ATI RD600

ACESHIGH · 6 Jun 2006 at 06:48

ATI RD600: 3 Graphics
Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on June 4, 2006 - 6:39 PM

We've already told you a bit about ATI's upcoming mainboard chipset RD600. With Computex around the corner more details are now surfacing. Something very interesting .. loads of features we saw on the nForce 590 SLI mainboard will be introduced at the RD600 chipset. While NVIDIA has LinkBoost which overclocks the HyperTransport links between the MCP and SPP, ATI will have a similar feature that will overclock the PCI Express bus 25% which they claim improves dongle-less CrossFire performance.

ATI has developed an elaborate memory controller that operates asynchronously from the front-side bus. No more memory dividers means the front-side bus can be overclocked drastically without being limited to memory. There will also be support for DDR2-1066 too. ATI claims the RD600 has been overclocked to 375 MHz (1500 MHz Quad pumped) using the current reference board.

One very distinctive feature however will be a third graphics slot .. to be used for a graphics card that'll process physics calculations and obviously Intel support (Conroe Core Duo 2 for example) Sweet ! Let's have a look at some slides (courtesy of HKEPC).

ATI RD600 chipset for new Intel-based motherboards, it's going to be a very enthusiast targeted platform. Though its features are similar to those of RD580 (Radeon Xpress 3200) introduced in March, it still has a number of typical differences.

It seems that the mainboard will support 1333MHz nominal and up to 1.5GHz (!) overclocked FSB. There also will be an asynchronous memory controller with clock rate independent from the FSB. The chipset will support memory up to DDR2-1066.

Taking on the NVIDIA nTune software will be the ATI System Management (ASM) software application. ASM is a Windows XP utility that supports FSB, Memory Clock, PCI-E clock, memory timings and voltage adjustments Also supported will be three fully-featured PCI-Express x16 interfaces for three graphics cards. Two of these may work in the CrossFire mode, while the third can process physics calculations. The CrossFire mode won't require any connectors anymore.

The RD600 will be made using 90nm process, so it will be cooled passively due to lower heat dissipation. Besides the top-end RD600, boards on which will cost $150 and more, several cheaper solutions will be released also.

Source: hkepc

benjo · 6 Jun 2006 at 07:26

Link?

subxero · 6 Jun 2006 at 09:09

Sounds good, gonna take a lot to beat nForce5, but interesting regarding how memory is handled.

ACESHIGH · 7 Jun 2006 at 03:01

heres some related info ....

ATI announces GPU-based physics acceleration plans
by Geoff Gasior - 09:58 am, June 6, 2006

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — ATI used the first day of Computex to announce its strategy for GPU-based physics processing. Radeon X1000 series graphics processors will be capable of accelerating the Havok FX physics API as a part of what ATI is calling a "boundless gaming" experience. GPU-based physics acceleration is nothing new, of course; NVIDIA announced its support of Havok FX back in March. However, ATI says its approach is far superior to that of NVIDIA, in part because ATI's implementation can support three graphics cards in a single system.

ATI had a demo system running a pair of Radeon X1900s in CrossFire with a third X1900 card dedicated solely to physics processing. This configuration was appropriately referred to as the "meat stack," and while it produced silky frame rates in a number of demos, it's not the only Radeon configuration that will support GPU physics. In addition to supporting three-card configs, ATI will also allow a pair of its graphics cards to split rendering and physics between them. The graphics card dedicated to physics doesn't even need to match the other graphics card(s) in the system; for example, it's possible to run a high-end Radeon X1900 XTX crunching graphics alongside a more affordable Radeon X1600 series card for physics. In fact, ATI had a demo system set up with a pair of Radeon X1900s in CrossFire and a Radeon X1600 XT accelerating the Havok FX physics API.
With support for three-card configurations and no need to match cards used for graphics and physics, ATI looks to have the most flexible Havok FX acceleration implementation. ATI also claims to have a significant performance advantage when it comes to GPU-based physics acceleration, citing the Radeon X1000 series' ample shader processing power, efficient dynamic branching, and fine-grained threading. Of course, the first games to use Havok FX aren't expected until later this year. Havok FX isn't exactly comparable to what Ageia's doing with hardware physics acceleration, either; Havok FX is limited to "effects physics" that don't affect gameplay, while Ageia's PhysX PPU has no such limitation.

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/10117