ATI Radeon XPRESS 200 Chipset Review

[Dave Baumann]

http://www.beyond3d.com/siteimages/b3dsmall.gif (http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/rs480/)ATI’s chipset business has hardly arrived with a bang and, although you may have missed it, they have already produced several generations of chipset platforms. Over these generations, they have gradually increased their presence in terms of capabilities and awareness, however now ATI are taking another stab the market with the RS480 based “Radeon XPRESS 200”.

There are a number of points to highlight for Radeon XPRESS 200. First, after concentrating mostly on the Intel platform, and largely failing to make any large headway thanks to competition from Intel’s own chipset business, ATI are hoping to capitalise on AMD’s burgeoning success with the RS480 chipset being their first for the AMD 64 CPU’s. Second, ATI are actually well in the race to be one of the first to bring a PCI Express based AMD chipset. Finally, this is the first AMD platform to integrate DirectX9 graphics capabilities.

Here we’ll take a closer look at ATI’s Radeon XPRESS 200, putting it through a range of platform and graphics tests. Read the full review here (http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/rs480/).

[aZZa]

Hey Dave, the Abit-AV8 motherboard I have runs above usual default specs 204/66/33 vs 200/66/33. This kinda cheats when compared to other motherboards - giving it a couple percent advantage in most situations, although not affecting stability. Can you check to see if yours is setup the same? I think the new ATI board will be about the same if you reduce the Abit board to run at 200 instead of 204??

Another query is does the AV8 use the VIA vinyl audio or the realtek ALC658???

It will be interesting in the near future, once we have ATI, Nvidia, VIA & SIS all with AMD-64 PCI-Express systems (and hopefully graphics cards to match).

[Dave Baumann]

I turned uGuru off and made sure that it was running at the AMD default settings at 200, rather than 204. I also recall a RealTek driver being installed, however I thought Vinyl Audio just relates to the fact that it had a higher sampling rate by default?

[aZZa]

Not 100% sure, but I thought that vinyl audio referred to the higher quality audio options related to a series of via chips (Envy24?) reccomended to be used with the modern via chipsets as opposed to a standard cheaper solutions bundled with most motherboards. I think similar via chips are used on some stand-alone sound cards.

[kemosabe]

Nice review, Dave. By the way, what is known about who is fabbing these chipsets for ATI?

[Dave Baumann]

IIRC these are done at TSMC, using the standard 130nm FSG process. I've heard talk that they will be later moved across to 110nm in order to reduce costs (and presumably chipset price as well).

[Ali]

Im a little confused as to how they managed to cut a quad up into two pipelines and use the same drivers.

I was under the inpression that since the R300 all chips were based on rendering quads, so therefore all drivers in the catalyst suit should be based around quad rendering. How does this relate to the half-quad in this chipset?

Ali

[Anonymous]

I would think it is still using quad rendering - it it takes two clock cycles per quad.

[PeterAce]

I would think it is still using quad rendering - it it takes two clock cycles per quad.

Whoops, I didn't log in!

[Kaotik]

Sorry to ask Dave, but were you sick or drunk while writing that? :P
I didn't read it through yet but these just popped @ me from the.. specs thingie or whatever:

XPRESS 200P + Descrete Graphics - shouldn't it be discrete?
Semperon (x3) - Last time I checked it was Sempron

:oops: :oops:

[Anonymous]

does RS480 have HW vertex shader and HW T&L?
what's the official word from ATI?

[Dave Baumann]

I didn't read it through yet but these just popped @ me from the.. specs thingie or whatever:

There's a lot more info in there to care abut a few typo's!

does RS480 have HW vertex shader and HW T&L?
what's the official word from ATI?

PR guy I was speaking to was unclear on that point, however the testing done at the bottom of this page (http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/rs480/index.php?p=19) makes the answer fairly clear.

[Kaotik]

I didn't read it through yet but these just popped @ me from the.. specs thingie or whatever:

There's a lot more info in there to care abut a few typo's!


Yeah, I know, didn't mean to be rude really :oops:
Those were just things that popped in my eye, while browsing the page first before reading through :)

[Anonymous]

PR guy I was speaking to was unclear on that point, however the testing done at the bottom of this page (http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/rs480/index.php?p=19) makes the answer fairly clear.

thanks,read that already ;) but it'll be crystal clear if there're official confirmation from ATI ;) other reviews say "some" VS/T&L are handled by HW/IGP and the rest are done by SW/CPU???

your results could indicate that the CPU is doing triangle setup or that test is only invoking SW/CPU VS/T&L or the drivers isn't ready or its so weak that its disabled in the drivers???

[ben6]

Hrm, the PR guy that briefed me was pretty clear it was software VS cause I had the same concerns. It also struck me as strange when testing to expect 4 pixel pipelines when results were clearly 2 (PR later cleared that up as well)

[mczak]

Any information about transistor count? Die Size? Is it flip chip?

It's interesting you got a board with passive cooling - all other reviews I've seen got the same board, but with active cooling. Maybe ATI thought other sites would focus on overclocking, so they just slapped on an otherwise unneeded noisy little hsf. But it's good to know it isn't needed.

[Sunday]

Very nice review!
Just want to point out that no one in any review has stated what kind of interconnection does Xpress 200 are using between NB & SB! Mine guess is Hyper Transport. Why?
‘Cos producer of the SB is ALI (this is missing in Dave's review), or now known as ULi.
And ULi is using HT for NB-SB interconnection even for their P4 chipset (Albatron does have mobo for P4 based on this chipset!)
TUL does have Socket754 Socket mobo based on Xpress 200, and you can clearly see ULI logo on SB. This is BTW first S754 mobo /w PCIEx support (atleas for the VGA port – ASUS does have SiS based mobo with x1 PCIEx port)
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/archives/nov/tulatirx480.jpg
:wink:

[Dave Baumann]

Cos producer of the SB is ALI (this is missing in Dave's review), or now known as ULi.

No, the boards at the moment are using IXP400, which are ATI's designs. ULi do have one coming up that works with ATI's Northbridge, but at present this is all ATI.

[Tim]

Very nice review!
Just want to point out that no one in any review has stated what kind of interconnection does Xpress 200 are using between NB & SB! Mine guess is Hyper Transport. Why?

No the SB is connected with two PCIe lanes.

‘Cos producer of the SB is ALI (this is missing in Dave's review), or now known as ULi.

Nope the SB is an inhouse Ati design.

[Sunday]

Where did you find that information??
I have ATi press kit, and no where do they mentioning type of interconnection!
If that is true what are you saying, then ULI should have somewhere in they roadmaps SB capable of interconnecting thro PCIEx lanes, and they don’t have such an I/O controller!! And this TUL mobo is producing, so where is that ULI SB with PCIEx lanes interconnection.
In mine last meeting with ULi management at this year CeBIT they told me about design they are doing for ATi, and IXP400 is the result of that design!
ATi has always used 3rd party SB designs under they name. In the future ULi will continue to do SB design in cooperation with ATi. And probably won’t be selling any under they name!
And once again about PCIEx interconnection between NB and SB… it’s not true… ATi is using HT, with ULi I/O controller.
One interesting fact, about usage of HT: HT is used in G5 Macs, and it is combination of IBM NB, and AMD 8131 I/O Tunnel (only one PCI-X HT controller)

[Dave Baumann]

Where did you find that information??
I have ATi press kit, and no where do they mentioning type of interconnection!

I'm thinking you neither looked at the press kit closely enough, or read this review!

http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/rs480/index.php?p=2

Look at the image - there is a colour key that indicates the connection between the NB and SB is PCIe. In fact the NB has 22 lanes - 16 for PEG, 4 for expansion / GIGe and 2 for the conection to other SB's. Technically any SB that uses PCIe could connect to the ATI NB.

[mczak]

In fact the NB has 22 lanes - 16 for PEG, 4 for expansion / GIGe and 2 for the conection to other SB's.
22 lanes - and what about the internal graphic core? Is this also attached via a (internal) PCI-E bus, or how else is it connected?

[Sunday]

Well, picture says more then 1000 words, so they say. I did not pay that much attention to the picture I admit… it’s just that I’ve expected more tech. specs. Of the RX480. For example, ATi doesn’t says that it is using integrated Silicon Image SATA controller, and only if you look in to the drivers files you can find reference to the SI controller… well, the fact that is using this controller puts me in position where I must admit that I was wrong, IXP400 must be a genuine ATi design… so I’m sorry for being so stubborn (I just want to write the best possible review, and as always B3D is being helpful – thanx Dave!)
P.S
Dave when can we expect report from the "Shader Day"? I hate to read about it at the Inq (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19773)

[Sunday]

In fact the NB has 22 lanes - 16 for PEG, 4 for expansion / GIGe and 2 for the conection to other SB's.
22 lanes - and what about the internal graphic core? Is this also attached via a (internal) PCI-E bus, or how else is it connected?

This is extremely good question, which highlights mine unsatisfaction ‘cos of to little tech information provided by ATi. I presume that integrated core is using 16 lane bus, when it is alone, and split the bus 8x8 when the VGA card is in the PEG slot.

Anyway, I would like to share with you mine findings about Southbridge. It has very pore USB performances.
Mine Verbatim Store’n’Go 90 scores only 14 MB/s in Sandra 2004 SP2, and on nForce3, and i915 score is 21 MB/s… more to come later!

[Dave Baumann]

Errm - the AGP/PCIe interface is only a connection method for getting data to and from devices to go to and from the host CPU and memory. The integrated graphics is internal to the Southbridge and in the case of the AMD platform it uses HyperTransport to communicate to the CPU (and, of course, memory as that is controlled by the CPU) - it doesn't actually need to use the PCIe lanes for anything.

[mczak]

Errm - the AGP/PCIe interface is only a connection method for getting data to and from devices to go to and from the host CPU and memory. The integrated graphics is internal to the Southbridge and in the case of the AMD platform it uses HyperTransport to communicate to the CPU (and, of course, memory as that is controlled by the CPU) - it doesn't actually need to use the PCIe lanes for anything.
Are you sure the graphic core is directly attached to HT? I don't say it isn't, there's just no information there that it actually is (other than the pretty picture, but that's a weak indication). It might be possible the Northbridge is actually little more than a HT/PCI-E bridge, and in the case of RS480, with a graphics core slapped on. The older integrated graphic core also were logically just AGP devices.

[Sunday]

Errm - the AGP/PCIe interface is only a connection method for getting data to and from devices to go to and from the host CPU and memory. The integrated graphics is internal to the Southbridge and in the case of the AMD platform it uses HyperTransport to communicate to the CPU (and, of course, memory as that is controlled by the CPU) - it doesn't actually need to use the PCIe lanes for anything.

I think that you’re wrong Dave. Some type of connection bus with GFX core inside NB must exist. In case of non-P version, Northbidge just PCIEx Tunnel+ GFX core inside one chip. Since there is no HT interface for GFX core, it must be connected with the rest of the control logic with PCIEx link! Connection would look like this: CPU--- PCIEx Tunnel --GFX, where 3 dashes would be 1000MHz HT link, and 2 dashes PCIEx lane x16.

It is interesting that HT Consortium recently came up with standard for HT physical slot intended mainly for fast net cards, but it would be no problem to design HT graphics card with appropriate controller inside GPU, or external HSI-like bridge (tunnel) – well, simplified (with just 16 lanes) XPRESS 200P would be just fine for that purpose.

[Anonymous]

Let's just wait for EQS's RS480 out next week :)

EQS will be selling RS480 in 939 and 754

Also, RS400 in 775 and 478

From MATX to ATX