To the consumer nowadays, the RD580 is known as the "CrossFire Xpress 3200". The Xpress 3200 CrossFire chipsets for Socket AM2 processors have been renamed as the "AMD 580X Crossfire" chipset, for the socket 939 variant, since AMD has stopped producing socket 939 CPUs, the " Xpress 3200 CrossFire" chipset for socket 939 CPUs, has not been renamed. As reference boards for Socket AM2 trickled out, many sites commented that ATI had an even footing against nVidia with great improvement in the SB600 southbridge.Īs of the completion of the acquisition of ATI, AMD has currently moved to rename all ATI chipsets for the AMD platform. As a result, high expectations was placed on ATI to design a Southbridge that was on-par or greater than the ULI 1575. The ULi 1575 Southbridge was the other preferred Southbridge until nVidia took over ULI. Originally, the SB450/SB460 was highly flawed in the USB design and lacking in cutting edge features as compared to nVidia's counterpart which resulted in low sales. With the launch of the socket AM2, ATI also announced the release of their SB600 southbridge which was to be compatible with the RD580 northbridge. Supposedly, the chipset is also configured for the new Socket AM2 and of such, many motherboard manufacturers have decided to skip the Socket 939 RD580 and began research and development (R&D) on the Socket AM2 version of RD580. The RD580 was called the "Radeon Xpress 3200" and was released on March 1, 2006. Having all of the PCI Express lanes within the Northbridge claimed to be more efficient and less bottlenecking as compared to the nForce 4 16x SLI. It was claimed by ATI that having 2 chipsets with 20 PCI Express lanes would slow down data transfers when the chipset is working in multi-GPU configurations. The RD580 was the same as the Xpress 200 chipset with the exception of the 40 PCI Express lanes within the northbridge. With the release of the nForce 4 16x SLI, ATI changed strategy and announced the RD580 chipset. Reviews painted the Xpress 200 Crossfire as a board that could match nVidia's nForce 4 SLI. However, rolling delays with the Crossfire Master Cards forced ATI to launch the Socket 939 platform while the Intel platform was scrapped due to time constraints. The Xpress 200 was launched with the CrossFire edition of the chipset considered as the high end of the chipset. The Radeon Xpress chipset was designed by ATI to enter the realm of the desktop arena, especially the AMD Socket 939 platform where ATI's rival, nVidia, had a clear market advantage. The 580X chipset was originally named the "ATI Radeon Xpress 3200 chipset". ( October 2010) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources.
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