Introduction
Talking to analysts during their Q1 2006 financial results, ATI Technologies' Dave Orton made note of the company's big internal growth in desktop core logic sales, approaching 10% of their sales total for all chipsets they produce, with a large chunk of that 10% just for the enthusiast on AMD-based desktops.Their CFO followed that with a note that chipset revenue was up by 30%, margins were increasing and core logic was likely to account for a quarter of the company's revenue in Q2 of this year and that getting the 600-series core logic out the door was a priority.
So they're seeing decent activity in their core logic business overall, no doubt helped by a decent set of core logic releases over the last year or so. The company released their own range of Crossfire-supporting chipsets, starting with RD480, and now the company is pushing RD580 until the release of 600-series later this year.
A big nod to the enthusiast, one who's mostly in raptures with nForce4 boards when using AMD processors, RD580 is a bid to steal some of NVIDIA's well-earned limelight in the core logic space for those with high-end AMD PCs. Released in early March, we've been busy testing, re-testing, swearing at and evaluating RD580 on a couple of mainboards, since release.
We think we've got it sussed now on the boards we've looked at, so we've chucked those evals in with some Crossfire testing, mixed them all up and come up with this. So if you're at all interested in alternative core logic for your AMD-based system and Crossfire tickles your fancy, read on to check out our two-board RD580 shootout.