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ATI, NVIDIA Launch New Chipsets for Socket AM2
theraindog writes "The web is swirling with reviews of AMD's new Socket AM2 processors, but they're not the only new chips launching today. ATI and NVIDIA have both introduced new core logic to accompany Socket AM2, and The Tech Report has a comprehensive comparison of the new chipsets. ATI's CrossFire Xpress 3200 and NVIDIA's new nForce 590 SLI are run through an exhaustive suite of application, peripheral, and power consumption tests with surprising results. The nForce 590 SLI definitely has the edge when it comes to the sheer number of integrated peripherals and extra features, but the CrossFire Xpress 3200's performance is competitive, and its leaner approach pays big power consumption dividends. It looks like ATI may finally have a credible alternative to NVIDIA's domination of the Athlon 64 chipset market."
On the one hand, you've got Ferrari with its sleek lines and power-packed drivetrain. On the other you've got a McLaren with its race course-styled lines and race track pedigree.
Which one you spend your money on is up to you and the aesthetics you find more pleasing.
As for me, I'll stick with my Toyota Corolla and the 42mpg that it gets.
Hexus Review.
Not entirely on topic, but it is interesting.
Good news, I'm planning to move to Athlon64 and finally I can choose between two vendors :)
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I thought my monitor was broken.
Well, they did but not in any particular quantity, and pretty much only in the beginning to launch the Athlon off the ground. So what was the problem?
Seeing as the ATI board doesn't have a built-in ethernet controller (which honestly seems a little crappy, I thought these things became standard on-board features a year or two ago), and the motherboard only has a limited number of PCI / PCI-X expansion slots (very limited, if you go for an SLI setup, as I'm sure many will).. where is the room for expansion with other devices such as Soundcards, PCMCIA slots (yes, these ARE handy on desktop PCs in my opinion), WiFi cards, TV-Tuners etc?
It seems to me that you're really limited to just 1-2 additional cards, and not having an in-built ethernet controller really limits flexibility..
I'm also not 100% sure about having only 1 PATA connector, although this is probably a good thing these days..
The difference in power consumption just between different motherboards is quite amazing - I have never really paid much attention to the actual motherboard I use in the past, but I guess it is starting to get quite important to over-all system performance these days.
Will program for karma.
I've recently started trying to build my new systems to draw as little power as possible. I've done fairly well at it, too (largely thanks to the 90nm Athlon 64s, although I'll keep my eyes on Intel's new offerings), with not a single system in my house sucking over 100W at the wall.
But I have to admit, it never even occurred to me that the chipset alone could account for (over) 20W difference between systems - And that only considers the difference between the two, not the absolute draw. I had previously focused on the CPU, then the GPU, then HDDs, in that order.
With the current trend in power consumption, it looks like my next system will focus on the GPU first, then Northbridge, then CPU, then HDDs! Holy reversals, Batman!
What next - Should I worry just how much power my fans and ever-growing number of parts with numerous LEDs draw? I never considered them as a significant draw, either...
they are very wasteful of energy with everything they make.
When can I get on to Newegg or Mwave and order an AM2 motherboard? I need a new one ... should I just stick with stabliity of socket 939 or risk problems with the new stuff?
One of the reasons we haven't been able to move to athlon64 is the lack of Linux support on the nforce5 chipsets. In particular, SATA NCQ has never worked and afaik, they required an NDA for the ATA developers to work on this. I've also heard the ethernet has some issues. So let's hope these chipsets open up a bit.
Intel's chipsets have excellent Linux support BTW from the open ahci SATA to the e1000 ethernet drivers.
Boo at you. Why would you need to post AC?
The mark of a mature person is not creating arbitrary criteria for considering others mature.
tried it twice.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
In conjunction with this, nVidia are also today releasing their new Series 90 of drivers for Windows, the biggest visible change is a new configuration panel interface.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Does anyone else remember when VIA was a big player in the chipsets? Like seriously, what happened to Via? I hardly see any AMD boards using Via chipsets anymore, most the new ones were all nForce until ATI started theirs as well...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
TFA said that the ATI chipset doesn't include the ethernet controller, BUT PROVIDES PCI-E LINKS TO WHICH MOTHERBOARD MANUFACTURERS CAN CONNECT ONE.
It's really quite common for motherboard manufacturers to have to add an extra one of their own in order to provide GigE ethernet, or to work around a buggy chipset, or for whatever other reason.
The chipset also does nothing to limit the number of PCI/PCI-X slots. Again, the motherboard manufacturer can drop an inexpensive PCIe/PCI bridge there, and suddenly you've got 6 PCI slots! Wow! Magic!
If motherboard manufacturers thing 1 PATA connection is a problem, they can drop a simple PATA chipset on that PCIe/PCI bridge they added, or they can stick a 5-connector RAID 5 PATA controller on a PCIe link.
It looks to me like ATI provided a rock-solid base platform for OEMs to work from, without saddling them unnecessarily with legacy crap (excessive PATA headers or a wasted PCI bridge). Granted, the Ethernet controller doesn't fall under "legacy crap", but decent ethernet PHYs and MACs are a dime a dozen (well, a little bit more than that, but not much).
Really, the ATI chipset seems flexible enough to be designed into any level of system, and probably ideally suited for integration into SFF systems that the nVidia chipset would have a much harder time getting into. The one PATA connector would be ideal, passively cooled chipset, drop a cheap ethernet chipset on it, and bang! a nice mini-ITX board.
Inconceivable!
The longer answer would be nice - you know, back up that assertion with some corroborated facts.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
First Post
Hey, not all people bother to get a slashdot account.
If the ATi chipset drivers are anything like their graphics card drives (bloated and buggy), then no way! nVidia's nForce line has never let me down, I for one will stay with the nForce line.
Via? Am I the only one who still likes Via chipsets? Does anyone know what has been happening with their offerings lately? The last chipset from them that I've heard of was the KT890, and none of the vendors I frequent carried it.
emphasis mine
For a second, there, I thought that you were describing the prime mythological Xian bad-guy-buggaboo as lazy.
Damn acronyms.
What is the chance of an NVidia SLI setup working with an ATI chipset and vice versa? I predict that only ATI+ATI and NV+NV will work perfectly together while the other combos will have "minor but annoying issues".
Should vendors from one domain really make products in another domain, thus endangering compatibility?
I have _heard_ (and read independant reviews) that the Volkswagon diesel engines are getting ~48-54 mpg highway. I don't know what your buying criteria is, but these are cars the I'm looking at buying.
Seriously, there are three major chipset vendors. This article should read "ATI, NVIDIA and VIA Launch new chipsets for Socket AM2." Thanks for the link.
Last year, I was trying to build a HTPC, and bought a little SFF box. It had an ATI chipset inside... what a complete piece of shit it was. The drivers were awful, and the USB never really worked right. The system was connected via USB wireless, and I could rarely copy more than a 25mb file or so before the ENTIRE USB SUBSYSTEM would lock up... wiping out keyboard, mouse, everything. Ended up having to do a hard power off every single time. Turns out this was a widely known problem and, to my knowledge, it was never fixed. That SFF was a complete waste of money, a total loss. I should have just lit a few hundred-dollar bills on fire.... at least it wouldn't have taken all the troubleshooting time.
After my previous experience with the dismal ATI graphic drivers, particularly in OpenGL, they are on my shitlist for at least the next three or four years. The hardware may be good, but who can tell with drivers that suck that badly?
I'd suggest steering WAY clear of any ATI chipset.
2002 was the last year for the Prism.
agreed.
first chipset was AMD 762
second was nVidia nForce 2 Ultra
third was nVidia nForce 4 Ultra
fourth was nVidia nForce 6150/430 (current)
fifth will be nForce 570 SLI in mATX format when one is made.
not that i care about the SLI, but the extra PCI-E 8x slot will be invaluable.
Obviously you don't know much about the fabrication process and the challenges of creating chips with the speeds they currently perform at.
It's OK to be ignorant, but don't assume that everything always boils down to some mega corp not giving a ratts ass about anything. Our chips are not wasteful. They are as fast as they can be for the available technologies that we have.
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
Hardware sites sure know how to make me feel good about my purchase.
"NVIDIA's nForce4 chipset family was introduced more than a year and a half ago, so it's long overdue for a replacement".
Dam you Techreport!
Btw a Passively cooled 7600GS from Newegg for $99 AR is a dam fine "budget" GPU choice.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I would love to not to have to ask this, but.... does someone here could tell me what would be the advantage of choosing a nforce drivers over VIA ones to use this CPU if i'm going to use linux? (on linux is not confortable the use of nvidia drivers and VIA support is native there so I would like a good reasson) VIA MOBO's are cheap enough to make me think those might be bad hardware but i'm not sure
Do the these chipsets support 1GB DDR2 or 2GB DDR2?
The lack of support for open-source systems (i.e. open documentation of hardware) is a serious issue, and a big concern amongst the circles of people who actually care about the future of opensource operating systems (Linux, BSDs, and perhaps others) and keeping free software free. Calling this a troll is just profoundly ignorant: Bad moderator, bad!
WiiTF? x.x this is a virulent evil spyware or something? x.x
How is it that ATI is pulling that off, given they are opperating under the same "hardships"? No one elses designs are bleeding that much juice either, it's just you and yours.
dude, For this socket they are releaceing a duel core 3800 that only uses less then 35 watts. Think of the overclocking capabilitys...
I used to drive one of them ('98 New Beetle TDI, 5-spd.). Really enjoyed it. After emissions equipment, it only has about 95 HP, but it doesn't feel like it. The engine has a lot of low end torque, and through the manual gearbox it's pretty fun to drive. With the auto, it'd be a misery.
I used to regularly get between 39 and 44 MPG out of it, and I did a lot of mixed secondary/highway driving. I think if you really drove with economy in mind, it would be closer to 45-50.
The price of the fuel fluctuates here in the Northeast seasonally; in the winter it's significanly more expensive than gas, in the summer it's cheaper.
You have to keep the car for about 100,000 miles in order for the fuel economy savings to pay for the increased cost of the engine, though. So if you buy and hold on to cars, it's a good deal: but if you're someone who develops a wandering eye every 36 months or so, it's not really economical.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
is it fullbore or idle? What are you building your boxes with? I've been wanted to build a low power computer but it looks expensive and you're stuck with something what can't be upgraded, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
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you answered. whoops.
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Love your .sig :) I've been there too.
PCI-X is an extention to the PCI standard that was available in workstations and servers, which was available I think starting around 2002. It used the 64 bit PCI slot and allowed it to operate at up to 133MHz, I am not sure if 266MHz ever made it to production). It was primarily used for high speed RAID and network cards.
True to historical form, PCI-Express group made a completely different, incompatible standard (electrically and physically) but still used the same name. If you want a video card, you want a PCIe card. I'm not sure there ever was a PCI-X video card.
It wouldn't even boot my computer. And it was a 430W. I now use a 380W Antec. Works great. I previously ran a 3.0GHz P4 (Northwood, not the more power-hungry later ones) and an NVidia 6800 Ultra (one of the most power hungry video cards ever built) plus two hard drives and two optical drives off a 380W Antec. I had to add a fan on the front of my computer to keep the temps down though. But it worked great. Not sure why people buy 500W and 600W power supplies.
I wanted to get an Antec Neo HE also, as they are 85% efficient. But it appears they have problems running my motherboard (Asus A8N SLI Deluxe).
I also have a Kill-A-Watt. You find out interesting things like my computer uses no less power in S3 (suspend to ram) than it does when shut down. My previous computer uses 5W in S3 or shut down, sadly, my new one takes 10W.
I run a relatively beefy Athlon 64 X2 4200+, but I use AMD Cool n' Quiet and only one hard drive and it's difficult to get the machine to take more than 85W, unless I start up a game.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I just like calling it a "Suckit A2M" processor. Huh. huh.
Nvidia is a good chip maker and so is ATI. I have admiration for them both, but with every new graphics chipset, GPU, or other device they release I become more frustrated. Basically, there is no way to ever try and keep up with PC hardware and have a dime in your wallet. I have in the past desired to upgrade to a faster more powerful GPU, but could never afford to do so. Basically, I am sure this new chips will work great. But I think I will purchase the PS3 with the RSX included so that I won't have to worry about upgrading every few months. Doom 3 is an awsome looking game, but it also depresses me to know that to get the very most out of it a user would need to upgrade to a SLI setup. At least with consoles Metal Gear Solid 4 will look the same being processed by your PS3 as it will on everyone elses PS3 (if of course you had the same quality of display).
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