X-bit labs

Love at First Touch: ATI Radeon Xpress 3200 Review (page 5)

Category: Chipsets

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 03/27/2006 | 02:34 PM ]

CrossFire Xpress 3200: The Overclocking Demon

Many computer enthusiasts run their gaming systems overclocked to achieve the maximum possible performance at any cost. When developing the CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset, ATI took account of the needs of this group of users and endowed the new system logic with some overclocking potential.

It’s not a secret that overclocking PC components means putting them under stress and no manufacturer would vouchsafe for their stable operation under so harsh conditions. Well, what is harsh for other chipsets is quite normal for the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 which came out impressively robust.

The RD580 North Bridge can work normally at a voltage of 1.2V and a temperature of 120°C which is almost deadly for any other silicon chip. As a consequence, the CrossFire Xpress 3200 should have excellent overclockability under normal conditions, especially as it features low power dissipation and optimized HyperTransport and PCI Express controllers. The chip doesn’t have internal frequency divisors, so its clock rate grows up in sync with the base frequency of the HyperTransport bus, which is 200MHz.

According to ATI Technologies, the HyperTransport bus can be overclocked by more than 50% in the CrossFire Xpress 3200, from 1GHz to 1.5GHz and higher. The PCI Express bus is stable at a frequency 40% higher than the default one. You should be aware, however, that the actual overclockability will depend not as much on the chipset as on the particular mainboard and CPU model. The PCB wiring, the quality of components like resistors, capacitors, etc. and a lot of other factors will all have an effect, positive or negative, on your overclocking attempts.

So, the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 gives you a promise of good overclocking, but it’s then up to the mainboard maker to back up this promise or not. Even two samples of the same mainboard model may differ in their overclockability, so overclocking is not unlike a lottery. Luck has always been a factor in this enterprise besides the user’s knowledge and skill, and not the least important of the three!

With a Little Help from OEMs

ATI has been very successful in the chipset field, achieving a tremendous sales growth in the last year. In Q3 2005 the company earned less than $40 million by selling chipsets whereas in the fourth quarter of the same year they raked in as much as $100 million! And this number is expected to grow up to $120 million and higher in Q1 2006. So, ATI’s share of the chipset market has grown threefold in the past 12 months. Right now the company produces about 50% of all chipsets for the AMD platform, the most popular one among gamers. And talking about the market at large, ATI now holds a bigger portion of it than Nvidia.

This is all the result of successful collaboration with major PC OEMs after ATI got contracts to supply chipsets for such companies as Acer, HP, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Lenovo, Gateway/Emachines, Sony, NEC, Fujitsu, Medion, Packard Bell and others. ATI Technologies was chosen as the main chipset supplier not only because its produce spans all the sectors of this market, including mobile and integrated chipsets, but also complies with world-class quality and reliability standards. For a better comparison, Nvidia’s nForce, on the other hand, is employed in systems from such large manufacturers as HP, Gateway and Dell. Considering that OEMs account for most of the PC market, the showings of ATI who managed to sell almost 7 million chipsets in Q4 2005 do not look such a great marvel.