RD580 at CES

[BrynS]

AnandTech have posted some CES coverage of motherboards, memory, cooling and more. The RD580 board pics and info start from page 6.

Some paraphrased highlights:

RD580 Launch
Mid-to-late February 2006; RD580 is AM2 (AMD Socket 939 successor) compliant; more RD580 boards at AM2 launch.

ATI SB600 Southbridge
Should be ready for AM2 launch in about six months.

Asus
A8R32-MVP; wider-spacing between the X16 slots; mainstream target market (like the A8R-MVP).

DFI
High-end RD580 board with ULi M1575 Southbridge due for Feb release; no pictures yet.

ECS
RD580 board for AM2 launch; six months out.

Sapphire
High-end RD580 board (no pictures yet) shown, due in Feb?, Discrete Sapphire R580 boards were present at the show -- product should be on the shelves at launch. (Jan 24th?)

Does a mid-to-late February RD580 release suggest that R580 CrossFire will only launch then or will reviewers be seeded with RD580 boards for the R580 reviews in late January, as seemingly happended with the X800 CrossFire reviews?

Edit: separated SB600 info for clarity

 

[Dave Baumann]

Reviewers will not be seeded with platforms that are not currently available for R580 reviews.

 

[Geo]

SB600 southbridge is ready to go? I thot I saw somewhere that early mobos were still going with the ULI. A timing issue?

For instance, the Asus: http://www.ati-power.fr/ASUS-A8R32-MVP-au-CES-2006,nh3744.htm

 

[BrynS]

Thanks Dave.

SB600 southbridge is ready to go? I thot I saw somewhere that early mobos were still going with the ULI. A timing issue?

Apologies geo, I should have been clearer -- I've edited my post to hopefully avoid any confusion.

According to AT, the initial RD580 motherboards launching next month, such as the Asus A8R32-MVP, are using ULi south bridges, but when AMD's AM2 socket launches in about six months or so, AT are saying that SB600 should be ready for new RD580 boards launching to support AM2 processors at that time.

 

[Geo]

Ah, okay. I didn't realize M2 was that far out.

 

[BrynS]

Nothing to see here.

 

[Blacklash]

I hope Sapphire releasses an upgrade to their PURE Innovation along these lines. I am not going Crossfire and would like to try a solid ATi board that uses an ATi North and south bridge. The slower USB performance is inconsequential to me. I do not use external hard drives and such.

 

[maaoouud]

On topic: The first boards based on RD580 is bound to be socket 939 designs.


Off topic:

I hope Sapphire releasses an upgrade to their PURE Innovation along these lines. I am not going Crossfire and would like to try a solid ATi board that uses an ATi North and south bridge. The slower USB performance is inconsequential to me. I do not use external hard drives and such.

I'm not sure what you want the upgrade to be, higher hypertransport clocks? - the current design maxes out just about all processors. The only real setback of the current PI-A9RX480 design is the usb performance. The PI board I've got has high quality capacitors and is most likely the one you will get when buying (there are 3 versions, I think the first one used poor capacitors). In my oppinion if you're going to get a 939 board for overclocking this is the one to get. However to quench doubts please take a look at the sapphire forums (keep in mind that most complaints here is from people that are confusing the PI-A9RX480 with the crossfire advantage) and xtremesystems forums. You will need to tweak this board though as it is intended for overclockers and not really casual users, there's tons of unfamiliar memorysettings - but there's also rough timings for the more popular (for overclockers) brands of memory chips/modules available. It is expensive though and you don't get alot of accessories, but most overclockers already have lots of that so it's not that bad.