ABIT AT8 32X Motherboard Introduced

[Max Page]

ABIT has sent word of the launch of its first ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 motherboard solution. Based on the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset, the ABIT AT8 32X motherboard offers full-bandwidth 2x16 PCI Express graphics. Catch the full PR with all <a href="http://www.pcstats.com/releaseview.cfm?releaseID=1403" target="_blank">juicy details right here.</a>
<p>What do you think of CrossFire-based solutions like this? It is worth the investment compared to nVidia's offerings?</p>
<div align="center"><img src="http://www.pcstats.com/ArticleImages/200603/abitat832x_news.jpg" border="1"></div>

[yahooadam]

not really considering that i havent even seen ATI's retail "master card"

if they havent released that, how are they gonna work out the bugs from the crossfire technology

and then ontop of that, nvidia has allready had over a year with their SLI technology

[therealwesty]

Looks like a pretty nice board really. I guess the raw power of the dual GPU system can't be ignored but I am not sold yet. Typically games continue to run extremely well so long as you have one of the newer generation cards. This year there haven't been any new games that I've really been anticipating either, save Battle for Middle-earth II. There hasn't been anything of the magnitude of HL2 that I would be willing to upgrade my system towards.

[Skorp]

I've never been sold on crossfire. You need a motherboard with inferior features (unless it uses that ULi chip, whom nVidia now own), you need a rare / expensive Crossfire master card, you've got to use that external cable (meaning my PC would need to be pushed forward from the wall a bit), you have to endure iffy application capability (no ability to change inbuilt settings yet), and you'll be constantly thinking that you're not getting 100% from both cards (with SLi giving a larger average percentage boost in performance).

Then there are the killers inherent to dual-card systems, be they SLi or Crossfire, on top of that - mainly that you need to sacrifice upgradability, you need a dual-card motherboard, a PSU large enough, good enough airflow fer both cards, a lot of money, and cards from the exact same GPU range. Yes, you can use Crossfire with mismatched cards, but you need a Master Card thats faster / as fast as the second card, so it can turn itself into a slower version by deactivating pipes and lowering MHz, which is plain bonkers. How anyone can call that a feature is beyond me.

I've owned an SLI system before though, and my friend has recently got a dual-6600GT system (with arctic coolers on both), a 3500+ Venice, and other top notch hardware, all for GBP£350. Its... amazing to see how far SLI has come. Even before, last year, it was a true marvel of engineering, with everything working at its best. Now, though, all the features you could have ever wanted are right there, and its a heck of a lot faster, too. All that from driver updates? nVidia are gods. Dont believe me? They've put in hundreds of premade SLI settings, customisable SLI profiles, restartless SLi activation, TV/Out as main display support, VSync support, mixed vendor / memory type/size/speed support, bridgeless SLI support, tons of bugfixes, even more tons of speed bumps, and some other things I cant remember.

It took nVidia a year to get those features, and they've got this motherboard business sorted. (We all remember the nForce 2... ahh, when men were men, and chipsets were chipsets.) Imagine where they'll be in another year. ATi are just getting started - at best, itl take a full year of widespread crossfire implementation for them to get where SLi has been for some time now. And with nVidia using dual-GPU boards to keep cards cheap (through greater fault tolerance), allowing for quad-SLI on any old SLI board, ATi are pretty stuffed in the multi-GPU arena as it stands.

[Ominous Gamer]

I understand the need for the 4 pin molex connection to help with the PCI-express power...but why in earth would you put it at the bottom of the motherboard?:confused: Especially on a board that doesn't support being positioned upside down because of the heatpipe on the chipset.

[Skorp]

What the-? He's right! Man, thats poor.

They diddnt have the foresight to space the PCI-E slots further apart either, unlike every ASUS SLI board... ever made, pretty much. Poor, man.

[yahooadam]

not all the asus boards have it

Nvidias reference design for the Nforce 4 chipset is right under the PCI-E Slots

most people use the reference designs at first, thus they are all in stupid positions

[gokusimpson]

I'm surprised it only has 2 legacy PCI slots. Boards with nVidia chipsets usually have 3 or even 4. If someone uses a 2 slot video card in sli, the pci card is gonna fry.