MSI ATI Xpress 200 Mobo.

[Chris_T]

I cannot find any information on This Mobo whatsoever.

So. I ordered it.

Whats up with the problems i have read about with the ATI southbridge ?

Also, NO overclocking on this board, I don't care, its for a client.
XP64 3000+
1 Gig of Corsair
yadda yadda

I will get it in sometime this week and have until Saturday morn to build and test.
Anything special anyone want me to do ?
Btw, the client is happy with the onboard vid, so I have no PCIe gfx card for it.

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

The problem with the chipset is the south bridge. The USB speed are a little slower like 3%-5%. Its not a problem for most cases but a USB hard drive will be slower then with other chipsets. ATI just finished a new south bridge to fix the problem. The old south bridge being SB400 and the new one SB450.

 

[Frank]

As far as intergrated graphics go, it is well above average. And what use is an $200+ video card to most people anyway?

 

[Chris_T]

Thankes Snipe and DiGuru.

Answered both of my most nerve-wracking worries about the board.

Client is not a gamer, but wanted something that they could upgrade for games later as the kids get older.
Before i suggested the ATI board i was pushing them with a socket 755 chip on an Nforce3 board. But prices on the equiv 9xx chips are not much more now, tho there is a difference in actual chip speeds. A 7xx 3000+ is at 2Ghz a 9xx 3000+ is 1.8Ghz. Thats the 512Kb L2Cache versions.

They were interested in getting a board with PCIe, and I believe the 7xx sockets will be phased out soon from what i heard, so i wanted to make sure they could upgrade later if they wanted without too much hassle.

Other than not getting them a vid card, This is to be one HELL of a system in its own right.

I am going to run the system through the paces of my small set of benchmarking tools. Will post up results here for reference and all that.
If i had the cash to blow i would probably pick up a PCIe vid card to pop in for testing. But the onboard will have to do. Plus i do want to see how the onboard scores.

If USB2.0 suffers less speed this client will never know it.
And if that is the only problem with the SB then i should have no worries now at all.

 

[Pete]

Are there reviews on NewEgg yet? GamePC reviewed it, said it was less than perfectly stable. Nevertheless, I'm probably going to order it for an upcoming build, as it fits my criteria: best upgrade path, microATX, firewire, good price. I'm really not interested in OCing.

 

[ANova]

Anyone heard anything new on the bullhead board?

 

[Chris_T]

Only NewEgg reviews I saw are pretty sparse and mentions there is no OC'ing in the bios for this board. They do seem entusiastic about the board tho.

Also i did persue all the reviews, even here at B3D, about the reference board this is built from. But this board is a tad bit different from reference, and i could only find just a few short p/reviews on the MSI board itself.

I must admit Google incantations have become a bit more difficult in obtaining the best results these days, as opposed to the past. Just having read the GamePC head-to-head review gives me pause, but i will be sure to keep on top of bios updates for the client.

Lastly, I would never really buy into early adoptor tech, but the price is falling a bit on it right now, and the client expressed they wanted something current, easily upgradable within next 3-4 years, and on a budget without re-using their old computer components. So, I put together a few things and this setup caught their attention the most. Esp onboard video capable of doing Theater out.

 

[anaqer]

What bothers me with these boards (apart from the obvious SB400 problems) is that I can't seem to locate the SidePort RAM chip on them. I'm thinking they might have banished it to the underside of the mainboard to conserve PCB space, but it would be very unique to place components there, no?

Also, I myself would rather like an ASUS A8AE-LA (or a second revision of it with the new southbridge).

To us fell the engineering model of maternal pay on new you chipsete ATI Xpress 200. Although the product will be extended under trade mark ASUS and has its own name, officially it thus far does not exist (on the site of the producer of information about this model found could not be). In spite of form factor mATX, Aеe- la it is possible boldly to place in the category of topovykh products. There are an integrated graphic nucleus, a slot for external videokarty PCI Express x16, FireWire- controller even four ports SATA (across the southern bridge ATI SB400) with the possibility of designing RAID- massifs. Is also sufficiently rarely meeting joint PCI Riser, intended for the installation of "fir tree" and that making it possible to use pay in 1U housings with PccI- map, located in parallel to the plane of pay. Supplements common picture the 24- contact joint of nourishment, which again emphasizes the possibility of the servernogo application of this product.

 

[Chris_T]

Sideport ram ??
Do you mean the BGA ramchip for the onboard video ??

Unfortunately, this Motherboard does NOT have this.
It uses the craptacular *shared* ram method, but what do you expect for a mobo with onboard vid with S-video and RCA video out, plus PCIe slot for under 100 bucks, I believe I read with a PCIe card it will do a 3way video out. BTW this mobo is not the same as the reviewed sample ATI boards, its not a Full ATX board. But it does let you specify from *32, 64, 128Mb* of ram, maybe more, just haven't got into fully checking it out.

So, I got the junk in today, and got it thrown together within a few hours and everything works. And I am fairly impressed with the system so far.

Setup is:
Lian-Li PC7B Case
Enermax 370watt Powersupply with autofan/silent control.
Samsung 790DF 17" Monitor (client wants to wait til Christmas to get LCD for the price drop)
MSI ATI XPress200 Mobo
AMD64 3000+ Athlon 939pin 512L2 Processor w/HSF
1 Gig of Corsair PC3200 Value Ram
200Gb Maxtor SATA HDD (partitioned @ 75/25)
Sony 16x Dual-Layer DVD Burner
Floppy drive (gotta have it for SATA drivers)
Creative 56k Soft Modem (yeah we is all still on dialup out here, while the new subdivide less than a mile up the street gets fiber, fucking Bellsouth)
Logitech Premium Black Keyboard and Optical Mouse
Also got some other various doodads they wanted with this computer.

Here is a quick test rundown.
Using latest offical CAT drivers (non-.NET) from ATIs website
Video using only 64Mb of Ram @ 1024x768. (btw you can overclock the videochip in the Bios but not the Processor)

Sorry, all I had to test with is 3dMark03 tonight...

3dMark03 Score: 1344

GT1 - 54.8
GT2 - 8.7
GT3 - 7.5
GT4 - 7.1

CPU1 - 75
CPU2 - 12.6

Single-Texture - 392.9
Multi-Texture - 570.7
Vertex Shader - 3.6
Pixel Shader 2.0 - 14.3
RagTroll - 6.1

Thats all i can do for now, got to take it in with me to work for updating everything via DSL, since only dialup here @ home. Will try to get the newer futuremark test program tomorrow and my copy of Sisoft needs updating, it reported back some funky scoring tonight.
Cheers.

 

[anaqer]

Do you mean the BGA ramchip for the onboard video ??

Yes, though I checked again for tests regarding it's effect on graphics performance and it just wasn't particularly impressive (<10%) so it's probably not that important.