“Who could foresee the compatibility problem between ATI north bridges and south bridges? “, one mainboard franchiser said.

Recently, several models of a popular mainboard brand in low class marketing came out exceptional status, such as “Cannot identify device (USB2.0 interface device)”, breakdown and/or “blue screen”. In addition, there is compatibility problem between these mainboards and SATA hard disks and operation errors when GHOST was running by the system.

Technical examine shows that the north bridges of these mainboards are all ATI RC410 chips and the south bridges are SB400 chips or SB450 chips.

As we all know, ATI mainboard chipset products have few partners in Chinese mainland marketing. Many top mainboard brands are very cautious in selecting ATI chipsets. After a long period of effort, ATI launched RC410 in the second half of 2005 to compete with INTEL915G series chipsets as a rudimental chipset. Its performance is equal to the later, and its graphic performance is equal to X300 SE. And its price is very good. Therefore, this chipset was adopted by several top mainboard brands.

There is a compatibility problem between the north bridge and the south bridge of ATI RC410 chipset. However, there is no such problem between the north bridge of ATI RC410 and the south bridge of other manufacturers. It is an impenetrable to mainboard manufacturers even ATI.

An R&D principal of one mainboard manufacturer told us that they found this problem during testing samples and changed the material of south bridge to amend their plan urgently. He said “If ATI gave us reasonable explain, we would had considered technical methods. However, they always told us it was out of stock”.

Although it is an “art” way for ATI to resolve this problem, it brings a rather big difficulty to the mainboard manufacturers. They have to take a new series testing.

Although USB2.0 interfaces are not so continually used as other internal interfaces on the mainboard, the loss to the system and/or the data cannot be measured when problems come out.

We have contacted with some mainboard manufacturers:

Asus: Our products are absolutely safe, because we always use the south bridge of ULI.

MSI: We did find some compatibility problems during research and development. However, our final design can ensure the safety of use. Please don’t worry about it. If there is any problem, we can resolve it properly.

Gigabyte: We regard the rights of our users as our most important thing. Our products are absolutely safe.

Asrock: We did find some problems during the course of design, so we adopted the south bridge of ULI. ULI is one of our strategical partners.

Paradise: We have lots of cooperation with ATI in the field of display card, but little in the field of mainboard. At present, we cooperate with the top chipset manufacturers such as INTEL, VIA, SIS and NV, because their products are much stable. We should be responsible to our users and the safest way is to adopt stable products.

One person from INTEL told us that INTEL only cooperates with ATI on Xpress 200. Due to there are too many bugs in ATI RC410, INTEL doesn’t launch this product yet.

In addition, PALIT decided to stop their ATI chipset plan though they put lots of effort in research and development.

We are looking forward the official responses in due form from ATI. If they refuse to resolve this problem, they will lose their costomers.

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