 3 are also very slightly slower on nVidia/ATI than nVidia/nVidia, but the % change of 2% to 3% is hardly significant.

    The ATI Bullhead is equivalent to slightly slower with an nVidia PCIe card than an nVidia nForce4 chipset running the same nVidia card. nVidia has claimed that nVidia on nVidia is a faster combination than ATI on nVidia, but we can only conclude that these performance differences are so small as to be negligible. ATI/ATI and nVidia/nVidia are the fastest combinations in our comparisons, but the differences are so tiny that they really don't matter. You can run any of these in combination with each other without any concern that you have to match Athlon 64 chipset to Graphics chipset."


    WOW! You can say that yet still push ram with tight timings despite similar small performance differences over slightly more conservatively timed but much cheaper ram?
  • landrew - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    What about sound and IDE performance? It seems you totaly ignored this! What about nVidia firewall and RAID? Does ATI do anything like that?

    I want ot know because I'll be buying an A64 soon and want the best motherboard.
  • mczak - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    "The RX480/RS480 is the first ATI chipset for AMD" - this is not true. IGP 320/320M was a chipset for Athlon XP, especially the mobile version was somewhat succesful.
  • jamawass - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Motherboards based on this chipset would be ideal for a cheap htpc. It would have been helpful if the reviewer had looked at video decoding performance for dvd and especially hdtv. Both the fusion gold hdtv and HDTV wonder require dx9 graphics.This forces a lot of people in the htpc community to purchase dx9 cards even though they don't game, just to improve hdtv performance.
  • Wesley Fink - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    #14 and #17 - If you check older reviews you will see that ATI and nVidia perform very differently in Specviewperf 7.1 benches. The performance we see here is nothing unusual.

    We were trying to establish baselines for both PCIe cards for the future and to compare to the past. Comparing ATI and nVidia performance with Specviewperf doesn't really tell you much. Comparing ATI to ATI in specviewperf or nVidia to nVidia can be useful.

    We will also be updating to Version 8 of Specviewperf for motherboard tests in the near future.
  • Wesley Fink - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    #2 - Corrected.

    #6 - We could have used the $1,020 3.46EE to compare to the $856 FX55, but the 3.6 P4 560 performs better in many benches. The 560 costs about $500 these days. As #14 said our goal was to compare top to top. We included the 560 for Reference. We did price/performance comparisons in our last CPU launch article.

    #10 - I agree with you. The mfgs don't think ATI when they think AMD chipset. IF they look at RX480 they will change their minds, but that is a big IF.

    #11 - We will do this in an upcoming nF4 retail review.

    #12 - Cool'n'Quiet appears to be working properly with 2 or 4 dimms, but we did not focus on that feature. We will ask ATI about question 2.

    #15 - ATI claims Gigabit PCI Express LAN is just as fast and just as cheap as on-chip Gigabit LAN. PCIe Gigabit LAN is fine, but PCI LAN can also be used with this chipset - an option the low-cost providers will probably exploit. Then again, some Tier 1 mfgs have been using PCI LAN with nForce3 Ultra to save costs.

    #16 - ATI tells us the RX480 will be cheaper than the top Nforce4 Ultra chipset and more expensive than the VIA K8T890 chipset. ATI wants to underscut nVidia prices but still be a premium compared to the cheaper VIA boards.

    ALL - some boards are already shipping. I have seen pics from Germany of a retail board exactly like the Bullhead except it is red. When we have more availability data we will post an update.
  • Ecmaster76 - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Anyone know what is up witht the benchmarks on page 15? They look a little strange.
  • knitecrow - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    what will make or break this product is the price.

    If mobo's based on the said chipsets are cheaper than nforce3/4 ... it can be a good budget overclocker.

    No frills, just performance.
  • Sahrin - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    I'm really excited to see another performance player in the AMD chipset market. Ironically, despite the fact that Intel is considered to have the best quality chipsets, the AMD segment has the most players and the most options. This chipset looks very good to me, especially as an overclocker, but I'm kind of left hanging in the feature set, which traditionally has been the determinant in the A64 market. Sure, 6 SATA ports is nice...etc. etc. but where's my dual integrated GigE LAN? I will take a long hard look at this chipset if SB450 comes out in time, but I think I will likely be going nForce one more generation.
  • SLIM - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    #6, of course you use an FX with the best gfx card available, he's trying to highlight small differences between chipsets. If you want P4 vs A64 look at a recent cpu review.

    However one large set of differences were the specviewperf benches? Huge differences when using ati/ati (some good and some bad) but no comments as to wtf is going on. Are those differences related to DX vs opengl, other driver issues, anybody know??
  • ipoh - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Onboard graphics use to be not good but changed since ATi comes out with RS350...and with this RS480 DX9 VGA will be definitely good

    Currently using my RS350 playing Doom3 and still looks good :)

    I will spend my money for more HDD :)
  • Ivo - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    With DX9 included, the integrated graphics (IG) of RS480 is good. First of all, with guaranteed future OS compatibility, it's very good for the OEM - for both business machines and home-office PCs. Secondly, as stated it the review, it is good enough for high-end 2D users because of the Surround View option. Third, it is a reasonable option for gamers too, as it could serve in emergency cases, when your high-end overclocked graphic card is tired ;-(

    The IG could be even more interesting for occasional gamers and even business users if, in a thinkable upcoming chipset, the IG is involved in a SLI scheme with one graphic card. In that case the IG will add it's modest 10% to 20% to the overall gaming performance (small, but from heart). This 10%-20% could be interesting for the real gamers too, if the IG is involved in a triple SLI scheme with two additional graphic cards.

    My questions to this great article are:
    1. What about the Cool 'N Quiet operation - does it work properly on the reference board with all (DIMM etc.) configurations used?
    2. What is ATI suggesting about the SidePort - why it is limited to 32 bit and 16MB only?
  • byvis - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    It's very impressive. But I have one minor question about the benchmarking. Why didn't you test Nforce4 + X800XT in Winstone and other benchmarks? I see, that you DID test RX480 + GF6800U and RX480 + X800XT. Maybe the margins are very small, but I'd like to see them, I think other people would like that too.
  • deathwalker - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    ATI might be right in the thick of it based on performance..however...from a marketing standpoint I think they will have a tough road to plow.
  • bearxor - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Sold
  • Jalf - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Onboard graphics makes perfect sense for non-gamers.
    If they can cram in something that works for normal desktop use, *and* can claim to support DirectX 9 as well, then it's a pretty good deal. It'll serve your needs under normal use, and it'll at least be able to run games, even if they might get an unplayable framerate.
  • DrDisconnect - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    I'm surprised that any of you are wondering why they are producing an integrated graphics versio. Haven't you taken a walk through any of the computer superstores lately? Entry level machines from HP etc. are using integrated graphics to hold prices down yet allow users to beef up their machines when they ahve some coin later on.

  • ranger203 - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    -1st of all, why does anandtech keep benchmarking AMD FX chips, sure they are the fastest hands down, but none of us are buying they. I.e. they are comparing apples to oranges, (FX vs. P4). They need to bench regular A64s!!!!

    -2nd, Onboard video still really sucks for gaming, but atleast they are making an effort, they should relize that $30 gaming cards are better quality than their onboard video and stop integrating it into their full size atx boards!!! Unless this was just a "show" board of ati's capability, then i could understand....
  • kogase - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Eh... I don't think the boards are kicking Intel's ass. A64 is.
  • fuzzynavel - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    I didn't realise that the nforce4 and ATI mobos...kicked intels ass so badly!! Not bad for a first attempt....just avoid the integrated graphics and it all looks sweet
  • Denial - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    This is nice and all, but I'm not uprading until dual cores are out. The difference between my home PC (P4 2.8) and office workstation (dual 2.66 xeons) is night and day. It's at the point that my home PC drives me nuts when one process brings everything else to a halt (all the more frustrating when it's something like explorer running amok). I've absolutely had it with single CPU's, no more!
  • VaultDweller - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    The tables on pages 10 and 11 both list Halo as the first benchmark, but the review text on page 10 refers to a 14.4% gain in 'Quake 3.' According to the table, that 14.4% was for Halo.
  • MAME - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    sweet

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