ATI R570 has a mystery connector

WHEN WE PUBLISHED the picture of MSI's RX1900GT- here, we couldn't help but think about similarities to the Radeon X1800XL and Radeon X1900, albeit without any king-size coolers.

Our readers noticed that as well - and it didn't take long before we received a picture of original R570 reference design, manufactured in ATI's small SMT line in Canada.

The reference design is still the same size as X1800/X1900 series, but comes with some tweaks to lower the price of the product. We still see the ancient Rage Theater (sic) ViVo chip, which debuted in the world around eight years ago, and still is an often seen feature on ViVo boards. Sadly, this author has a preference for the Rage Theater (sic) 200 chip instead, but it obviously isn't cheap enough to manufacture.

As you can see, the right side of the PCB has a 6-pin PEG (PCI Express Graphics) connector, and the voltage regulator part has been cleaned due to less power consumption of the chip. However, the size of the die is still huge, and judging by my first check-up, it's not much smaller than R580. It seems to us that the size of caches inside the chip enlarged, or ATI may have a trick or two up its corporate sleevies.

There is also a mysterious connector on the top left side of the PCB. At first, it reminds us of an SLI-style connector for the PCB Bridge, but it could be actually a connector for the second PCB, containing optional HDMI or DisplayPort connectors. For what we know now, it is for a TBD feature (To Be Decided).

So, once the product comes to the market, you will be able to pick what kind of design you want. It's obvious that MSI and similar products pack more overclocking potential, since the X1900 PCB was designed for 600 MHz+ GPU clock. But still, reference designs have their hidden charms. µ