DFI RDX200 CF-DR First look

Let's clear the air of the B.S. and focus on facts pertaining to the chipset side of things which is what I am involved in and can speak with certainty.

First of all, on Nvidia doing and ATI not. B.S. plain and simple. That's what Nvidia wants you to believe. Let's look at the bigger picture.

Nvidia has been around in the AMD channel market for a while now and is most well known there. But what about anywhere else? ATI specifically focused on the OEM market and hit that first on both the AMD and Intel fronts at the PCI-E market transition. This was the plan and it worked very well. But don't let me try to convince you of that, just check the Mercury numbers ;) Our market share has increased rapidly and this will only continue. ATI has pumped out more chips in the last year than anyone else; namely RS480, RX480, RS482, RD480, RS400, RC410, RD400, SB400, SB450 and a few unannounced ones are pending. The fact that channel motherboards are appearing later on is a simple result of the motherboard vendors' design cycle. Remember that the whole Xpress 200G family of products has been shipping in droves for a very long time to OEMs. The channel will follow. It was never and still isn't a chipset issue.

On the flip side, where are the green guys in the Intel IGP market? Nothing there. What about the AMD IGP market? Nothing there neither except a in any significant way (speaking of paper launches, where is the C51G?). So when you ask the question "who's doing?", look at the whole picture, not just a portion of it.

As for the green guys' dual x16 implementation, anyone who knows anything about computer architecture will tell you it's a hack job. It's an amalgamation of existing chips to get dual graphics ports and nothing more. True dual x16 bandwidth is not achieved even on paper. Secondly, what happens when an I/O device (like a SATA drive) needs data? Even more bandwidth is stolen from the lower graphics port. Is there anyone that can demonstrate that dual x16 actually improves performance in any way? In fact, what happens to I/O performance of southbridge devices when 2 cards are being used and active? Has anyone measured that? ;) The flaws are numerous.

Our policy is to not comment on unannounced products, but there is something coming. Overclockers, get ready. Gamers, get ready. Now back to the topic at hand...RDX200.

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Originally Posted by Tony

The issue Jason is the NV option is not true 16x X2, if you read how they implememnted the technology you will see its actually a compromise. Then to move on they do not run the chipsets at actual LDT speeds so you have a performance drop there also.

Im not taking any sides but im waiting to see what ATI do with their 16x X2 before i go buy an NV board...as the ATI just may be a little better.

Now, to comment about NV are doing it and ATI are just talking the good talk you are partially correct, ATI are behind, but the fact is they also have been looking at whats there already and seeing if they can do it better.

Rememeber i get board here to test and to show you guys, they are retail boards, nothing special, nothing cherry picked and from now on they will have either ATI or NV chipsets, which can only be good for the consumer.

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Originally Posted by Grayskull

Our policy is to not comment on unannounced products, but there is something coming and it will bring new capabilities. Overclockers, get ready. Gamers, get ready. Now back to the topic at hand...RDX200.

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overclockers get ready bit cought my eye :fact: .....you got something superspecial coming up?......damn once i get the expert i really don't want to be tempted until M2 damn it

on the current mobo.....why in the world would ATI not include Sata2 controller with it or is this DFI's call?

DFI recognized a good thing when they saw it and duplicated the memory power delivery section of ATI Grouper/Halibut. The component selections are a little different based on what I can see on the DFI board but the components used are equivalent. There is over 5 A VTT drive capability at 100C.

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Originally Posted by brandinb

so have you found anything yet?? you are looking to see if this board will have the vtt issue you found on the dfi nforce 4 boards outnow right?? do tell if you find the answear as i really need a rock solid board and my dfi right now well it isnt rock solid. its fine for gaming but at full oc it is never rock solid only flakey in very strange times like outlined in your mobo mods thread!
keep us updated!




also tony do you know of an nvidia based dfi board with 1 16x pci-e slot but with the same volt regulation and power circutry of these boards??? that is what im looking for this board but with only one pci-e16 slot and a lower price point because of it!!!!!!!

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Motherboard vendors dictate onboard features, not the chipset suppliers.

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Originally Posted by dinos22

overclockers get ready bit cought my eye :fact: .....you got something superspecial coming up?......damn once i get the expert i really don't want to be tempted until M2 damn it

on the current mobo.....why in the world would ATI not include Sata2 controller with it or is this DFI's call?

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Originally Posted by Grayskull

Motherboard vendors dictate onboard features, not the chipset suppliers.

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that was a dumb decision whoever made the call

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Originally Posted by dinos22

that was a dumb decision whoever made the call

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We talk about DFI board build with ATI chipset here...not ATI board. Let them work out some data and you can find out yourself if you got the board :)
I'll post results later today with -90s C performance on this board...without any real benchs its hard to tell. Imo, it will surpass SLI-DR with BH/UTT...
One thing about SLI-DR....it survived 2 months straight run..6/7 hours daily with cascade...

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Originally Posted by dinos22

that was a dumb decision whoever made the call

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I would agree with you if this is going to be their topline ATI chipset mthbrd, but somehow I dont believe it will be. If it does end up being their topline mthbrd then that was a dumb decision!!!!

Why put old tech on a new mobo? To save costs! I see this mobo becoming something like the cheaper varients of NF4, over a period of time ofcourse!

[OFFTOPIC...sortof]

umm, during the whole however many months that ati hasnt released a gfx chip, hasnt released the ATI chipset as quickly as it wanted, they know nVidia is in a position to one up them, and they are probably planning ahead, doing something to show up nvidia, and this is more a mobo thread im sure, so nVidia with their nForce range is a performance chipset, ati's shipsets have been aimed squarely @ the OEM market...so they gotta start from ground up. and in all possibility, could have a next generation ready to come out to show up nVidia, when they do release the generation after nF4 expert (i think thats what it is anyway...)

because btw, Expert or whatever it is, is only using a hacked 8x2, not 16x2, so im pretty sure, that this generation is designed to top off nF4 sli/possibly expert. and then nVidia could already be hard at work, trying to release something which is fully 16x2

and as greyskull has said

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overclockers get ready

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seems to me, ati has definitly been hard at work...

as greyskull has said, nVidia has probably just done a hackjob on the 16x2 slots, and even if the next generation of ati's performance chipset turns out to be a dud, they have been growing steadily and are fairly well known in the OEM market, and have also (i think) signed a deal not too long ago with intel so that they can include their integrated gfx chipsets in their motherboards, ati, doesnt need to release any overclocking boards to keep themselves in business, some business is almost entirely based on it :p: but i think more than anything, they want to show up nVidia, which is why they are putting out these motherboards...

soz if it doesnt make sense, have to go

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Originally Posted by Grayskull

Our policy is to not comment on unannounced products, but there is something coming. Overclockers, get ready. Gamers, get ready. Now back to the topic at hand...RDX200.

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Whilst im probably not going to get an answer to this its worth asking anyway. :p:

how long is the new stuff likely to be? are we talking couple of weeks/a month/ a couple of months?

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Originally Posted by Grayskull

Our policy is to not comment on unannounced products, but there is something coming. Overclockers, get ready. Gamers, get ready. Now back to the topic at hand...RDX200.

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id honestly rather have not known about this... as when i jump on halibut, i was planning on riding it all the way to M2, or at least i wanted to think thats what i was doing for a minute... its pretty sweet to hear this, but id avoid talking more about it just for sake of avoiding competition with the boards that still arent available

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Originally Posted by Grayskull

Let's clear the air of the B.S. and focus on facts pertaining to the chipset side of things which is what I am involved in and can speak with certainty.

First of all, on Nvidia doing and ATI not. B.S. plain and simple. That's what Nvidia wants you to believe. Let's look at the bigger picture.

Nvidia has been around in the AMD channel market for a while now and is most well known there. But what about anywhere else? ATI specifically focused on the OEM market and hit that first on both the AMD and Intel fronts at the PCI-E market transition. This was the plan and it worked very well. But don't let me try to convince you of that, just check the Mercury numbers ;) Our market share has increased rapidly and this will only continue. ATI has pumped out more chips in the last year than anyone else; namely RS480, RX480, RS482, RD480, RS400, RC410, RD400, SB400, SB450 and a few unannounced ones are pending. The fact that channel motherboards are appearing later on is a simple result of the motherboard vendors' design cycle. Remember that the whole Xpress 200G family of products has been shipping in droves for a very long time to OEMs. The channel will follow. It was never and still isn't a chipset issue.

On the flip side, where are the green guys in the Intel IGP market? Nothing there. What about the AMD IGP market? Nothing there neither except a in any significant way (speaking of paper launches, where is the C51G?). So when you ask the question "who's doing?", look at the whole picture, not just a portion of it.

As for the green guys' dual x16 implementation, anyone who knows anything about computer architecture will tell you it's a hack job. It's an amalgamation of existing chips to get dual graphics ports and nothing more. True dual x16 bandwidth is not achieved even on paper. Secondly, what happens when an I/O device (like a SATA drive) needs data? Even more bandwidth is stolen from the lower graphics port. Is there anyone that can demonstrate that dual x16 actually improves performance in any way? In fact, what happens to I/O performance of southbridge devices when 2 cards are being used and active? Has anyone measured that? ;) The flaws are numerous.

Our policy is to not comment on unannounced products, but there is something coming. Overclockers, get ready. Gamers, get ready. Now back to the topic at hand...RDX200.

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All that sounds dandy, but the bottomline fact is more than likely you'll have to wait to buy ATI products. ATI has put out lots of products I can read about on the internet, but I can't buy it until months later. So much so that by the time they are available its time to move on to something else. I have been using ATI cards for more than 4 years now and have been satisfied. But the reality is ATI is about as dependable for launching a product in reasonable time as me going out and buying a Unicorn horse. I read about grouper back in July or May, lets just say a long time ago, its darn near Christmas time.

I actually think half the issues with Grouper and Halibut were that they are built without compromise and in reality are NOT cheap to manufacture. Remember Taiwanese companies are all about making nice profits and to make a board like Grouper and be competitive would eat into their margins....so they design their own instead.
We saw Sapphire downgrading components on grouper, this was all due to board manufacturing costs.

What we need is a small manufacturer to make boards without compromise, issue is would you guys be willing to pay the price or would you just complain that $200 or so is just to much?

If there really was a difference in end performance, I'd do it.

if you mean an OCZ mobo tony, then im all ears hehe

no but seriously, if a board like that were released, it would need to justify its price with better performance then the cheaper mobo's, or at least helluva lot better features, I.E. no using the sil3114.

you know us here at XS don't mind paying more for the good stuff, but itll really need to be the good stuff, i mean, abit's boards all have quality components, but they cant clock nearly as good as dfi's offerings that use lower quality components.

and if you used all of the good stuff but only equaled that of a CF-BT or whatever, then it wont do well, people wont pay a premium for brand name caps when generic ones are working fine.

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Originally Posted by Revv23

if you mean an OCZ mobo tony, then im all ears hehe

no but seriously, if a board like that were released, it would need to justify its price with better performance then the cheaper mobo's, or at least helluva lot better features, I.E. no using the sil3114.

you know us here at XS don't mind paying more for the good stuff, but itll really need to be the good stuff, i mean, abit's boards all have quality components, but they cant clock nearly as good as dfi's offerings that use lower quality components.

and if you used all of the good stuff but only equaled that of a CF-BT or whatever, then it wont do well, people wont pay a premium for brand name caps when generic ones are working fine.

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Totally agree.
Paying more is OK, but we want better results. Otherwise it doesn't make sense

You guys shouldn't be complaining about 200$.
CF-DR is on preorder in Denmark. About 300.

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Originally Posted by SlackeR

You guys shouldn't be complaining about 200$.
CF-DR is on preorder in Denmark. About 300.

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I thought along a similar line, luckily it's only about $250 in the UK so i get off slightly better.
$200 for me would have me dancing around the room lol.

G

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Originally Posted by Master_G

I thought along a similar line, luckily it's only about $250 in the UK so i get off slightly better.
$200 for me would have me dancing around the room lol.

G

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yeah i've noticed that UK guys get ripped off pretty badly.......but we are not too far behind either heheh

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Originally Posted by Dumo

I'll post results later today with -90s C performance on this board...without any real benchs its hard to tell.

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We waiting for your results :woot:

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2572

anandtech's article

Don't the ~90k AQ3 screens look familiar? They were posted here, a different CPU was used IIRC.

There's no mass consipiracy here, this was a fairly collaborative review, not the typical AT style (from what we know at least). More results in the coming days....

EDIT: between all the AQ3 runs the settings were left the same (other than the RAM configs).

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Originally Posted by MickeyMouse

So they say. ;)

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:shakes:

They are so much fun, well lets the board in the handds of us mere mortals.

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Originally Posted by MickeyMouse

So they say. ;)

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For the 1t runs we were using an FX57 at its stock speed, for the review a 4000+ was used.

That is why the scores are lower in the review than the 4x1dimm 1t results.

No conspiracy here, please just ask the correct questions and we will give you the answers.

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Originally Posted by Troman

LOl i love these discussions :D
:toast:

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I'm backing out of it right now....I don't want to get in trouble :nono:

Anyway, at the price of $240+~$30 of shipping, Americans can get the board and use it tomorrow....in fact, you could have ordered yesterday and have had it today!

It should be any day now before we get more reports and results :toast:

And thank you Tony for explaining the details....:up: