ASUS gets into the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 game

[crazyeddie]

ASUS is reported to be shipping their new P5RD1-V Radeon Xpress 200 motherboard for socket 939 Athlon 64 processors. This new board is radically different from MSI's (excellent) RS480M2-IL motherboard in a number of ways:

-Lots of overclocking features implemented in system bios
-Full ATX form factor instead of mATX
-3 1x PCI-E expansion slots along with 3 PCI and 1 16x PCI-E
-Gigabit Ethernet on board
-ULI M1573 Southbridge instead of ATI RS400

These differences seem to clear up almost every objection that forum posters have listed about the MSI RS480M2-IL, making ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 a very, very viable alternative to the excellent NForce 4 Ultra platform.

Like MSI's board, the ASUS P5RD1-V includes the Xpress 200 IGP with Cinema Display technology for 3 monitor video setups. There is also a Deluxe version of the board shipping in Europe that boasts an integrated TV tuner module to go with the TV out portion of the IGP. Whether or not a U.S. version with NTSC tuning will ship hasn't been made clear, but it would certainly be a really cool option if made available.

At least one online retailer is showing the board as available for immediate shipping:

Compu-Terra.com

 

[Megatomic]

That link leads to a s775 Intel motherboard not a s939 AMD board...

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Hey Eddie, have you found a utility that lets you overclock the IGP on your MSI? If you haven't attempted it, could you try it for me? This Asus could be the perfect upgrade for my son's system when the 939 Sempr0ns are readily available.

Judging by the P5 in the name I'd say that is definitely the Intel board shipping Hopefully the AMD version ain't far off though.

 

[cpush]

yeah that's an intel board

 

[crazyeddie]

Oh man, I'm such a spaz!!!

I read this over at the Inquirer, and it never said it was a Socket 939 board, I just ASSUMED that it was:

"Asus Radeon Xpress 200 motherboard with TV tuner out

$, ?125 + in shops

By Fuad Abazovic: Monday 02 May 2005, 12:26

WHEN ATI LAUNCHED its Radeon Xpress 200 chipsets at CeBIT, previously codenamed RS400, we saw that Asus presented a rather interesting board featuring a TV tuner.
That?s if you talk about the deluxe version, as the non deluxe version is just a good old PCIe motherboard lacking the tuner. Asus decided to use ULI M1573 south bridge with RS400, Radeon Xpress 200 supporting 16X PCIe slot, two PCIe 1X slots, three PCI slots, four slots for dual channel memory, HD audio, Gigabite Lan, four SATA drives, two IDE, S-ATA Raid, Firewire and some USB stuff as well. Beside this you will find an integrated ATI RADEON X300 GPU and TV tuner with all the ins and outs you need. Asus calls this motherboard the P5RD1-V Deluxe.

You can even overclock on this board as it has a very feature rich Bios. The deluxe version is available in Europe for ?135 while you can buy the non TV tuner version in US for about $100. You can find a European price and board here, available now, while the US non TV tuner board is here.

This will definitely give a boost to ATI's chipset business, as Asus is definitely one of the key players. This means that Asus, MSI and Gigabyte, three out of the four tier one mobo companies are using ATI chipsets. ATI's chipset division appears to be on a roll."

 

[RonML]

The ATI Xpress 200 chipset sounds like a good rival to the Nforce 4 especially if it can support the dual core AMD Athlon 64x2 http://apps.ati.com/ir/PressReleaseText.asp?compid=105421&releaseID=715444

I was looking for an inexpensive PC to build on and I noticed that the Emachines 6212 has a ATI Radeon Xpress 200 motherboard.
I wonder if oldern Xpress 200 motherboards bios upgradable. If so, this is a beter deal than the Intel 945G boards.