The Athlon64 Radeon Xpress: ATi's Latest Stab as a Chipset Maker

Test Setup

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AMD Processors (Socket 939)
200 MHz FSB (DUAL DDR400)Athlon 64 4000+ (2400 MHz, 1024 kB L2)
Motherboards
Board IATI RS480 Reference MotherboardBIOS B10, CPU Clock 2409 MHz
Board IIAsus A8VVIA K8T800 ProBIOS 1007, CPU CLock 2403 MHz
Board IIIMSI 8KN Neo2NVIDIA nForce 3 250GbBIOS 1.3, CPU Clock 2411 MHz
Memory
DDR-400 I2x 512 MB - DDR400 (200 MHz)Corsiar TwinX CMX512-3200XLTimings: CL 2.0-2-2-5
DDR-400 II2x 512 MB - DDR400 (200 MHz)OCZ Platinum Rev 2Timings: CL 2.0-2-2-5
Common Hardware
Graphics Card IPCI-ExpressNVIDIA GeForce 6 Series Reference BoardGPU: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GTMemory: 256 MB GDDR3-SDRAM
Graphics Card IIAGPSparkle GeForce 6800 GTGPU: nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GTMemory: 256 MB GDDR3-SDRAM
Graphics Card IIIPCI-ExpressATI Radeon Xpress 200GGPU: RV370Memory: Shared
Graphics Card IVPCI-ExpressATI Radeon X600 XTGPU: Radeon X600 XTMemory: 128 MB DDR-SDRAM
Hard DriveWestern Digital WD740 Raptor74 GB, 8 MB Cache, 10000 rpm
DVD, CD-ROMMSI MS-8216 16x DVD
Software
ATI GraphicCatalyst Ver. 8-062-040929a
ATI Graphic Radeon XpressCatalyst Ver. 8.07-041019a
Nvidia GraphicDetonator Ver. 61.77
ATI Chipset DriverSouth Bridge/IXP Driver Ver 1.4
Nvidia Chipset DrivernForce Ver. 5.10
VIA Chipset DriverHyperion Ver. 5.53
DirectXVersion: 9c
OSWindows XP Professional, 5.1.2600, Service Pack 1

As motherboards with Nvidia's nForce4 or VIA's K8T890 are not yet available, we included the AGP chipsets nForce3 Ultra and K8T800 Pro into the benchmark results. The Asus A8V is one of the fastest K8T800 Pro based motherboards, which is why our decision here was easy. In terms of nForce3 Ultra, the K8N Neo by MSI used to perform quite well. However, it recently gained some more performance after updating Nvidia's Forceware drivers to the current release 5.10.