So far, PCI Express has been strictly an Intel affair, with the introduction of Socket T (LGA775). With it has come support for DDR-2, and the number of supported IDE channels has been reduced to only one, almost forcing a Serial ATA upgrade. This seems like an awful lot of components to replace for an upgrade so we could only recommend LGA775 if buying or building a new machine.

Considering PCI-Express, SATA, DDR2 and LGA775 are all middle ground products that reap very little benefit over their predecessors, they certainly aren't technologies to be jumping at both feet first. However, the latest generations of AGP cards are likely to be the last, with even the current generations being very PCI Express orienated.

Finally it is time for AMD to have their turn. Over the past few months we have seen the announcement (on paper at least) of 3 chipsets for Socket 939 (or 754, should board partners choose to do so). VIA will be launching the KT890, nVidia will be launching the nForce 4 and ATi their RX480 chipset.

As we proved in our Athlon 64 chipset analysis, due to the memory controller being integrated into the CPU, performance difference from chipset to chipset is minimal. We expect with PCI Express chipsets the results will also be similar, with features, price and overclocking support being the deciding factors.

So let's a take a look at what ATi have to offer with the Radeon Express 200P.

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