Abit AT8: µGuru comes to the RD480
by Gary Key on March 10, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
The ATI CrossFire Xpress 200 chipset fully supports all AMD Athlon 64 processors in both stock and overclocked conditions.
We tested our 7800GTX video cards using NVIDIA 81.98 WHQL drivers and ATI X1900XT cards with Catalyst 6.2 to provide recent performance results. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1280x1024x32 unless CrossFire is enabled. Resolution in CrossFire benchmarks is 1600x1200x32 with 4XAA and 8xAF where applicable. 3DMark and Aquamark3 benchmarks use a "Standard Score" setup at the 1024x768 video resolution for both CrossFire and non-CrossFire testing. We did not retest the Asus A8R32-MVP for this article due to utilization of the board for other testing at the time of publication.
The ATI CrossFire Xpress 200 chipset fully supports all AMD Athlon 64 processors in both stock and overclocked conditions.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ utilized for all tests |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ Technology PC4800 Platinum Edition Settings- DDR-400 at (CL2-2-2-5, 1T) |
| Hard Drive(s): | 2 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA (16MB Buffer) 1 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM IDE (16MB Buffer) |
| System Platform Drivers: | ULi SATA Driver - 1059 |
| Video Cards: | 1 x MSI 7800GTX (PCI Express) for all non-CrossFire tests 2 x ATI X1900XT (PCI Express) for CrossFire tests |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 81.98 WHQL ATI Catalyst 6.2 CCC |
| Cooling: | Zalman CNPS9500 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ Power Stream 520 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboards: | ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2 Asus A8N-SLI Premium Albatron K8SLI Foxconn NF4SK8AA-8KRS Asus A8R-MVP (ATI RD480/ULi1575) Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe |
We tested our 7800GTX video cards using NVIDIA 81.98 WHQL drivers and ATI X1900XT cards with Catalyst 6.2 to provide recent performance results. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1280x1024x32 unless CrossFire is enabled. Resolution in CrossFire benchmarks is 1600x1200x32 with 4XAA and 8xAF where applicable. 3DMark and Aquamark3 benchmarks use a "Standard Score" setup at the 1024x768 video resolution for both CrossFire and non-CrossFire testing. We did not retest the Asus A8R32-MVP for this article due to utilization of the board for other testing at the time of publication.
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Gary Key - Friday, March 10, 2006 - link
Abit plans on this board becoming a value performance leader with the AT8-32x being slightly more upscale in the price range. We will be reviewing this board once it is available. However, given the current price range of the RD580 boards, the RD480 boards are the better value at this time given the incremental performance differences of the RD580 (although this would be my personal choice).
There have been some growing pains with the ATI chipsets but there were also growing pains with the NVIDIA/SIS/VIA/ULi/ALI/Intel/etc. chipsets at product launches also. :) Overall, both the ATI RD480 and RD580 are very good chipsets, the fact the SB600 Southbridge was not available in time for either product launch is where I think ATI failed. This forced the board suppliers to utilize a Southbridge solution (ULi M1575) that was not designed in conjunction with the RD480/580 Northbridge. While it is an excellent Southbridge solution, some of the storage access and timing issues that have been reported and now solved, were not seen on the few SB450 equipped boards. I personally expect the ATI equipped boards to mature quickly and provide an excellent competitive alternative to the nForce boards. This is good for all of us.
n7 - Friday, March 10, 2006 - link
Even with the OCing issues, this is still a far better value Crossfire choice for anyone than the craptastic A8R-MVP