CrossFire Xpress 3200: RD580 for AM2

Zitat

ATI and NVIDIA are worthy competitors in the AM2 market. NVIDIA has added many new features, auto overclocking, some slick LAN features, and a few more bells and whistle, but in the end enthusiasts care about performance. Nothing NVIDIA has added really improves performance, and that is an important point. ATI has a superb overclocker in their CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2, even better than RD580 939, and the chipset has every option an enthusiast can dream of. NVIDIA also has readdressed the enthusiast in this round of nForce, with boards that perform just as well overall as the ATI. So which is better - ATI or NVIDIA AM2?

The answer depends on what you want in a motherboard. Both are excellent choices. If you really need killer LAN built-in then you may tilt to NVIDIA, which features two Gigabit LAN on-board that can be "teamed". Since you can't really utilize 1Gb on your broadest broadband connection you may find the feature is more about bragging rights, but it is there if that is an important concern in your buying decision. If you're new you might also choose the NVIDIA "LinkBoost" - overclocking for the common man - but just be aware that the items LinkBoost overclocks have almost no effect on performance at all. In fact, we find it just as easy to get great overclocks on the ATI leaving most choices at "Auto" as we do on the fanciest NVIDIA 590 chipset AM2.

On the other hand if you admire simplicity you may be attracted to the ATI AM2 chipset where the Northbridge controls both X16 PCIe video slots and there is no worry about the communication speed between the two chips used to provide the same capabilities to NVIDIA 590. We could not measure any real difference in our tests between ATI or NVIDIA, but we do know NVIDIA is combining their own chips into one for later this year.[...]