More than a year ago now NVIDIA developed their SLI (Scalable Link Interface) technology which allows a single system to combine two NVIDIA graphics cards to scale system performance. This technology takes advantage of the increased bandwidth made available by the PCI Express bus. Theoretically this technology should have the power to almost double the frame rate when operating in SLI mode. This obviously sounds very appealing to any gamer out there that has enough money to dump on such a setup.

Although SLI is not quite as glorious as it is cracked up to be, the hype that still surrounds this technology is huge. Having an SLI enabled system instantly grants gamers ultimate bragging rights and why would it not? SLI owners have not spent big dollars on just one graphics card, but rather two! Although SLI was just an interface that could link two graphics cards together, it also allowed single graphics cards to feature dual GPUs. Although these solutions were not overly popular, it did allow NVIDIA to overwhelm ATi with such a huge range of graphics products.

The release of SLI technology really hurt ATi in 2005 as they had no answers. Furthermore, they did not even have an up-to-date product line that could counter the GeForce 7 series. Thankfully, late 2005 they were able to launch their X1800 series which was shortly followed by the new X1900 series. At the same time ATi also finally got their CrossFire technology into action, designed to be ATis alternative to SLI. The first chipset known as the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire was a fairly shabby piece of hardware. This chipset was plagued with bugs and never really took off.

Therefore ATi has completely redesigned their latest CrossFire supporting chipset from the ground up. Known as the Radeon Xpress 3200, this new north-bridge chip is far more powerful than that of the Xpress 200. This is great news given the success of the X1900 series, as the Radeon X1900XT/X are currently the fastest graphics cards available. Although the Radeon Xpress 3200 is a completely new chip it does not offer all that much more than the Xpress 200, other than performance.

So where does the Xpress 3200 get its extra oomph from? Like the new nForce4 X16 SLI chipset the Radeon Xpress 3200 features all 40-PCI Express lanes. This means when operating in CrossFire mode, both graphics cards are able to utilize x16 lanes rather than the x8 lanes of the Xpress 200. The biggest down side to the nForce4 chipsets is their thermal output which is incredibly high for a chipset. The Radeon Xpress 3200 on the other hand only outputs 8-watts and is the smallest north-bridge chip on the market. The core features only 22 million transistors in total and the overall chip size is 39mm (W) x 39mm (L).

ASUS has been quick to deliver a Radeon Xpress 3200 motherboard in the form of the A8R32-MVP Deluxe. There are a few things that suggest to me that ASUS consider the Radeon Xpress 3200 as a serious chipset, things they did not do with the Radeon Xpress 200. The most obvious would have to be the board design. PCBs colors do not usually play much of a roll in a motherboards success. However, the fact that the A8R32-MVP Deluxe has been given the elite ASUS black PCB color, suggests to me that they view this motherboard as a serious solution for gamers.