ATI Radeon Xpress 200: Performance, PCI Express & DX9 for Athlon 64

ATI RX480: Measuring Performance

The ATI Bullhead has shown itself to be an outstanding performer in overclocking performance, easily matching or surpassing the best Athlon 64 boards that we have tested. But the best overclocking that we have seen doesn't mean much unless the ATI RX480 also shows stock performance that is competitive with the best Athlon 64 boards.

To determine how the ATI RX480 Bullhead compared to other Socket 939 boards, several different areas were compared.

1. First, the ATI RX480 Bullhead was compared to performance of the Gold Editors Choice MSI K8N Neo2, which is based on the nVidia nForce3 Ultra chipset. We ran a brief series of game benchmarks on both boards to see if the ATI measured up in performance at stock speed. The ATI is PCI Express and the MSI is AGP, so the ATI Bullhead was equipped with an ATI X800 XT PCIe, and tests on the MSI K8N Neo2 were with an ATI X800 XT AGP video card. Both systems used the same 3800+ and the same 2-2-2-10 memory. Results are on page 9.
2. Next, the performance of the PCI Express ATI RX480 was compared to the PCI Express nForce4 using the same ATI X800 PCI Express video card. A brief series of benchmarks on both boards were performed using the same FX55 CPU and memory. Results are on page 10.
3. The performance of the ATI RX480 and nForce4 were then compared using the same nVidia 6800 Ultra PCI Express video card. The FX55 and memory were the same on both test boards. Results are on page 11.
4. Full motherboard benchmarks were run with the ATI RX480 Bullhead using both the ATI X800 XT PCIe video card and the nVidia 6800 Ultra PCIe. These results are to establish baselines for both video cards on the ATI RX480 that can be compared to past benchmarks and to future motherboard testing. The purpose was not to compare video cards, although we suspect that the results will be used by some for comparing nVidia and ATI PCIe performance. Results begin on page 12.

Anand also did an extensive evaluation of the integrated DirectX 9 video available on the RS480 ATI chipset. He takes a closer look at the features related to ATI's integrated video. The ATI RS480 video performance is also compared to Intel i915G and the discrete ATI X300 video card. These results begin on page 16.