read on to check out the results of HEXUS' first ATi RADEON XPRESS 3200 shootoutif you're interested in alternative core logic for your AMD-based system and Crossfire tickles your fancy...
and grab the fire extinguisher as you read this articles HEXUS.afterburner on page 13...if we had published our evaluation when ATi Technologies launched its RADEON XPRESS 3200 (RD580) core logic, on March 1, then we'd have written a very different story...
and be sure and let us know your thoughts below
just a question, with one graphics card installed, can you use eithe x16 pci-e slot or do you have to use the master (bottom) slot?
also do you know if the asus ships with the latest bios or is it still being sold with the crappy one?
Thank you hexus for keeping your ethics in place. The main reason i lurk here is due to your stance on accurate reporting. Ive been a victim of the of sites/companies dishonesty. The most frusrating thing for me was spending months trying to fix an problem that i had no chance of fixing. Strangely enough ati was one of those companies involved.( no im not an nvidia fan boy- i still buy their products when it meets my needs). The worst bit about it though was thinking "it must be me, im doing something wrong"
Blimey, talk about blowing your own Hexus trumpet. Sorry but self-aggrandisement really sticks in my throat.
If Hexus had so many problems, and I dont doubt for a moment that you did, can I just ask why it took nearly 3 months for you to tell us, your faithful readers??
Surely problems of this magnitude should be highlighted to the readership asap, after the companies in question have been given reasonable time to try & fix them.
At the end of the day though it is good to hear that you can't be bought with your advertisers filthy lucreb
Last edited by jimborae; 22-05-2006 at 07:27 AM.
" means that even a lower price of just over £100"
out of interest where can you find the Sapphire board that you tested for just over £100?
The Advantage version is usually just under the £100 but the going rate for the board that you tested seems to be in the £140s (it's £165 at OcUK) ...
As far as I am concerned, none of the ATI mobos have been worth a sh*t and Asus' Nvidia and ATI chipset mobos released in the past two years have been pure junk based on any number of accounts.
It's nice to see Hexus expose the dirty little secret that the Asus Xpress 3200 mobo was crap as released, as was the RD480 version. Asus has been on a downhill spiral for several years with SLI mobos not worthy of being paper weights let alone PC main boards.
In a rush-to-market mentality, virtually every single ATI RD480 and RD580 mobo has been a total POS and a rip-off of consumers. Not a single one of these boards performs properly and with Asus' circle jerk vcore BIOS voltage games, the boards aren't worth the powder to blow them to Hell. The fact that none of the ATI chipset mobos has more than one or two usable PCI slots is absurd. DFI in there wisdom decided to drop all serial or parallel ports too. Then to top off the BIOS and voltage and memory issues, the mobo makers have literally doubled the prices on these mobos without any justification.
Pigs will fly before I'd ever buy a POS mobo from Asus, Sapphire, DFI, et al. Sapphire is so lost they can't even copy the frigging reference mobo from ATI and get it right. These mobo companies have brass balls to ship a POS product that is defective in design and operation and then ignore customers and hardware review sites after the defects are documented and reported to them.
I'd suggest Asus go back to making rice cakes as they haven't a frigging clue about how to produce PC main boards.
From memory, I think both DriverHeaven and Bit-Tech had noted such issues. You could always spin what you have said the other way and state why would you go out and by a board that hasn't been review from our unbiased friends hereOriginally Posted by jimborae
Who will you be buying from then?
Others like MSI and Gigabyte don't particularly have many hardcore enthusiast boards available. That really leaves Abit, whose implmenetation of the RD580 is just as bad as those you stated leaving a maximum of 2 PCI slots remaining.
Last edited by Tobeman; 22-05-2006 at 07:46 AM.
Sapphire's RD580 board layout was/is horrible. Worst I've ever seen with only 1 partially usable PCI slot. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
See System Specs.
About the Sapphire board
Firstly, you can use only the top pci-e slot when using one graphic card.
Why do you say this? Where does the board lack in this department? You don't explain in a single word.
The DFI also has this one, what's with the deary me and what's the problem?
I was excited when you were to test these boards against each other, because as all your benchmarks show (except one) and other people, like the Inquirer, has shown before, the Sapphire is the better board both performance and overclocking wise. However your article doesn't tell this to the readers at all.
I was also suprised that while you've written TONS about the Asus' bios issues, you have not mentioned the Sapphires in a word. Cause I have to ask you, have you not noted the extreme cold boot problems with the board? And the fact that half of the advanced memory settings in the bios won't save and work, even with the latest official bios? And what about the total lack of software monitoring programs? If this is really the case, I SERIOUSLY question the real capability and reliability of your oh-so-honest reporting.
However, Tony aka bigtoe has later provided us with a very good beta bios and semi-functioning software for the board. I've also reached 370 HTT on the board, more than the 340 you're reporting. I don't own the Asus board, so I can't comment on that.
Better tell the whole story, mates.
I think the whole afterburner article seems a bit grumpy. It gets the point across but not objectively so. It now just seems you're grinding an axe not reporting a problem which makes it hard to believe.
Also why were there no reported issues with the Sapphire board?
On a side note I do not have a Pci card and have never had one in a modern system and know many others who don't so the single pci slot is fine for me. It is a matter of personal preference as if you don't want pci slots then it gives you much better cooling for your graphics cards, especially in crossfire.
Interesting.
on a side note, can either the CrossFire or SLi's second PCIe x16 slot be used a PCIe x8?
Hopefully then I can build my new AM2-base workstation with hardware RAID.
I'm not sure if it matters if it's a higher bandwidth slot so you should be fine. I think graphics cards have been tested on 2x slot and still work (with reduced performance) so you should be fine.
The 3200 chipset seems to be pretty solid on its own but where are the decent mobos? Nothing I have seen so far seems to be worth it. I am only interested single graphics solutions so xfire issues don't really affect me but the overall stability of the boards is in question as well. DFI look like they might be the only choice but they don't have any decent ATi mobos out yet anyway and IMO even the nVidea boards are overpriced and look to ugly to go anywhere near my computer (Thats the case modder in me speaking)
I reject your reality and subsitute my own.
Yes
MOLLY AND POPPY!
The AT8 32X is pretty solid & Scan were selling it over the weekend for £111 which makes it the cheapest RD580 afaik after the Sapphire Advantage (which it seems doesn't have much overclocking ability but does have another PCI slot).
P.S. ItoldYouSo's post looks suspicially similar to those of someone who has posted nothing but negatives on Abit-USA, XtremeSystems etc. & no doubt others without even owning a board ...
Last edited by BUFF; 22-05-2006 at 06:52 PM.
Always good to see tech sites taking a critical approach to reviews and not getting fobbed off by dismissive comments from manufacturers. There are far too many tech sites that produce reviews that are akin to PR marketing material.
Shame no one seemed to seemed to notice the problems with Nvidia's ActiveArmour on the NF4 boards or the SW IDE/Nvidia IDE driver issue when the boards were first reviewed.
Hehe, Nvidia ActiveArmor rocked!
Well, I say rocked, I mean rocked as in "Nick, disable ALL your firewalls, the ones on the mainboard, any software firewalls, hardware firewalls and any in your router and it'll work fine"*....
It works just fine now that I've disabled Active Armour and installed a separate PCI network card...
*Paraphrase of a conversation with an NVIDIA bod.
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