Specification
| Board Feature | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Northbridge | ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 |
| Southbridge | ATI SB600 |
| Processor Support | All AMD Socket AM2 microprocessors including: AMD Athlon 64 FX AMD Athlon 64 X2 AMD Athlon 64 AMD Sempron |
| Memory Support | DDR2-400/533/667/800 8GiB max via 4 slots |
| Graphics Support | PCI Express 2 PEG16X slots ATI CrossFire |
| PCI Express | 2 x PCIe X1 slots |
| PCI Conventional | 1 x PCI 2.3 slots |
| Networking | Marvell 88E8052 Gigabit Ethernet on PCIe |
| FireWire | VIA 1394a controller on PCI 3 FW400 ports |
| Audio | Realtek ALC880; HD Audio, 8-channel (7.1) Jack sensing |
| USB | ATI SB600; 10 ports USB 2.0 |
| Disk Support | ATI SB600; 4 SATA300, 1 ATA133 IDE, RAID0,1,0+1 2x Sil3132; 2 SATA300 each |
If it weren't for the inclusion of the SB600, the Sturgeon reference board's specification would look decidedly ordinary as far as enthusiast-class mainboards go. However, the use of SB600 brings ATI's brand-new AHCI SATA2 disk controller with 4 ports, along with a new USB2.0 controller implementation that banishes the performance demons present in SB450/460 and increases port count to 10 (up from 8).
While SB600 doesn't integrate an Ethernet controller, ATI arguing that a PHY for an on-board MAC is almost as expensive as a full chip that does the lot, and as such doesn't quite implement the raft of features that NVIDIA's new MCP55 (nForce 5) does. The support for PCI Express means that's largely moot if the board designed that uses SB600 is smart, and marketing doesn't shave off add-in features provided by external ICs, for the sake of a few dollars' saving.
Only a single GigE controller and lack of digital audio output give us cause for concern on the feature set side of things. It's fully-featured elsewhere though, with all SATA2 ports on the SB600 disk controller and dual Sil3132s having physical ports on the board, and RD580 itself well known by now for its single-chip dual PEG16X CrossFire implementation, overclocking prowess and general performance.