Post your luck with DFI Experts and/or RDX200 boards

Well, I know that lots of people were complaining that only the bad news with the Expert is emphasized and the good news is ignored. So I thought I would make a point of pointing what I think is very good news . . .

I've been running the Expert for about 4 days now and it's running beautifully. I tested 3 Opties and they each clocked great. I was amazed at how high this board will go . . . 500MHz HTT!

http://img448.imageshack.us/img448/7...ghts3iv.th.jpg

And that's with a 2.5x LDT multiplier so the HT frequency is at 500MHz x 2.5 = 1250MHz (which is 1250MHz x 2 = 2500MHz data rate). Sisoft shows those values (in the red box in the pic).

In the Anantech review, "Mr. Icee" said he reached 512MHz HTT on the Expert using ClockGen. But I don't know how he did it because ClockGen seems to max out at 500MHz (as you can tell in the pic). I even tried to go further using the "ghost mode" feature but it didn't work. How did he do it?!!

Also, I can't get ClockGen to let me change the the FID/VID values. Notice in the picture it's greyed out. I installed the Opteron drive from the AMD website, I tried "auto" and "manual" for the CPU FID and VID in the BIOS but nothing seems to work? Anyone know why?

very nice results Revivalist :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hirotaro

Don't understand => Same Chips, Same Size (both 4MBs, both LPC/FWH
PMC4 type) so what is Ur post about???

Only thing could be older version of AwdFlash. But I believie, that Our Friend uses the One given with BIOS - that means the One that Manufacturer expects U to Use.

Or maybe U're talking about EEPROM Writer?? But He said He want's to do Hot-Flash :)

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awdflash, winflash, etc.. whatever tool you decide to try to flash with. They are very picky... :(

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Originally Posted by Revivalist

[COLOR="Green"]
I've been running the Expert for about 4 days now and it's running beautifully. I tested 3 Opties and they each clocked great.

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Nice board ;)

Did you use the same CPUs on a different board before? Did you reach a higher effective overclock?

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Originally Posted by Martin Cracauer

Nice board ;)

Did you use the same CPUs on a different board before? Did you reach a higher effective overclock?

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Unfortunately I wasn't able to test them on my old ASUS A8V. It died about a week before I was able to setup the Expert.

im not sure - but i think my expert may have killed my cpu. It was working fine for about an hour then i switched off pc, switched back on and the 4 diagnostic lights stay on and no beeps or nothing....... Everything was on stock voltage and no overclocking, it is an fx55 (SD core). I reset bios with the jumper, still nothing.. Can this be caused by anything else? dammit.. this is doing my head in

0 problems here with my Expert. Runs fine since first day except some problems with 4x512 BH5 but now i'm running 2x1GB so no problems :D

Well the BIOS bug's have been fixed so it should be all OK...shouldn't it?

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Originally Posted by gline

im not sure - but i think my expert may have killed my cpu. It was working fine for about an hour then i switched off pc, switched back on and the 4 diagnostic lights stay on and no beeps or nothing....... Everything was on stock voltage and no overclocking, it is an fx55 (SD core). I reset bios with the jumper, still nothing.. Can this be caused by anything else? dammit.. this is doing my head in

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Might be power source too. No way to tell unless you have a second PS or second MB to try the FX in.

I have an Expert arriving tomorrow. Unfortunately a new 146 is not arriving until January.

I was using an A8N32-SLI under phase and it seems to have damaged itself, possibly helping to kill a 146 and a Venice. I still need to test both CPUs in another board; the Expert will I'm sure shoot any of the wounded and settle the issue.

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Originally Posted by saaya

how did it happen?
shut the board down and then when you wanted to reboot it was dead?
is the cpu ok? and the mem?
were you running oced? what settings?

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Sorry for the late reply but, I was running 2.9g doing some 3D stability testing (Stable for 3d only) found it to be unstable, rebooted, loaded optimized defaults (Everything pretty much auto) flashed bios using Winflash (Dont have a working floppy accessable (future flashes will be floppy) checked the clear cmos when it restarted and everything spun up, but 4 leds, tried just about everything, when I plugged in the 4pin power, the board will not power on, just the red leds flash on then off... I think my PSU took the board (Which is feasble) but I have another on the way, I'm not to worried

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Originally Posted by Eldonko

Might be power source too. No way to tell unless you have a second PS or second MB to try the FX in.

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well i had it all working fine and now have a weird issue. Trying to install windows, it freezes after it has just installed the basic drivers from the cd and is just about to reboot... tried everything different, but nothing seems to solve it :confused: leads me to think something is dodgy, dammit

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Originally Posted by JasonDTM

when I plugged in the 4pin power, the board will not power on, just the red leds flash on then off... I think my PSU took the board (Which is feasble) but I have another on the way, I'm not to worried

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May I ask which power supply you are using? I had initially bought an Enermax Liberty 620W ELT620AWT PSU for use with the DFI LanParty nForce4 SLI-DR Expert motherboard, and it was displaying the exact problem you describe after I powered off and then on again. After I had waited a certain period of time (not determined), it would then power on again correctly. It must have had something to do with the voltage / circuit protection features of the PSU kicking in and only allowing you to switch on again after a specific cooldown time.

I have since purchased a Hiper Type R HPU-4K580 power supply unit, and it functions perfectly.

I was using a handpicked X-Connect 500w that offered rails spot on under high loads, I now have an Antec NeoHE in the wings for my board... but thats on newegg rma, I'll post when I get the new board, the old board was long since dead when it was doing that lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gline

im not sure - but i think my expert may have killed my cpu. It was working fine for about an hour then i switched off pc, switched back on and the 4 diagnostic lights stay on and no beeps or nothing....... Everything was on stock voltage and no overclocking, it is an fx55 (SD core). I reset bios with the jumper, still nothing.. Can this be caused by anything else? dammit.. this is doing my head in

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I know the feeling exactly. . . . Two days ago I set a really high HTT (like 450MHz) and high Vcore (around 1.70V) and suddenly the board turned off and wouldn't turn back on again. I cleared the CMOS, moved the RAM, unplugged and replugged the PSU but still nothing. . . I thought my Opteron 148 was gone and I was another victim of "Expert CPU murder." I was even ready to post here that I had another casuality to report . . . But instead I searched around in google for some answers and found this thread. It explains how to do a total CMOS clearing. . . . I tried it and lo and behold, it worked! Of course, I was stoked. My Opty was alive!

Moral of the story. . . . If anyone thinks their board or CPU just died on the Expert, before you freak out and cry out "murder!" please try the full CMOS clear described in this thread first. ;)

Clockgen cannot make FID/VID values adjustment to Opteron & FX-60,At least I have tried!:) :)

Mine killed my UTT mushkins and 3 DIMM slots but once I RMAed it, Its been running fine for 2 weeks.

Mine was running great at first. No problem during windows installation, then my 2gb ballistix also ran memtest without problem at 250mhz 3-3-3-6 2.6v for 7 hrs. Then when i started to overclock my x2, the problem arise. I started with 2.45ghz at 1.425vcore in bios, but smartguardian detected only 1.39. 30mins OCCT no problem, stressprime also no problem. But it hanged everytime i wanted to play game. I ran 3dmarks05 and it also hanged. So I assumed the vcore was not enuff and i increased it. But I still cant get it stable eventhough my x2 was pretty stable on my Abit Fatal1ty AN8 SLI (yeah u read that, ABIT) Then i set divider to 200/250 htt since my ram is rated at 250mhz. Memtest in bios again pass without any errors but my windows hanged. Then i press restart button, but it wont restart. I had to switched off the power button on my PSU and after 10 secs, when I switched on my pc it wont start. I had to switch off and on the PSU again then only I can bring my PC to life.

So what do u guys think..

1) Ram problem? (passed memtest at 7hrs without any error).

2) CPU problem? (no problem at all @ 2.5ghz on my ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 SLI)

3) PSU problem? (also no problem with my abit fatal1ty but i heard someone said enermax is totally not good on DFI.. issit true?)

4) Expert problem? (difficult to reboot)

Thx alot~!

Thought that I would post my time with the expert board. Was a little hesitant to start out using my opty, so I put in my old 3200 and some OCZ 3200 rev 2 tcc5 ram. Loaded up optimized defaults and loaded windows no problem. Everything stable at stock. Set 10x250 with 150 divider, no problems. Ran this way for a few days, then decided to overclock more. This is were my trouble begins. This chip and ram combo was prime stable 10x265 1.4+113% on ultra-d. So I set 10x250, no divider, and get blue screen before even getting to windows. I know ram timings are different, but I had everything way loose. So kept going lower. Finally could get into windows at 10x235, but fail even 1m pi. Flash to 11-25 bios. No help. Tried with lower multiplier, with more vcore, with vdimm all the way to 3.0v, all different ram settings. Played with all drive strenths, no luck. While doing all of this, had to clear cmos many times to get to boot again. Put in my gskill, which will do 300 2.5-4-4-8 easily. Still couldn't get anything above 235 stable. Had another lockup. clear cmos agian, now any change in bios from default settings results in no boot. I was hoping this would be a better board. My ultra-d is good, but sometimes has a mind of its own. It can be stable for weeks, then not, and its like starting over. I don't consider myself a pro at this, but I'm not a noob either. I can't believe that this is all my fault. I still think DFI offers the best options for overclocking, but I don't think a stable overclock is too much to ask. Hell, my AN7 has been running 11x235 for over a year and half. After working with this, and my ultra-d, I think I will try something other than DFI. Maybe one of the new ati based boards.

im just wondering... can someone get 300x9/10 2.5-3/4-3-6/7 1T 32m stable on expert with tccd 2x512? anyone? i cant - not 1T... i spent 2 weeks of testing - and nothing - i mean nothing - not even close - no matter what voltage, timings, bios, cooling i use!!! max stable 1T 270x10 :mad:
on sli-d no problems 290x10 or 300x9 1T

i had the same problem as you,so sold the Gskill 4400FC and buy a pair of OCZ VX to work at 250 2-2-2-5 at 3.3 vdimm an as far as i know the performance is the same except the memory bandwidth.:slapass:

Running stock bios on revision A02 board. Memory is giving me a hard time, need to change that out. Mild overclock (2.5Ghz) and rock steady.

My Expert running with no problem since first day ! I can push my Venice 3000+ E6 to 2600MHz with 1.6v vcore ! I love it !!!

i initially had some problems with the board raid setup and whatnot and just went back to my ultra-d for 3 weeks now, and just today i went to reintall it to give it another go, everything booted up all right, installed a fresh copy of windows, and smelled a wierd burning smell then poof up comes smoke from the pwm area and the computer died, im not trying the board with another cpu or anything just incase, but i just did try the cpu and ram and it works in my ultra-d.

RMA time!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bullit

i had the same problem as you,so sold the Gskill 4400FC and buy a pair of OCZ VX to work at 250 2-2-2-5 at 3.3 vdimm an as far as i know the performance is the same except the memory bandwidth.:slapass:

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i love my corsair ram :bows: its hard to sell good and well known ram when u never cant know will your next ram be as good as previous ram. also i know that ch/bh/utt ram is more effective for futuremark benchmarks than tccx... is it true?
so - im waiting for expert/tccd wunder-screenshot :)

OPB killed two more CPUs on the Expert - I managed to kill an Expert board but no other casualty on my end ( besides a stick of mushkin redline 512mb ram previously...)
EDIT:
SOmeone can add a vote one more bad vote on Expert for me....and 4 for OPB - lol

Got another expert up and runnign for about 2 weeks with no issues at all :)

Yes it´s quite normal that just about all that finds their way will post about their problems whereas for people it´s running fine for they will post more when it get messed up...

But still the problem is not that there is problems but the severity of them. My Expert died and took my CPU/RAM and what not with it is not something I like to hear...

It´s to much of that really. For me it needs to be stable 2 years at least not two weeks...

Now I know there is a big chance I will get a expert that runs fine for two years but still...

And I do know I can get issues with any mainboard on the market but I have never ever had it happen that a mainboard has killed any of my hardware before...

But apart from that how many here have gotten stable. Not experts that can make insane overclocking and run some benchies but I meen stable 24/7 gaming computer with good overclock?

My DFI Lanparty Nforce 3 250 GB was never that. My Shuttle AN50R was but how is the Expert doing in comparison?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bullit

i had the same problem as you,so sold the Gskill 4400FC and buy a pair of OCZ VX to work at 250 2-2-2-5 at 3.3 vdimm an as far as i know the performance is the same except the memory bandwidth.:slapass:

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so - i borrowed from my friend mushkin redline UTT 2x512. looks nice.
260x10 2-2-2-5 3.4v (bios setting 3,48) and its rock stable with tight subtimings.
sisoft sandra bandwith ~6900. is it ok? everest lattency ~39ns with auto/auto drive strenghts, 36ns with 7/4. seems that working drive strenghts for UTT on expert is 6-7/1-4

rdx200 died and took my 3700 with it so the mobo went for rma and when it came back my x800gto2 has stopped working so as soon as sapphire give me an rma no thats off too. im not too sure i want to put my fx57 in it now as i cant afford to lose that and dfi dont seem to care that the board kills other hardware.

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Originally Posted by Cossey

rdx200 died and took my 3700 with it so the mobo went for rma and when it came back my x800gto2 has stopped working so as soon as sapphire give me an rma no thats off too. im not too sure i want to put my fx57 in it now as i cant afford to lose that and dfi dont seem to care that the board kills other hardware.

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Thats bad news Cossey, sorry to hear. What bios version were you using?

the original one, i had one of the first batch of boards the cpu died within the first half an hour of using the board. im going to try it again with the latest bios and my old 3200 winchester and a pci gfx card then try and sort out whats happened with the gto2.

its a shame because on paper the board is miles better than my current neo2 but in reality its worse than useless.

RDX is a good board. My FX-57 gained 30 Mhz running on this board, now running @ 3.68Ghz vs. Ultra-D @ 3.65Ghz

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Originally Posted by G H Z

RDX is a good board. My FX-57 gained 30 Mhz running on this board, now running @ 3.68Ghz vs. Ultra-D @ 3.65Ghz

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Lol,
You gained 30mhz and I lost mhz with my 57's on the RDX-200. :)

Some odd reason it does not like any of my FX 55 or 57 San diego 90nm cpus,
beyond an certain point.
So, I ended up buying an 55 ClawHammer for this board to continue my
crossfire venture. Funny thing is, first 55 ClawHammer I come across
and its an 0442 GPMW :slobber: .

Just picked up the Expert after a tossup between that and the RDX.

I'm quite happy with this board... came back to DFI as it is currently the best available choice right now. I previously owned two DFI Ultra-D's that BOTH failed on me, so I was quite weary about purchasing another DFI board...

First Ultra-D: Incompatible with any PSU but an old AOpen (Fortron) 300W 20 pin PSU (with adapter). Somehow I managed to get it working once (I never power off unless doing a hardware change) with my X2, VX and Seasonic S12-500... turned off to install a HDD once and it never POSTed with anything besides the AOpen.

Second Ultra-D: Refused to boot after two days and took my Audigy 2ZS along with it.

After hearing so much praise about the Expert from someone with a very similar setup to mine, I bit the bullet and bought one last night. The only other boards I somewhat considering were the A8N32 and A8R-MVP... but people have said the vCore flux was wild (one of my main concerns for stable overclock).

My MSI K8N Neo4 Plat wasn't letting me push my X2 and 2x1024 D43 much past stock at all with voltage and tweaks, but the Expert works quite well.

Currently dual Priming: 10 x 260, 1.40 vCore in BIOS, Zalman 7000A HSF. 217 3-3-3-8-1T @ 2.75 vCore. When I left for work it was 5 hours and counting. Stock BIOS (11/02)

Hopefully it can match (or even surpass) my old Venice at 9 x 300.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dynasty

Lol,
You gained 30mhz and I lost mhz with my 57's on the RDX-200. :)

Some odd reason it does not like any of my FX 55 or 57 San diego 90nm cpus,
beyond an certain point.
So, I ended up buying an 55 ClawHammer for this board to continue my
crossfire venture. Funny thing is, first 55 ClawHammer I come across
and its an 0442 GPMW :slobber: .

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After some thorough testing tonight with some 270+ Mhz BH-5 I'm starting to dislike this board :D

It runs the GSkill awsome but I can't get this thing to run LL memory for crap.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by G H Z

After some thorough testing tonight with some 270+ Mhz BH-5 I'm starting to dislike this board :D

It runs the GSkill awsome but I can't get this thing to run LL memory for crap.

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Do you have the BH5 int he yellow slots?.... BH5 seems to like the yellow slots a bit better,,, more voltage,,, people says TCCD go into the orange slots,,,,

Sounds like most of those whose expert's and rdx's have died are using phase cooling. Condensation issue?

About to test my luck again in the next upcoming week, my RDX200 is inbound to Kansas after Newegg RMA replacement. Maybe I can get 3ghz stable :)

i had my 148 to 3ghz 273x11 6hrs prime . i was also higher than what i had achieved on my nf4 board. but maybe because i had to go through a whole nother learning curve with it

Quote:

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Originally Posted by G H Z

After some thorough testing tonight with some 270+ Mhz BH-5 I'm starting to dislike this board :D

It runs the GSkill awsome but I can't get this thing to run LL memory for crap.

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Try some 4000 VX or Redline. :)

Both my 4000 VX & XP 4000 Redline run better on my RDX,
then my BH-5/6 rams.

i get a better oc out of my rdx than may nf4 so it seems . alot easier to setup aswell then the early nf4's ( bought my ultra-d first week) . so far im happy

any rdx200 owners notice that thier mb's do the mem count on boot up and reset everytime unlike other mb's? now im not seeing a selection in the bios to stop this so im wanting to know if this is normal cause its kinda a pain in the arse...

peace perc,

well i havent really see that but i feel , may be my own pysch feelings that it takes longer to boot with the logo than w/o .

im not using the logo boot so maybe thats why i notice the mem count cause i can actualy see whats going on instead of looking at the logo. i looked all over the bios i cant find anything that will make it stop counting the memory every dammed time it boots? this cant be right...

peace perc,

maybe a quick post option or something?

running @ 280htt, prime stable for more than 24h, but 32m superPi can't pass...

CAn I change my vote to "Freaking Expert never been really stable, burned a PSU, not quite compatible with Seasonic, and now killed a San Diego 3700 after disabling SLi on the driver settings."

I am not a happy customer. Thank God for my little P3 laptop.

My second RDX is back.. churring away with my E6 San Diego as I type. :D

There are some people in serious denial over this issue on another forum <sigh>. And still the failures keep rolling in...

funny how everyone thought the old lanparties werent stable boards.

there is obviously something wrong here, if you are having what looks to be more then 2% of your boards failing its time to step up and at least pull your product until you figure out what the hell is going on.

especially when its a board in this price range.

everything in my system was good-to-go from the first time I hit the power button.

my first DFI, but it certainly wont be my last!

The only complaint I have at all is the bug that has the Expert reporting low temps. other than that, no problems at all, and im lovin it!

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Originally Posted by Revv23

funny how everyone thought the old lanparties werent stable boards.

there is obviously something wrong here, if you are having what looks to be more then 2% of your boards failing its time to step up and at least pull your product until you figure out what the hell is going on.

especially when its a board in this price range.

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I think its not nowhere near 2% cus prolly the pissed crappy board owners are more eager to post here.

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Originally Posted by slow'puter

not quite compatible with Seasonic...

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In what way?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sume4

I think its not nowhere near 2% cus prolly the pissed crappy board owners are more eager to post here.

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Hard to say i guess, but from the looks of this poll almost 30% of the boards that XS members have are failing, and several are taking things with it.

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Originally Posted by -.-PhanTom-.-

In what way?

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It seems that the Seasonic unit I have is not controlling its voltage well. I find more stability with the OCZ than with the S12.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Revv23

Hard to say i guess, but from the looks of this poll almost 30% of the boards that XS members have are failing, and several are taking things with it.

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Not really.

When the poll was first made we had dozens of people from around the net sign up just to report problems with the board. The issue with this was that all the original trouble reports (with dead hardware) were only here on XS. No other major OC forums reported CPU deaths or anything similar. Accordingly, everyone with "an issue" flocked here to XS to report trouble.

The results are indeed very skewed.

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Originally Posted by mdzcpa

Not really.

When the poll was first made we had dozens of people from around the net sign up just to report problems with the board. The issue with this was that all the original trouble reports (with dead hardware) were only here on XS. No other major OC forums reported CPU deaths or anything similar. Accordingly, everyone with "an issue" flocked here to XS to report trouble.

The results are indeed very skewed.

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I see, I guess that changes things. Still, the fact that people are coming here with reports about dead CPU/ram even today makes me not want to use this board, as i dont want to take any chance of getting a bad board. If i kill something i want it to be my fault. Not faulty engineering. i guess its just a personal choice.

Pardon me for intruding but the main reason people are still buying this board is its overclocking capabilities.Even the MSI Diamond + cant beat it by far as we seen in the review in here.The asus seems to have not been able to overclock that high too and has basic layout problems.My first thought seeing the DFI board was excellent layout and at last 4 phase pwm circuitry-100% japan caps.(though x16 sli would be welcome too)
On the other hand beeing just close into upgrading my old 754 rig(a64 Clawhammer C0 :slapass: 10x250,Dfi nf3 250gb,2x512 3700eb,X850xtpe 570-610)to a opteron 170,2x1gb tracer( which i bought last day before they were off :) ),XFX GTX256 i stand to think why should i risk to buy a DFI board that is responsible for these monstrosity killings of other hardware parts :stick:.
After seeing all these people having problems, something telling me dfi is doing something in secret( i hope so),or else their credibility would go below the lowest basement of scyscraper.
So im asking all the "crazy" people here that lost one Expert :toast: ; are you ready to try out a new one or gone to a model less overclockable but more life time warrantied from another mobo manufacturing company?

I think those who've had their Experts died bought new ones (or RMA'd them) to replace the dead ones. I haven't heard of a dead one lately, so after initial paranoia, I'm getting one for the awsome layout, 4-phase, and OC ability.

The first RDX200 I got from the 'egg, purchased a few days after it was first offered was a dud. RMA'd the board, and it runs like a champ. Very satisfied. Have yet to get the $$$ to give crossfire a shot.

Expert day 1, everything fine so far. Updated to 12/7 (now official already) bios which obviously solves cpu killing problem.

For what it's worth, we've had very few returns on Expert boards (<2% or so) but a TON of returns on the Crossfire boards (~50%). I regret ever stocking the crossfire boards, they ended up costing us an arm and leg.

That being said, I hear the new revision works much better, and people are having FAR fewer problems. I'd be interested to see... but either way, I'm not stocking them anymore.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TankGuys

For what it's worth, we've had very few returns on Expert boards (<2% or so) but a TON of returns on the Crossfire boards (~50%). I regret ever stocking the crossfire boards, they ended up costing us an arm and leg.

That being said, I hear the new revision works much better, and people are having FAR fewer problems. I'd be interested to see... but either way, I'm not stocking them anymore.

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lol yes, the crossfire boards seemed like they were trouble at first.

I havent heard much lately though.


Only issue I have with the expert is the Vcore temps. totally wrong and they wont fix it.

As heading says, a few weeks ago turned pc on everything was fine, to it switched it self of, never turned on again. I heard a buzzing noise though just after it switched off. Was using latest offical bios also.

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Originally Posted by Alex10

As heading says, a few weeks ago turned pc on everything was fine, to it switched it self of, never turned on again. I heard a buzzing noise though just after it switched off. Was using latest offical bios also.

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Man, sorry about the loss. :(

That's pretty scary to think that one day I could turn on my system and "poof!" there goes my Opty.

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Originally Posted by Pedro Rocha

On the Expert
VCore=1,77v (maximum)
VDimm=3,6v (maximum and voltemetered)
RAM=Corsair BH5

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Thats extreme, I can see why it died

Its weird but i have better stability and overlocking with original bios EDB02.Second best was e704bta.Weird is that 12/7 crapped out didnt try the rest from Tmod boot cd.The known 623 from sli dr exists for expert or not?
I have heard that there is a danger using old bios for killing cpu or memory.I ve heard the last one is practically safe.Which one is that statement reffered to,704bta2 or EDC07