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Graphics Software Hardware

ATI's Athlon 64 Chipset with Integrated Graphics 219

Posted by CmdrTaco from the everybody's-doin'-it dept.
EconolineCrush writes "ATI has released the first Athlon 64 chipset with DirectX 9-class integrated graphics and PCI Express. The Tech Report has an in-depth review of the Radeon Xpress 200 that highlights the chipset's impressive performance and surprisingly competent integrated graphics. It looks like the Radeon Xpress 200 could be the missing link that helps AMD crack Intel's dominance of the consumer and corporate desktop markets."
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ATI's Athlon 64 Chipset with Integrated Graphics More

ATI's Athlon 64 Chipset with Integrated Graphics

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  • I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gonzman2000 ( 829312 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:45PM (#10758676)
    I wonder if On-Board video will ever replace the need for PCI-E and AGP for gamers. On-board audio now is good enough for most gamers, and we have on-board LAN, etc.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:4, Funny)

      by billysielu ( 818427 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:47PM (#10758725) Homepage
      Soon everything will be onboard, didn't you ever see Star Trek ?

      • Soon everything will be onboard, didn't you ever see Star Trek ?

        Ya, but most of it isn't arriving until next Tuesday. :-P

    • Re:I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:51PM (#10758799) Journal
      Sure, it already has.

      Look at the XBox, PS2 or GameCube. No AGP or PCI-E ports, no need to upgrade every 6 months.

      Ever notice that EB Games has aisles and aisles of PS2, XBox and GCN titles, but only about 4 different PC titles stuck on a little shelf off in the corner?

      As for the PC market, I don't think so. Games have to push the "cutting edge", and the video card you buy today is obsolete six months later.

      My Radeon 9800 is virtually unsupported at this point, with all the driver fixes and enhancements aimed at their latest chipset.

      I'd sure hate to have to pitch the entire motherboard every time a new game comes out.
      • The comparison is not entirely fair though. Game developers for console systems know that they are limited to a specific configuration while PC game developers are, as you say, pushing the cutting edge.

        I tend to think that even with onboard graphics we'll find that the hard core gamer will still desire to go to the latest hardware and hard core developers will follow.
      • My Radeon 9800 is virtually unsupported at this point...

        Most problems with drivers for products tend to show up when the hardware is just released. Is your Radeon 9800 working correctly? Well then.

        Also note that the stores are piling out with software compatible with your video card. Obviously if you want to get the latest and greatest, you will suffer the consequences. Even then, you can disable some of the advanced settings and get kicking. If you are a die-hard gamer that wants the latest and greatest

      • My Radeon 9800 is virtually unsupported at this point, with all the driver fixes and enhancements aimed at their latest chipset.

        That's exactly the kind of thing that drove me away from ATi. I had a Radeon 8500, and after the 9000-series came out, it was like they officially disowned their prior customers. Some driver revisions even made games display / perform worse than before. That, plus the fact that I hope to move to Linux soon, is why I'm no longer an ATi customer.

      • My GeForce4, with only 64MB of RAM, runs Unreal 2004 quite nicely.

      • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        The last best hope for game consoles that can be used for some basic computer functions is the future of the Xbox. If we can just convince them that being essentially a PC isn't a death sentence if you can prove you have enough developers (developers developers developers developers!) on board, then maybe we can get a system that will allow us to have mice and keyboards and plug in arbitrary HID-compatible input device in general. People will still buy the official controllers like mad anyway, I hate to sa

    • A separate high-end graphics card offloads far more of the graphics drawing functions for very complex 3-D graphics in both OpenGL and DirectX operations than onboard graphics, which means less CPU cycles needed for complex graphics operations.

      Even ATI's new chipset for the Athlon64 CPU won't process graphics as fast as ATI's higher-end graphics cards, that's to be sure.

      • onboards have seperate GPU's (Score:5, Informative)

        by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @05:15PM (#10759140) Journal
        They don't steal the CPU's cycles like you think. The GPU of the Nforce motherboards is integerated into the northbridge. It doesn't tie up the CPU any more that a gforce 2 does, Except that it doesn't have its own memory. Thats the killer. It has to share memory with the main system. That might also steal some cpu cycles, but my point is that the cpu isn't doing the graphics work.
        • It also means that the memory is slower, since system RAM is usually slower than video RAM, and it has to contend with the CPU for RAM access (which also makes RAM access from the CPU slower).
        • Even that isn't always a bad thing. The drawback of the video chip using main memory, is both the fact that it...well...uses a big chunk of your memory, and the fact that doing a render from main memory uses memory bandwidth the processor could be using. The benefit is that software doesn't have to send video data over the agp bus to get it onto the video card. It just moves it from one part of memory to another (or possibly even just remaps which blocks of memory the video chip is using to the blocks th

        • The GPU of the Nforce motherboards is integerated into the northbridge. It doesn't tie up the CPU any more that a gforce 2 does, Except that it doesn't have its own memory.

          That's true for the nforce2. Note though that any other integrated graphic chip up to now does NOT have T&L (or the "modern version" of it, vertex shaders). That's true for intel's graphic core, Via (unichrome), it's true for ATI's old igp320,340, their newer igp9100, and also this one, the rs480 (some reviews think it has hw vertex

        • Re:onboards have seperate GPU's (Score:4, Informative)

          by Bloater ( 12932 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @01:06AM (#10763180) Homepage Journal
          There is a lot of "extra" work done on a high end GPU that is not put on a northbridge with integrated graphics. The article even states that ATI did some trial and error to work out how much they could get on the northbridge before it became impractical (look at the size of that heatsink).

          By putting a framebuffer on the mainboard, they've even reduced the hit due to shared main memory to almost nothing, but some operations normally done on a high end GPU *are* done on the general purpose CPU.
    • Eventually it will, but that is quite a ways off for high performance graphics. Cooling alone is reason enough to put the GPU on its own free standing card.
    • Video needs high bandwidth memory, and the CPU does too. As long as the memory bandwidth needed to max out those chips exceeds the bandwidth available, I doubt it.

      I'm guessing AGP will be long gone by the time what you suggests happens. AGP was supposed to solve it and replace on-board texture memory, but it did not.

  • PC Perspective has also done an article on it. (Score:4, Informative)

    by pacmanfan ( 824027 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:45PM (#10758677)
    http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=88&type=exper t
    • http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?article id=597&cid=3 http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-xpress 200/index.x?pg=1 http://www.spodesabode.com/content/article/rx480 http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/RadeonXpress/ http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=88&type=exper t

      Pick and choose your poison. I am sure one or more will get /.'ed...

  • ATI makes video cards. The average office has no need of a high end video platform for their desktops. This is going to appeal to geeks that make their own machine and finally have an excuse to go 64-bit.

  • Not really... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:46PM (#10758708) Homepage Journal
    It looks like the Radeon Xpress 200 could be the missing link that helps AMD crack Intel's dominance of the consumer and corporate desktop markets

    No, what would crack intel's dominance would be Dell carrying AMD-based computers, which Dell has refused to do. AMD has the superior product in the Athlon 64 and its just a matter of getting IT managers to put faith in AMD and not go with Dell to buy their next big purchase.

    • Re:Not really... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rpozz ( 249652 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:53PM (#10758833)
      Dell's motherboards (last time I looked) have Intel chipsets on them. They're probably getting both the chipset and the CPU off Intel for an insanely low price. To compete, maybe AMD needs to start producing their own motherboard chipsets too.

      • Re:Not really... (Score:5, Informative)

        by ottffssent ( 18387 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @05:56PM (#10759740)
        That hasn't worked in the past. AMD's design talent is better spent on CPUs, and the only reason they used to design chipsets was because nobody else would. Back when AMD was making pin-compatible chips, they didn't need chipsets since they used whatever Intel was making. Then along came the Athlon, and AMD needed a chipset. So they made one, and then stopped as soon as Via and SiS started making their (better; cheaper) own. Then came the Athlon MP, and AMD again released chipsets, first the 760MP and then the 760MPX. Both fairly low-performance, low-feature chipsets designed to get some market adoption and convince the real chipset designers it was worth their time.

        These days, everybody knows that 1) Athlons rock, and 2) they'll sell. If AMD now produces their own chipsets, they're just competing with their current chipset partners, and diverting talent from CPU design (and flash, and the other things AMD does). Between ATi, NV, SiS, and Via, there's plenty of competition for the Athlon segment and with Intel's recent return to high-quality chipset manufacture, there's competition to produce the best platform. AMD's held up their end of the bargain, and shortly the chipset makers will catch up to Intel as well.

        It'd be great if Dell started selling AMD kit. However, that's not going to happen any time soon. Firstly, Dell's getting huge discounts on CPUs and chipsets from Intel. Secondly, even if AMD were to match Intel on price, AMD doesn't have the fab space to keep up. Fab 30 is going all-out, and AMD's in the process of building another one; also working closely with IBM, etc. in an effort to increase that capacity as cheaply and quickly as they can to capitalize on their superior product. AMD's mid-30% market share corresponds to their maximum output. Dell might be able to bump that up to 50%+, but only if AMD brings another fab online. However, AMD has to be careful about investing too heavily in fab capacity they can't use, so they'll only bring online capacity to handle Dell signing on, if Dell agrees to it beforehand which Dell probably won't do, not knowing if AMD really can live up to their end of the bargain later. Kind of a catch-22, but AMD's doing pretty well these days anyway, and the consumer can't really complain either, so it's all OK.
        • AMD's mid-30% market share corresponds to their maximum output.
          AMD only has 15.8% [com.com] market share. Still not as high as the 21% peak in 2000.
          • The drop from the peak in marketshare of x86 chip sales is partially due to increased x86 server sales. Intel grew their market to include areas that previously were accessable to only the likes of Sun and IBM, and AMD continued selling to the same people they always had. I don't have a source, but if you looked at the numbers for just desktop systems you'd see a better picture for AMD; probably even better than the 21% they had back in 2000.
    • Dell has tried at some point to work with AMD, but AMD just didn't deliver (b/c of fabrication problems). In the end they didn't get a better deal, and pissed Intel at the same time.

      Having a better product from an architectural standpoint doesn't mean much if you can't mass-produce it. With their new plants they're doing better, but the memory of their past failures is still fresh.

    • AMD has the superior product in the Athlon 64

      Indeed, and that's why I agree with you about ATI not really helping AMD at all, but for a different reason to yourself.

      ATI's effect on others is a curious mixture of help and hindrance because of its wierd market positioning, and the last thing that AMD needs is "help" that raises issues for a section of its customers.

      ATI's problem is that it sees itself as betting on rival alternatives instead of (like Intel and nVidia) a backer of anything that moves. We

  • I don't see how this helps them crack anything (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:46PM (#10758710)
    They've already had a chip like this in the form of the nForce. Integrated graphics AND sound. This is better graphics, and newer technology, but I don't really see any magic bullet that will wow people. Just looks like a good new chipset to me.

    AMD's problem in the corperate world is mostly just one of repuation. Corperations tend to like to stay with proven solutions. If something works, don't change to something else. Well, Intel works, and has for a long time, so there is inertia to stick with it.

    Also AMD has a really rocky history. For a long time their processors did NOT perform up to their numbers. Also when the Athlons first came out the motherboard situation was abysmal and incompatabilities were rampant. Now granted that's been fixed, but it's easy to break trust and hard to earn it back.

    Ultimately, I don't think this chipset will make any large difference. It'll be another nice chipset for AMD chips and more options when you buy one, but it's nothing earth shattering.

    • Re:I don't see how this helps them crack anything (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hawkbug ( 94280 ) <psxNO@SPAMfimble.com> on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:58PM (#10758911) Homepage
      I agree with you on one point - the motherboard situation was horrible at first... and still is if you buy a motherboard with a VIA chipset on it. Then again, I had the exact same problem with Intel based boards using VIA chipets. Just google for "via 686b" and you'll be bombarded with horror stories and "bios fixes" to get around that awful south bridge.

      I do however disagree with you on the performance ratings. Almost every time AMD rates a chip, it outperforms the Intel counterpart, depending on benchmark ofcourse. I'd like to see some evidence of where you say their PR ratings didn't live up to expectations. I can't think of any examples right now where they didn't. I can think of the first Athlon XP chips hitting the market with these ratings, and how the 1800+ crushed the Pentium 4 1.8 GHZ. I also know that my XP 2500+ dominates a P4 2.4 ghz - but that's where things get messy. For starters, the P4 2.4 came in many different flavors, some with a 533 FSB while others have 800. So, the 2.4 P4 can and does beat the Athlon XP 2500+ in some situations. I don't think AMD has misled anyone though, their processors are either right on par with Intel's, or even ahead in some cases. It all just depends on how you bench them, and what steppings, drivers, etc you use.

    • Re:I don't see how this helps them crack anything (Score:5, Insightful)

      by owlstead ( 636356 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @05:25PM (#10759280)
      Eh, when did AMD processors not perform up to their numbers? The last ones I remember were the 200 and 233 MX chips, now long lost in history. Yes, there were some problems with chipsets, but that is history as well - my VIA based motherboards have been performing pretty well since some initial USB problems at the very start, thank you. I've got three running (1400, 2400XP and Via EPIA) right now.

      The best thing speaking for Intel now is just their name and their chipsets. In the desktop and maybe server processor branche their is little to gain for them:
      - more expensive CPU's
      - more heat (thus more noise)
      - less power
      - less headroom
      - more memory bandwith needed (expensive memory)

      On the chipset side though:
      - PCI-X
      - Well performing GB ethernet
      - Integrated (well performing) S-ATA (RAID)
      - Their new onboard sound system coming up
      - BX form factor

      So I think that AMD can make a bit of a difference by providing a nice cheap all-round solution which packs some/all of these features.

      When the chipset advantage of Intel removed they've got little left. Unless they come up with something smart, e.g. from their mobile processors.

      I wouldn't want to see either Intel or AMD disappear from the scene just yet. Lets hope they will get out of this mess. When the market is 50/50 or so :)

    • nForce4 chipsets for the Athlon 64's do NOT have integrated graphics, not yet at least. I don't think any of the other chipset mfg's do either. On board video is different on the AMD K8's than other processors, the onchip memory controller is great for the CPU, but it makes shared memory slower for the integrated graphics (ATI has a dedicated frame buffer in this new chipset to more than offset this problem).

      So, yes, this ATI chipset could be just the ticket for getting Athlon64's into OEM models - you k

  • WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:47PM (#10758718) Journal
    It looks like the Radeon Xpress 200 could be the missing link that helps AMD crack Intel's dominance of the consumer and corporate desktop markets.

    First off, AMD already has cracked Intel's dominace in the consumer and corporate markets.

    Secondly, it's no "missing link", it's just another chipset. Like nForce. Only from ATI.

    I guess everything posted to slashdot has to be about taking down the big bad (microsoft, intel, whoever else is the bad guy ATM).

  • Step in the right direction (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Average_Joe_Sixpack ( 534373 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:47PM (#10758729)
    I really wish AMD would have developed the 761 further but the nForce and now ATI chipsets should provide a good stable alternative to the VIA/SiS garbage.

    I just wish AMD had a motherboard manuf that was as good as Intel. Currently the stability crown seems to be passed back and forth between ASUS and MSI ... which IMO are crap compared to Intel.

    • Re:Step in the right direction (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:55PM (#10758856) Journal
      AMD needs to make their own mobos and chipsets like Intel does.

      Manager types like to see the same logo on everything, and frankly in my experience, all-intel systems have been the most stable, as in not being prone to crazy hardware incompatibilities.
      • I wish they did make more of their own chipsets. Although not the speediest, they're always incredibly stable IME, and IIRC have completely open spec - hence why you see support for esoteric little things like the RNG in the AMD 76x chipsets in the Linux kernel.

        However, chipsets ain't AMD's business. They make the first "reference" chipsets to get the ball rolling, and open up the spec to allow the third parties to get in on it quickly. This saves AMD a fortune in R&D, not to mention the fact that thei

    • Re:Step in the right direction (Score:5, Insightful)

      by StupidKatz ( 467476 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:58PM (#10758913)
      AMD bashers really don't have a leg to stand on. It's been shown since the early days of the Athlon Thunderbird that the chips are reliable - and I have yet to hear about AMD refusing to recall chips that wouldn't do floating point operations properly ala Intel.

      VIA was *the* chipset for gamers before the nForce started adding features and improving speed. As long as someone bothers to use something other than the first revision drivers, they've been solid in all the six years I've been building systems with them. (In fact, the latest system uses an nForce chipset, and it displaying odd 'input slow-mo' behavior under heavy load, something which never happened with VIA-based systems I built.)

      The problems with instability often come from incompetent people who think they know how to put a computer together from parts pulled from dumpsters or low-sellers on pricewatch after eating chocolate cake with their fingers...
      • The problems with instability often come from incompetent people who think they know how to put a computer together from parts pulled from dumpsters or low-sellers on pricewatch after eating chocolate cake with their fingers...

        Yes, well you get what you pay for, and when I pay for an Intel solution I can expect 24x7xYears reliability. When I've gone with Abit/Asus/Gigabyte/MSI/Shuttle it's been a mixed stability bag, that is I might get years of reliability or only a couple of months till a mobo capacit

    • Re:Step in the right direction (Score:4, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @05:06PM (#10759028) Homepage
      are you nuts??

      of all the machines I have here the INTEL motherboards are the ones that are the most unstable.

      I have 2 highend workstation motherboards that REQUIRE all usb devices to be removed before reboot or the motherboard will hand during post. Yes, this is a real motherboard/bios issue that intel knows about and who's answer is "wait for the next bios release." which means, for us to sod off.

      Intel motherboards in my experience are the most likely to have problems.
      • Yes.. and what's chipset and model number again please? Your statement sounds like complete bullshit to me. Intel produces the most stable motherboards I've seen and some more people I respect agree with me on that. USB problems on high-end motherboard... Phew...

    • Crown? Stability? And you didn't use the word Tyan?

      You must be Mad... I have a ASUS board right now but that's because performance is more important to me.

      However Tyan makes hight end stability boards exclusively, check out some reviews about the quality of their graphics and mobo's if you don't believe.

      Not the fastest though.

  • Which distros? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Cowdog ( 154277 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:48PM (#10758740) Journal
    I can feel some kind of electromagnetic field emanating from Fry's and pulling my credit card in that general direction...

    Which GNU/Linux and especially BSD distros are ready to take advantage of the full power of the AMD hardware offerings these days?
    • If you want a well supported video card under Linux, do not expect anything from a recent ATI video card - go nVidia.

      While ATI says they are going to support us, Real Soon Now, - actions talk, bullshit walks.
      • If there happens to be an rpm for the linux distribution (as in my case with SuSE 9.1), it's pretty straight-forward ane asy. Simply install the rpm, reboot, run the fglrxconfig, answer a few questions, and place the newly created XF86Config-4 in /etc/X11. rcxdm restart and voila.
        • And if there is not - for example, recent Fedora Core installs which use Xorg rather than XFree86, then you are SOL.

          • Re:actually... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Laebshade ( 643478 )
            Egads, I never though ATi wouldn't have an rpm that is compatible with Xorg. My apologies. Guess that blows my upgrading to SuSE 9.2 (which comes with Xorg) out of the water...
    • Err... Clarify yourself. AMD hardware or peripherals and MB which support AMD64?

      If it is AMD hardware as such, debian sarge runs on dual opterons without any problem provided you use the most recent packaged kernel (2.6.8.1) or build yourself something post-2.6.7.

      If it is about peripherals could not care less. Typing this at the moment on a 533 MHz C3. More then sufficiently fast for my needs for a desktop and most importantly absolutely silent - 22db from the drive when spinning (which is not very often
      • Right, to clarify, I'm talking about the entire picture, whether each piece of hardware is made by AMD or not. But specifically asking about solutions that involve AMD CPUs and chipsets.

        I'd be happy to jump (back) from Intel to AMD processors and chipsets (and compatible hardware) if I knew my OS could take advantage of them. My question is, which of FreeBSD or OpenBSD or any flavor of GNU/Linux are a good choice to use the new performance features like 64 bit architecture?
    • I run Gentoo Linux on my A64 2800 & MSI K8T Neo. I'm incredibly happy with it and the thing is fast. There's still a few kinks in the install procedure, but if you've installed Gentoo before, you could probably handle it. It gets my seal of approval :)

  • Linux drivers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nonmaskable ( 452595 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:49PM (#10758765)
    If ATI puts out Linux MB drivers for this, I hope they're better than their graphics card drivers, but I don't hold out much hope.

    NVIDIA has done an excellent job on Linux drivers for their products, so it CAN be done.
    • My experience with ATi over the years has been that they make great hardware, but can't write drivers for any platform. Their Windows drivers caused more blue screens than anything else (Creative's drivers for the PCI128 and SBLive! came a close second). Under FreeBSD, I had no problems with the Rage128 and Radeon 8500 drivers (both open source from the DRI project, not made by ATi) and my PowerBook, likewise, has had no problems (drivers written by Apple). I would be more impressed if ATi released detai

  • It is decent, but won't change the market... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fallen Kell ( 165468 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:50PM (#10758774)
    It especially will not make any difference in the general corporate world. Most companies are in longtime buying relationships with certain OEM's and will only purchase through them. Performance can and will make a difference (eventually), but that takes a backseat to current vendor relationships. Unless and until all vendors embrace AMD, you will not see a significant number of them sold to large corporations, and will only see small numbers purchased only with intense demand by individual users (typically engineers who follow actual hardware performance and not market speak).

    The best thing that AMD can have happen for them on the corporate front would be to get major vendors like Dell, HP, and IBM to offer their chips in their products.

    • In countries with a decent economy new companies are being created all the time.

      So this might appeal to them.

  • Nvidia's support for SATA is better (Score:4, Informative)

    by 3770 ( 560838 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:50PM (#10758795) Homepage
    Hmm...

    It is a very interesting chipset. But the Nvidia Ultra 4 seems to have better SATA support.

    Nvidia supports 300MB/s while ATI has 150MB/s. Also, ATI does not support Native Command Queue-ing, but Nvidia's chipset does. Nvidia also supports 0+1 RAID while ATI doesn't. They both support both RAID 0 and 1 though.

  • other reviews... (Score:4, Informative)

    by demonbug ( 309515 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:56PM (#10758874) Journal
    Anandtech [anandtech.com] also has a reveiw up. I haven't taken a real close look, but I think they actually compare performance with the ATI chipset with an early nForce4 board.
  • They only allow 16 PCI-E lanes for the GFX card, so if you use SLI its really only 8 PCI-E lanes per GFX Card. 22 PCE-E Lanes total, only leave you 6 for the system, sounds like you could fill that up really quick. (2 are used for the chipset?)

    But I guess, even SLI on 8 PCI-E kicks AGP's ass, so I shouldn't complain. Doubt you cna tell the difference between 8 PCI-E and 16-PCI-E lanes on current gfx cards.
    • Still, it's 2 more PCI-E lanes than anyone else has on their board.

      The only SLI competitor, the nforce4 also uses 8x2 in SLI mode.

      So there's no downside in terms of PCI-E lanes with this chipset vs any other current chipset.

  • Now the big question ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zzabur ( 611866 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @04:58PM (#10758906)
    ... is ATI finally coming with decent Linux drivers?

    I mean -- my first thought was that this could be in my next system -- but then I remembered that ATI Linux driver support is much behind NVidia. As everybody seems to be buying AMD64 systems to run 64-bit Linux, there is hope that this might change?

    Btw, the article seems to be 100% about windows software. Does anyone have any Linux experience with this chipset/system?
  • These new core logic wonders introduced a whole raft of novel features to the PC platform...

    The 915 and 925X Express ushered in a new era for personal computer hardware and left Intel's chipset competitors choking in the dust.

    ...the Athlon 64's incredible performance advantage over the Pentium 4...

    I love my computer too, but isn't this a little much? At least you can't accuse them of being biased towards one vendor, though.

    • Read Anand's excellent report from Taiwan on how "915 and 925X Express ushered in a new era for personal computer hardware" etc:

      "Intel seems to have learned from their 925X and 915 chipset launches - multiple fundamental technology changes without performance gains don't go over well."

      "The problem is that right now, no one wants 915 motherboards - they simply aren't selling well at all (925X boards aren't doing any better; I leave them out of this discussion because they are generally much lower volume

  • Marketing speak? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by asliarun ( 636603 )
    What's the matter with everybody nowadays? The Radeon xPress launch is just a regular product launch, not a friggin "missing link". Pray explain which "paradigm" has "shifted" or which gestalt has been redefined. I can look the other way when marketing suits come up with this kind of hyperbolic garbage, but /.? No way, man.
  • This is *not* ATI's first attempt at an AMD chipset. Their first attempt was quite a while ago, the Radeon IGP 320 and 320M (similar Intel version was the 340). IIRC, the 320 was targeted at desktops, but never really ever took off. The 320M/340M, however, did reasonably well I think. At least I saw it appear in quite a few Hpaq laptops, and considering that those gave you similar performance to a Radeon 7000 it was great relative to other integrated graphics at the time (which isn't saying much, but if

  • Haha (Score:3, Informative)

    by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @06:13PM (#10759960)
    Gotta love "DX9-class". It's missing the vertex shaders, kids. This isn't a DX9 GPU.

    -Erwos

  • AMD crack Intel's dominance? (Score:3, Informative)

    by rpdillon ( 715137 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @06:16PM (#10760009) Homepage
    Huh? AMD was shipping over half the new desktop CPUs last I checked (wasn't this a /. story a few weeks ago?)...this isn't like saying "...help Linux crack Microsoft's dominance..." or something like that.

    AMD may be an underdog, but they're competing quite well, and may still be shipping over half the new desktops.
    • AMD is shipping half the BOXED CPUs. These are the CPUs for the people who build their own computers. It doesn't take into account the people who buy preassembled computers (the VAST majority).

      Trust me, Intel is still far and away the market leader in desktop x86 CPUs.
  • While it may outperform Intel's integrated graphics solution, it is outperformed by even the cheapest discreet cards. Anandtech's review shows it outperformed by ATI's own x300 SE, which is the cheapest pci-express card out there.However, going this route probably will be quite a bit cheaper. The x300 SE is selling for $66 on newegg, while mobos with integrated graphics don't seem to sell for too much of a premium over those without, so this could be good for buisness buyers who use apps that mildly push g
  • Is that akin to OpenGL 1.3 or 2.0 class?

    Many of these chips will never see a byte of DirectX (presumably Direct3D) code.

  • Just built an Athlon 64 Linux box (Score:4, Informative)

    by freelunch ( 258011 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @07:12PM (#10760673)
    I had to do it now. The PCIe wasn't that important to me and support of the current hardware is only now getting halfway decent. I figured I couldn't wait for the new hardware to become mature (no rev 1 for me, thanks!) and for the Linux support.

    It took a long time to research the system due to lack of Linux compatibility info. I discovered a lot of info on how well the Athlon 64 CPU overclocks. I mean Really overclocks. There is way more info about OC'ing these chips than running them under Linux.

    I haven't overclocked since cranking my Celeron 300 to 366 Mhz in 1999. But I had to give this a shot.. I am typing this from my 1800 Mhz Athlon 3000 90nm cranked to 2430 Mhz with some fast ram. I had it up to 2700 in testing. It screams on Gentoo. I also broke down and splurged on an absurd graphics card, a BFG GeForce 6800 GT. The CPU idles at 36C and the system seems to run much cooler than my nforce2/XP2200. The socket 939 systems feature a dual channel memory controller and the very likely ability to run dual-core CPUs in about a year.

    I ended up going with the nforce3 based MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum and an XP-90 cooler. Finding good Linux compatibility info was tough. As for issues, things are pretty good right now. No major gotchas. I would buy that MB again.

    My main outstanding issue at the moment is an issue with time ("many lost ticks") and an inability to set the hwclock from Linux. Still need to track that one down.

    Obligatory performance numbers.. This system replaced that old Celeron 366. It ran 425 Dhrystone 2.1 MIPS while the new system does 4914.

    Stream performance is quite insane:
    Function Rate (MB/s)
    Copy: 4213.8589
    Scale: 4148.7969
    Add: 4570.0995
    Triad: 4564.9183

  • Am I the only one that thinks that ATI has made some weird decissions for this chipset? First of all, no ethernet? Everybody needs ethernet nowadays. Rather 2 than 1.

    Then it is aimed at a high end processor with chipset features that cannot compete with any high end motherboard. 2 channel sound, and you can't get graphic performance unless you buy additional memory. No native command queing either (I've never actually seen anyone USE 4 drive 0+1 raid, so they're excused for that).

    Ok, the PCI express is ni

  • Ahem. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AusG4 ( 651867 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @08:11PM (#10761226) Homepage Journal
    What i'm quite surprised about is that nobody has mentioned the XBox in all of this. If rumors hold true, Microsoft intends to ship the XBox Next (err, XBox 2, err XBox: Reloaded, whatever you want to call it) with a PowerPC 970 CPU and a GPU and chipset provided by ATI.

    That said, this may be a relatively decent look at what is to come in the form of the next XBox product.

    I know that this chipset is for Athlon 64. Don't point that out in a reply. I said "look at what is to come", not, "this is clearly the Xbox 2 chipset".

    At any rate, if I -was- the kind of person who bought PC hardware (which I'm not), I'd be likely to check out this ATI offering. The performance will probably be more than acceptable, and I do think it's important to support companies who have their headquarters within eye sight of your office. :)

    • Re:Ahem. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by n6mod ( 17734 )
      Actually, since both the 970 and the A64 use HyperTransport, you might not be far off the mark.

      Doesn't explain the lack of ethernet, though...unless MS wanted that unbundled so they could go wireless.

    • Re:Ahem. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TrancePhreak ( 576593 )
      I am lead to believe that the GFX chip in the XBox 2 is more similar to ATI's next flagship chip. IE something with shader 3.0 support.

  • Didn't Nvidia try this and gave up? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tangent3 ( 449222 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @09:11PM (#10761685)
    Remember the Nforce2 IGPs? They were the best performing integrated graphics solution and an excellent buy for non-gamers. Yet you hardly see any of them selling. I don't understand why, I've built many office PCs at very nice prices thanks to these things. But somehow it didn't seem such a good idea for Nvidia and they gave up IGP for the Nforce3 and Nforce4, as apparently there is not enough demand in the market for it.

    Does ATI really expect something different to happen with their IGP solution?
    • The nforce2 IGP had limitations. Most of the integrated graphic cards could not run when the FSB was 400mhz, either causing malfunctions or dead mainboards. I can't remember if they rectified the issue though.

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