Feature set

Since AMD has integrated the memory controller on the Athlon 64 CPU itself, performance has become less of a differentiating factor between the respective Athlon 64 chipsets. Quite simply, the variable that affected chipset performance the most has been moved off the chipset, and onto the processor, ensuring that AMD is able to deliver a more consistent performance experience than they were able to do in the past with Athlon XP. As a result, the feature set and stability of the system chipset is more important than ever before. We’ll start by taking a look at the North Bridge of the RADEON XPRESS first.

Up top ATI provides all the standard bells and whistles you’d expect out of a modern chipset. Twenty PCI Express lanes are supported, giving motherboard manufacturers the ability to populate their RADEON XPRESS boards with one x16 PCI Express graphics slot and four x1 PCI-E additional peripherals. ATI feels the most popular x1 PCI Express card will likely be a Gigabit Ethernet network controller. Like other Athlon 64 chipsets, RADEON XPRESS supports both dual and single channel memory operation, and supports the latest memory types. Also like other newer Athlon 64 chipsets, RADEON XPRESS supports 1GHz HyperTransport with 16-bit links for both upstream and downstream, ensuring optimum performance.

On the graphics side, the RADEON XPRESS 200 is powered by a cost-reduced derivative of ATI’s RADEON X300 VPU; this gives the chipset native DirectX 9 graphics capability. The IGP sports two pixel pipelines versus the four-pipeline configuration found in RADEON X300, and runs at up to 350MHz. As an added performance option, ATI has integrated 16MB of memory for the graphics core on the reference motherboard itself; you can still use local system RAM as well, but with a performance penalty. For the best integrated performance, motherboard manufacturers can incorporate up to 128MB of dedicated frame buffer memory, but this will obviously come with a huge increase in price.

Our overall impressions of the RADEON XPRESS IGP are generally positive. We’ve run a few numbers with the RADEON XPRESS 200’s IGP at 350MHz on the following pages and found that while its performance is nothing to write home about if you’ve already got a RADEON 9500/9600 level card, it’s still more capable than anything else currently planned for the Athlon 64 market, and its DVI connection was a nice touch, outputting decent 2D quality to a Samsung 213T flat panel monitor. A VGA connection was also provided on the reference ATI board. The beta driver we were issued with our reference board had problems with DOOM 3, but we had no visual quirks with Far Cry and UT 2004.

If you’ve already got a decent PCI Express graphics card, or plan on picking up one of the new X700 or GeForce 6600s, you’ll probably want to opt for the RADEON XPRESS 200P, which features the same North Bridge, minus the integrated graphics core. And, if you do wind up with a RADEON XPRESS 200 motherboard and decide you wish to upgrade your graphics at a later date all you have to do is drop in a PCI-E graphics card in the x16 slot. The RADEON XPRESS 200 chipset will automatically detect the external graphics card and disable the IGP, or, if you happen to populate the x16 slot with a RADEON X300 card or better, SURROUNDVIEW will kick in. With SURROUNDVIEW, you can drive three separate displays on your system, two are powered by the external graphics card, while the third monitor is driven by the XPRESS 200 IGP.