ATI's Crossfire Xpress 3200 Chipset Takes Off

110 nm Manufacturing Process, 8 W TDP

Looking at just the silicon, ATI is the clear winner over Nvidia this time. The Crossfire Xpress 3200 Northbridge - aka RD580, or 'Skeletor', as it is called internally at ATI - is produced by TSMC using a 110 nm process, making it the smallest core logic building block today. Its 22 million transistors require only 39 mm2. In addition to that, ATI states a Thermal Design Power (TDP) specification of only 8 W. As a result, the chipset does not require active cooling, nor a sophisticated (meaning expensive) heat pipe solution, as can be found on more and more enthusiast class motherboards with high-end chipsets.

As you will see in the power consumption section of the test results, the RD580 definitely offers an advantage over the Nvidia chipsets here, although the RD480 (aka Radeon Xpress 200) required less power.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.