ATi Grouper - Socket 939 Motherboard

After reading this on Anandtech, I am interested in this new ATi chipset. The review shows that it can match the nForce 4 in terms of performance and overclocking, but will that be enough? How many of you would consider this board over the nVidia equivalent?

While the board may be good, ATi could have a hard time against nForce, which is now well established. Another concern would be Linux support, or lack of it. On the other hand, people that prefer ATi might switch to this motherboard, especially with the potential of Crossfire.

Hopefully, they'll be more reviews soon so we can get a better idea of how it fares - anything coming soon from Hexus Towers? Any idea on release dates?

Mike

these boards look nice, im glad they compete well with nForce 4

do they have on board video ? i know the shuttle with xpress 200 chipset does..but they dont say much about onboard video in the review?

think i might just splash out extra money for one of these boards (probably the single slot AMD one)

thanks for the link mike

Pete

Rumour has it that OcUK will have stock of the Sapphire model within a month. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pirate Pete

do they have on board video ? i know the shuttle with xpress 200 chipset does..but they dont say much about onboard video in the review?

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I think that there is a version with an onboard X300.

Pirate Pete: it's quite simple there are two variants of the Xpress 200 chipset, the RX480 variant has no onboard graphics, RS480 variant does. The review board is based on the RX480 chipset...

If I got the version with onboard graphics and a crossfire x800xl for example, would I be able to 'crossfire' them together?

thanks :)

This baord honestly looks superior to the NF4s to me. The only down sides are the poor USB 2.0 performance and the high ethernet CPU utilization.

The performance, overclockability, BIOS options, and the onboard audio seem to been excelent.

If the price isn't too high, I'll get one in 5 days when they are released here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YorkieBen

If I got the version with onboard graphics and a crossfire x800xl for example, would I be able to 'crossfire' them together?

thanks :)

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No, and the onbaord graphics suck to the point it couldn't help any way.

The only reason I'd go crossfire/ATI is if it allows 3/4 monitors to be used, while SLi is active.

Like you said nForce is well established, and it would take a good performance gain to sway me from that. Althought the white pcb is verr sexxeh :rockon:

I tend to be an early adopter, if the price is right (been using athlon 64s for nearly 18 months, no regrets there). I would definatly get the single PCI-E 16x board. Crossfire/SLI has very little appeal for me.

Actually, the PCB is the one thing that bothered me about the board. Not the color/looks, which to me is utterly irrelivant, but the high placement of the CPU socket. I'm not sure my Zalman 7700cu will fit, without hitting my PSU.

so, any idea of the release price of these?

i would prefer one of the single slot AMD ones over my previous choice of an Abit AN8 ultra, hopefully it wont be more than 20 pounds more expensive?

heres hoping

Pete

The last board on that page appears to have dual AGP slots (The Dual-GPU version for AMD is known by the code name of Halibut.)

Anyone else think so?

I would seriously consider going sli/crossfire if I could utilise my current card!


=TcQi=

I wanna see this with the new M2 socket next year ;)

fraid not TcQi, thats 2x PCI-E and 2x PCI slots.

AGP is pretty much gone for high end boards now.