ATI Technologies today announced the availability of its new Radeon Xpress 200 series of core logic chipsets for the AMD K8 desktop platform.
The PCI-e enabled Radeon Xpress 200 series includes two pin-to-pin compatible north bridge parts: the discrete Radeon Xpress 200P and the Radeon Xpress 200 with integrated graphics. Both parts support socket 754 and 939 AMD processors.
The Radeon Xpress 200 features integrated graphics based on the Radeon X300 core and includes support for DirectX9, vertex shader 2.0 and pixel shader 2.0. ATI’s Catalyst driver software is also included. The Radeon Xpress 200 is the first AMD K8 PCIe integrated solution with onboard DirectX9 graphics support.
In addition, ATI is offering customers an option for HyperMemory support, which provides a dedicated local frame buffer of up to 128MB on the motherboard that can be accessed directly by the north bridge.
Both the Radeon Xpress 200 parts also include a PCI x16 lane, four PCI x1 lanes and support 1GHz HyperTransport. Video output options include DVI, TV-out and analog D-sub, while security features include TPM 1.1 and 1.2 authentication and support for AMD virus protection.
The ATI XP400 south bridge supports four SATA ports, eight USB ports and integrated RAID 0 and 1. ULi Electronics’ integrated M1573 south bridge solution is also supported by ATI, and a number of the motherboards on display at ATI’s Taiwan launch featured the ULi south bridge. ATI uses two PCIe x1 lanes to connect the north and south bridge.
Boards featuring the chipsets will be available in December and system partners planning to offer solutions include Hewlett-Packard (HP) Medion AG, Falcon Northwest and PC Partner. At the Taiwan launch, boards from Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International (MSI), Gigabyte Technology, Shuttle Computer, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) and Tul were on display.
Asus A8AE-LA
MSI MS7093
Article edited by Michael McManus
