Conclusions
The Radeon Xpress 200 is a bit of a surprise, not just because it's the first AMD-oriented chipset from ATI or because it's possibly going to hit the market before the other guys' PCI Express offerings. It's a surprise because it's so darned good. With the integration of the memory controller into the Athlon 64 chipset, the last great barrier to would-be competitors in the core logic game evaporated. In its first attempt, ATI has managed to field an Athlon 64 chipset with competitive overall performance, and they're unlikely to be outdone by upcoming offerings from VIA and NVIDIA. Instead of playing from a position of weakness as a newcomer to the Athlon 64 chipset game, ATI is able to come from a position of strength as the long-time leader in DirectX 9 graphics.

So the DirectX 9 graphics core is nifty, but I wonder about how well ATI will manage to sell its local frame buffer solution to the rest of the world. Embedding memory on a motherboard costs money, and adding costs is not exactly a big part of the modus operandi of most motherboard makers—especially for the sake of better integrated graphics performance. Perhaps some OEMs will use local frame buffers for their media center PCs, at least. I'm not saying it's not an appropriate solution; I'm just questioning whether it will sell.

In terms of performance and features, the real weak link in the Radeon Xpress 200 is the south bridge. USB performance isn't what it should be, and the Radeon Xpress 200 may find it tough going in the consumer motherboard market without support for High Definition Audio, SATA Native Command Queuing, and more advanced RAID features. I expect NCQ to be a practical requirement for retail motherboards once the word gets out about free SCSI-like performance.

Enthusiasts might be willing to overlook some of these shortcomings in the right board, but I'm also a little worried about whether or not we'll see a really solid enthusiast-oriented mobo based on the Radeon Xpress 200P. Maybe MSI will cook up something good, but I'm not holding my breath. The competition looks mighty tough, and I'm afraid the other guys will dominate the attention of the A and B design teams at most motherboard companies.

Of course, NCQ, RAID 0+1, and a slightly gimpy USB implementation don't matter a whit for corporate desktops and media center PCs, but integrated graphics does. ATI seems to have the right product for its intended markets, and they could sell a bundle of these things.