Southbridge performance

When we tested SB600, we found out that problems of the USB interface, which had appeared in previous southbridges from ATI, were solved. On the contrary, SB600 had a formal advantage over its competitors here. These days, you will need a very fast USB device to detect a small difference between USB implementations in different chipsets. Such tests are of no practical use.

In return, eSATA is getting increasingly popular, it even appears in cheap motherboards. Theoretically, there should be no difference between internal and external devices from the point of view of the controller. Nuances appear only in operating modes. Instead of IDE Native (compatible with all operating systems), you will have to use AHCI to provide hot plug functionality. In this case, older operating systems will require to load a driver during installation. In return to inconveniences, you may get a little performance gain owing to NCQ modes for better read/write management. But it must be noted that our copy test with many files revealed a 5-second difference from IDE Native mode.

However, differences between the chipsets are more noticeable here, although not big either. We copied files between two logical disks of the same hard drive (Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (SATA-II, 7200 rpm) 250 GB). The first place is shared by chipsets from AMD and NVIDIA.

Conclusions

AMD put its best foot forward to design a ready monobrand platform. It was a logical step after purchasing ATI. But expecting something and witnessing attractive results are two different things. Motherboards on AMD 780G look like an excellent basis for media centers and generic multimedia computers. AMD 780V will apparently find its place in the office segment. Now what concerns the 740G. Considering the new Southbridge, low power consumption owing to the 55-nm fabrication process, and DVI support on motherboards with price tags starting from $55, it will be a popular replacement for the 690G among economic shoppers.

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