Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe: ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 Chipset Launched

Name: Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe: ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 Chipset Launched - Page 16
Brand: Asus

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, March 01, 2006, 08:30 AM EDT

For our last set of benchmarks, we tested all of ATI's Super AA modes using a pair of Radeon X1900 cards running in a multi-GPU CrossFire configuration. We ran the same set of tests on the CrossFire Xpress 3200 and on the Radeon Xpress 200 to see if the increased graphics bandwidth offered by the CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset had a measurable impact on framerates in a couple of popular games. The tests below were run with each game set to its highest quality modes at a resolution of 1280x1024.

CrossFire AA Performance: Half Life 2 & FarCry

Upping the Number of Samples

Interestingly enough, running the same pair of graphics cards, with the same CPU and RAM, on the CrossFire Xpress 3200 based Asus A8R32-MVP motherboard resulted in higher framerates across the board (pun intended), versus the Radeon Xpress 200 based ECS KA1-MVP. It's hard to say whether the chipset by itself, or a the cumulative effect of all of the differences between the motherboards caused the performance increases we see here, but the CrossFire Xpress 3200 did offer the best performance, sometimes outpacing the Radeon Xpress 200 by as much as 5%.

Tags: Asus, ATI, Fire, CrossFire, SSF, Chipset, Pre, Chip, XP, chips, launch, OS, IPS, 320, OSS, UX, CrossFire X, IP

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com