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The AD580 XR board supports all current AMD Socket AM2 CPUs including the FX-62 and 6000+. AMD introduced their AM2 platform last year with support for DDR2 memory. The chipset supports HyperTransport with up to 2 GigaTransfers per second with 16bit up and down links.  CPU Socket  Memory Socket The RD580 chipset supports up to 16GB of DDR2 800MHz memory. Today, there are few if any 4GB memory modules but they do exist and this board is ready for it. Windows XP 32-bit only supports up to 4GB as a 32-bit operating system can only address 4GB of memory. 8GB or more requires a new operating system like Linux or Windows Vista 64-bit.  Two PCI Express x16 slots Crossfire requires the use of two similar ATI video cards. For example, an X1950 XTX and X1900XTX card can work together in Crossfire mode while NVIDIA's solution, SLI requires the same video card for both. ATI's solution has the disadvantage of requiring a "Dongle" for the high-end Crossfire solution. Their X1950 Pros can do Crossfire mode without a Dongle.  PCI Express x1 slots The board has 2 PCI Express x16 slots for Crossfire mode. The RD580 chipset can run the two cards in x16 mode each. Earlier chipsets based upon the 480 chipset could only run at x8 x8 mode. The rest of the expansion slots on the board include two PCI Express x1 slots and three PCI slots, giving plenty of room for devices such as network cards or an Audigy X-Fi card.  4 SATA ports  2 SATA ports  FDD controller SATA Hard disk drives have taken over the storage options on motherboards today. The EPoX Optimus AD580 XR board has 4 SATA ports controlled by the ATI AHCI controller on the RD580, the standard number which allows for two sets of two drives in RAID 1, a big RAID 0 drive with all four drives or four separate drives, depending on the user's needs. Two other SATA ports along with a PATA port is controlled by a JMB363 RAID controller.  Sound effect  3D Audio demo  IO  Microphone  Mixer Onboard audio is provided by the Realtek ALC883 CODEC which is High Definition Audio standard compliant. HDA added multiple simultaneous audio streams, 7.1 Surround Sound, Dolby Digital Live support and support for the various sound APIs. I prefer to use a separate sound card as the CPU utilization is lower with an add-on card.  Rear IO The rear IO on the board is typical of many boards on the market today. The standard PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard ports are present, 4 USB 2.0 ports, S/PDIF In/Out ports, Parallel port, RJ-45 jack for the Gigabit Ethernet six jacks for the onboard audio and a COM1 port. Contents: 
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