Asus makes use of the ATi Crossfire Xpress 3200 chipset and gives enthusiasts more choice.     

INTRODUCTION

This is the first time we've actually taken a look at a motherboard which uses the ATi Crossfire Xpress 3200 chipset (RD580) and SB600 southbridge. Asus has incorporated the Xpress 3200 chipset quite well in their M2R32-MVP motherboard, offering both Cossfire compatibilty and support for all AM2 processors. In our previous reviews ... only motherboards using Intel's i975X chipset offered Crossfire compatibility. So, it was interesting to see how well it will perform. 

I'm sure you've all heard of the historic merger between AMD and ATi during July of this year. A massive deal worth aorund US $5.4 Billion. It came as a surprise to everyone, because AMD have always had an excellent partnership with Nvidia, while ATi used to be one of Intel's closest allies.

Oh well, what will happen to the newly weds AMD-ATi ? ... only time will tell. In the meantime, Intel and Nvidia are still working away (separately) on new technologies and products hoping to weaken AMD-ATi's market position.

Both graphic cards company had their speciality. Nvidia first introduced their SLI technology to the world, using a pair of SLI ready Geforce graphic cards. Then later, ATi played catch up with their Crossfire technology, again using a pair of Crossfire ready Radeon cards.

However, one annoying thing about these dual graphic card technologies is that, motherboards using Nvidia's N-Force chipset (for SLI) are incompatible with those using ATi's Xpress chipsets (Crossfire). In other words, you cannot use SLI cards on a ATi Crossfire motherboard, and vice versa. It seems that once you've chosen the motherboard that offers dual graphic card capabilities (either Nvidia or ATI), you'll have to stick to that path...

                     

Before Nvidia introduced the Quad SLI and their Geforce 7950GX2, a Crossfire enabled system with two Radeon X1900XTX was the ultimate performance gaming rig. But unfortunately, at this very moment, Nvidia is currently winning in the battle for graphic card supremacy. The Geforce 7950GX2 with dual GPUs is quite a formidable card, outperforming everything in its class. And with news of their latest Geforce 8800, Nvidia's first DX-10 compliant card ... It seems that motherboards and graphic cards based on SLI technology is the one to go for.

Fear not for all you ATi fans. With the help of AMD, I'm sure ATi will have something up their sleeves to compete with Nvidia. They've already improved on their Cossfire technology and have now implemented "Internal Crossfire"... no more arkward external dongles. They've also included other new technologies such as DDR4 memory on their Radeon cards.

An interesting note here. I was told that by using ATi certified products such as memory, graphic cards, PSU and motherboard ... I would get a very capable system that would perform better than a Nvidia based AM2 system. Now, is that really true?

OK, let's not wast any more time, and see how well the Asus M2R32-MVP performs against other AM2 motherboards.