We heard yesterday that, despite the AMD buyout, ATI expects to continue
selling chipsets for Intel systems until the fourth quarter of this year at the
very least. This expectation doesn't shed much light over the fate of upcoming
chipsets, but
a
DFI engineer has confirmed to TweakTown that ATI's upcoming RD600 chipset
for the Core 2 Duo is still coming:
The engineer says a DFI board based on the chipset is currently undergoing
testing and that a final version will roll off production lines in September.
The RD600 chipset has some juicy overclocking potential, too: DFI engineers
reportedly pushed an ATI reference board to a front-side bus speed of
430-450MHz, equaling an "effective" 1,720-1,800MHz. In contrast, the stock speed
for Core 2 Duo-compatible chipsets is 266MHz, or 1,066MHz if one accounts for
Intel's quad-pumped front-side bus.
For those wanting SLI + Conroe, you're only official option at the moment is
nVidia's nForce 590 SLI platform. It's going to be a kick ass platform and
they were lucky
enough to get some photos of DFI's latest revision of their LANPARTY nForce
590 SLI motherboard which is by no means finished by it due to be released for
sale around the end of August this year.
)