First Desktop ATI Xpress 200 Mobos arrive for 939... and 754 !!!

Hey guys. Was just checking out the prices on different mobos on Newegg as usual when I discovered that Powercolor(TuL) has become the first ATI partner to release desktop versions (uptil now they were mATX) of its ATI Xpress 200P chipset with 2Ghz HTT support ;) for 939 and a PCI-E variant for the 754 too :eek: :

TuL AX480A-GF Socket 939 RADEON XPRESS 200P ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Newegg: Linky
Manufacturer's Website: Linky
http://images10.newegg.com/productim...190-003-02.JPG


TuL A480A7-VF Socket 754 ATI Radeon XPRESS 200 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Newegg: Linky
Manufacturer's Website: Linky
http://images10.newegg.com/productim...190-001-02.JPG

Looks like these boards are FINALLY here...and both for under $100 ;) which is especially a steal for 754 owners wanting PCI-E who, till now, have had to buy the asus k8n4-e for $120. And for 939 Owners, no need to waste money on the, to say the least, not so overclocking friendly RS480-M boards from MSI and ECS :rolleyes:

Enjoy :)

Perkam

Isn't Xpress 200 the ones with NO overclocking options at all?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DamienKC

Isn't Xpress 200 the ones with NO overclocking options at all?

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Not anymore...the RS480 Chipset seen in the ECS and MSI mobos were just not correct implementations of ATI's chipset. Grayskull himself said not to judge performance of the chipset by mATX boards...looks like the desktop boards are here...and on Newegg. :D

Perkam

Wow, that's cool. Any voltage info on the TuL 939 board? Specifically ram? Got some UTT that wants some high volt lovin' :D

We have 2 sapphire boards in sweden, in stock.
But i have no idea how good they are.

Only $92... sweet. :)
Though I doubt these will overclock very good; they look so cheap, like a budgetboard. No heatsink, nothing interesting to draw attention. Hope I'm wrong though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ubermann

We have 2 sapphire boards in sweden, in stock.
But i have no idea how good they are.

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Link to picture?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ubermann

We have 2 sapphire boards in sweden, in stock.
But i have no idea how good they are.

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I imagine they'd be better at overclocking considering the prototype board by sapphire with 4v vdimm and all. But the only thing with these boards is that they need bios updates from the manufacturers or ATI :(

Perkam

I'll definately wait a little longer for DFI's offering. Do you trust any other manufacturer to make an uber o/c board?

Went to their site, no info at all about them.
But i found this press release:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/pressrelease/Pure.pdf

"Pure" seems to be the new name of the boards (the ones we are waiting for)

I really hope a bios puts in some oc options

i want to see sapphire mobo these looks nice to sff

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xenolith

I'll definately wait a little longer for DFI's offering. Do you trust any other manufacturer to make an uber o/c board?

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LOL so true ;)

But I found a review in Russian here: http://www.3dnews.ru/motherboard/tul...a-gf/index.htm . Unfortunately, I dont know how to link a Babel Fish Translated website :( . Here are some Bios shots though:

http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/bios.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/bios_memory1.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/bios_memory2.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/...t_memclock.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/bios_health.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/bios_cool.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/...lect_multi.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/bios_select_fsb.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/...ect_vcore1.jpg
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/...ect_vcore2.jpg

...and their stable overclock with a 3500+:
http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/9845/tul_ax480_274.gif

Hope that helps.

Perkam

We get it all in this bios, im 99,99 % sure =)

They are using AMI bios which limits what you can actually do with them, I have modded the Award bios to suit my needs before ...AMI are to risky to mod, imo. If and when they were/are to implement an onboard video into one of these boards ....it would be a good all in one board for a standard system for the average user.

WC

I like to see a northbridge on a socket 939 board...

Seems more "natural" in some way :D

I would be very happy if this board can oc to 300+ htt :hrhr:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stryg

I like to see a northbridge on a socket 939 board...
Seems more "natural" in some way :D

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You mean without the hs ?? I doubt that makes any diff. But here's a link to the NB at ATI's website: http://www.ati.com/products/radeonxpress200p/index.html .

I disagree that this is a "standard" board...not when you can take it to 274 fsb on initial bios. Also, they only gave the TCCD 2.6v, so its not bad at that vdimm.

Quote:

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I would be very happy if this board can oc to 300+ htt

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You can, with the right mem controller etc. Max fsb on the initial bios is 320fsb.

*fsb is interchangeable with HTT...srry

Perkam

Hmm... I've been looking to upgrade to a S754 PCI-E motherboard. Was originally going to give the Soltek K890-754G a shot, but I might try out this 200P S754 motherboard instead. :p

If I bite the bullet, I'll be sure to post my impressions on the board. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frostedflakes

Hmm... I've been looking to upgrade to a S754 PCI-E motherboard. Was originally going to give the Soltek K890-754G a shot, but I might try out this 200P S754 motherboard instead. :p

If I bite the bullet, I'll be sure to post my impressions on the board. :)

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Great to hear :up: But the oc experience shouldn't be as bad as most are making it to be, especially since a bios update is likely and hopefully it wont be a "bite the bullet" scenario ;)

Also the 754 Mobo has an X300 Onboard Vid Card...so if you have a 754 proc now, you dont need to buy a PCI-E card right away...u can upgrade now and buy one later ;)

Perkam

My thoughts exactly. If one of the first boards based on this chipset is getting 320HTT out of the box with a shipping BIOS... sign me up! ;)

And I'm using a PCI card now, but if I get the board I'll likely ditch it and stick with the onboard graphics until the time is right to purchase a PCI-E card. Just kind of curious if overclockability will be limited w/onboard VGA enabled.

Also curious about the dimensions of that NB heatsink on the S754 board. It looks kind of like it's wider than longer. Do these boards use a standard 37mm^2 sized heatsink and mounting holes? I'd like to maybe replace it with a Zalman if possible.

One more question, what's the difference between the SB on the S754 board and SB on the S939 board? :confused:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ubermann

We get it all in this bios, im 99,99 % sure =)

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Agreed, lots of config settings in there. But I didn't notice in Perkam's screenies where we can change the most important one... for us UTT fanboys anyway... VDIMM.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xenolith

Agreed, lots of config settings in there. But I didn't notice in Perkam's screenies where we can change the most important one... for us UTT fanboys anyway... VDIMM.

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Exactly. I'm holding off on ordering until I absolutely know how high the vdimm can get.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DamienKC

Exactly. I'm holding off on ordering until I absolutely know how high the vdimm can get.

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I've e-mailed TuL/Powercolor Support on the issue. Will post when they get back to me. But even this could change with a bios update.

EDIT: Have asked about vdimm on 939 board only. I'll e-mail them about the 754 board once they get back.

Perkam

Just found out both the 939 and 754 versions of the board are Sempron ready ;)

perkam

Silly question but what does this offer over a DFI NF4 :stick:

Nothing we know right now, but i really welcome a challenge for DFI.
We want war! its good for people that want computers to be faster and faster fast as hell :smoke: :bsod:

On paper and and on rumours it has everything DFI has. And they wanted to make noise about very stable power on it.
So we will se when someone get the board and show us something.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jiff

Silly question but what does this offer over a DFI NF4 :stick:

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ATI vs. Nvidia... need we say more?

And as Ubermann referred to, competition is always good because it means faster components and cheaper prices. :fact:

And if the rumors i've seen come to fruition, this chipset will be faster and cheaper. How much? We'll see...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jiff

Silly question but what does this offer over a DFI NF4 :stick:

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Do you mean the DFI NF4-D ?? This one: http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merch...ct_Code=110799

Well, a couple of things:

939 Mobo:
- ~$30 Price Diff
- Sempron 939 Support
- Small Perf Increase with ATI Cards
- Cousin of the upcoming AMR Chipset - the RD480 (this is the RX480)
- 2ghz HTT bus support in a price range which consists mostly of 1ghz HTT boards
- 2 Firewire ports

The 754 Board:
- Affordable PCI-E alternative for 754 with brand new chipset
- 1Ghz HTT support for 754 boards (even the dfi ut 250 has 800mhz HTT)
- Onboard Video for 754 board

Stuff It doesnt have:

- SATA2 Support
- No alternative to NV Raid (Though it does support RAID 0/1)
- Only 2 Dimm slots on the 754 boards

Brief Pro/Con there. Hope it helps. Also, i just want to clear up that if I said previously that this was the cheapest 754 PCI-E alternative, it isnt, but its clearly one of the best ones.

Perkam

not worried, my mobo still owns...lol but i'm glad that more company's are seeing interest in 754

I sure dont hope the 320 Ht is the max on that board. dont know...but it shows 320 on the screenie ????

I wonder why ATI/Sapphire chose to release the mATX and lower end versions of this board before the higher end stuff!?

Thats opposite to how they release viddy cards.

They never made any info for them either.
Check this bios shots from ati bios, from late 2004.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2269&p=4

Guys Im going to help you out.

The board you are all waiting for is made by Sapphire, and its due very soon. It may feature the white PCB you saw on the cebit board but that may change.

As far as i know it comes with an Award bios now...i saw both bios files working (both AMI and Award) so they will probably favor the one thats more overclock friendly.

Its taken Sapphire a while to get these ready as it seems ATI were "fine tuning" the chipset...all is good i now hear.

So with luck we will all be playing soon, and hopfully we will have the comparison to the DFI we all want to see.

What i hope for this board is to be able to clock at 300+ HTT prime stable, Like the DFI NF4ultra :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bigtoe

Guys Im going to help you out.

The board you are all waiting for is made by Sapphire, and its due very soon. It may feature the white PCB you saw on the cebit board but that may change.

As far as i know it comes with an Award bios now...i saw both bios files working (both AMI and Award) so they will probably favor the one thats more overclock friendly.

Its taken Sapphire a while to get these ready as it seems ATI were "fine tuning" the chipset...all is good i now hear.

So with luck we will all be playing soon, and hopfully we will have the comparison to the DFI we all want to see.

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:eek: !!!!!!!

Official Confirmation that its coming !!! :slobber:

Thx so much bigtoe :D Though I myself am getting weary of Sapphire gradually becoming the monopolizing partner of ATI and I would'nt mind Powercolor, Gigabyte or MSI releasing their own uber mobos to go against the line of DFI NF4s standing at gate of Nvidia's Chipset Success.

Perkam

Some not-so-encouraging news from (Really Helpful :) ) TuL/Powercolor Support...Max Vdimm is 2.8v (which is enough for TCCD imo)

Apparently the ones competing with the DFI NF4s hopefully will be coming along later and priced higher than these, which are meant as budget alternatives.

At any rate, 2ghz htt support and what not for the price range AND as an alternative to the previous Xpress 200 offerings is no small accomplishment ;) .

Perkam

I hope the sapphire board comes out within a week, i dont think i can live w/o a gaming machine much longer...this laptop just isnt as much fun :D

2.8v is more than enough for ma TCCD. :D

Could you ask TuL/Powercolor if "San Diego" mobiles are supported on the S754 board? :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frostedflakes

2.8v is more than enough for ma TCCD. :D

Could you ask TuL/Powercolor if "San Diego" mobiles are supported on the S754 board? :)

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There are San Diego Mobiles for s754 ??? :confused:

Perkam

Check out the Xtreme Overclocking forum here on XS. There are 11 pages about these new mobiles. :D

I actually have one waiting, itching to be OC'd... hopefully my DFI will come back from RMA soon, or I'll just pick up one of these boards.

Quote:

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hopefully my DFI will come back from RMA soon, or I'll just pick up one of these boards.

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Hmmm...if you're talking about the DFI ut 250, then you WILL be biting the bullet if you buy one of these boards ;) The DFI is by far one of the best overclocking boards on any platform, and this is an initial offering on a yet-to-be proven chipset. Already, the 939 board has 2.8v vdimm and the dfi has ~3.2v, so I wouldn't put much hope into the Powercolor 754 board either.

However, if you still want to take the plunge cos of the features and the PCI-E compatibility AND the reliable onboard video, I can ask the tech support about the 754 board...Your call. You'd be the first one to review the board too ;)

Perkam

To be honest, I don't need 95% of the features DFI has to offer. My 3700+ has a 12x multi, so with air cooling I shouldn't need more than 240-250HTT. Because my chip is 90nm, and my goal is to keep my comp quiet, I won't likely take the processor over 1.4-1.5v, and TCCD should do fine up to 240-250MHz at 2.5-2.6v (or I may just divide and keep it 2-2-2-5), so a plethora of Vcore and Vdimm options aren't necessary. ;)

As long as the TuL board is stable and able to overclock to a reasonable FSB, I'd be game. It'd also be pretty sweet if it ran cooler than the DFI board (w/onboard VGA disabled, I'd expect it to heat up a little more with it enabled).

Does anybody have any idea about how the onboard X300 would perform? Would be pretty sweet if it was equivalent to Radeon 9600. I'd be able to get by on that for a while.

Np. I'll ask the Tech Support there and get back when I get an answer. Also, here is a review of the onboard video on these things: http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/...onboardgfx.htm . Not bad for integrated video, but its no 9600 ;) .

Perkam

I really appreciate. Thanks for the link. Definitely not bad for onboard video, but not nearly good enough for what I'd want to play. It would do as a temporary solution though.

Well, they got back saying they have never tested a Turion 64 cpu on the board, but will add it to their test plan :) Though it has native support for all A64s and Semprons, so Turion 64 should be no problem as well...Because its a new chipset, it may or may not need a bios update, but in case it doesnt and you DO buy one, I'm sure Powercolor or Newegg will help you out there.

Doesn't look all that grim IMO...even ozzimark's newark doesnt show up in CPUZ as a "Newark" so its still a pretty new processor on any platform, but the ATI chipset has been known to have support for dual core and what not, so this should be no different.

Perkam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hitmanx2

What i hope for this board is to be able to clock at 300+ HTT prime stable, Like the DFI NF4ultra :D

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Thats if you are lucky and have a DFI that will actually BOOT!!

The ATI Xpress 200 Chipset supports Turion64...but at most, your worries, frosted flakes, will be if a bios update is necessarry for the mobo to support it.

Perkam

i will wait if this board comes out within the week

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AMD-me

i will wait if this board comes out within the week

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Newegg has them in stock and ready to ship here ;) :

Powercolor/TuL 939 Board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813190003

Powercolor/TuL 754 Board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813190001

Hope that helps :D

Perkam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by perkam

Newegg has them in stock and ready to ship here ;) :

Powercolor/TuL 939 Board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813190003

Powercolor/TuL 754 Board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813190001

Hope that helps :D

Perkam

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I was referencing the sapphire :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AMD-me

I was referencing the sapphire :D

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That'll take a tad longer lol ;) :D

Perkam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by perkam

That'll take a tad longer lol ;) :D

Perkam

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Bug all, I guess I'll break and buy the DFI nf4, I cant wait any longer :slapass: ! :toast: :woot:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AMD-me

Bug all, I guess I'll break and buy the DFI nf4, I cant wait any longer :slapass: ! :toast: :woot:

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Well they're predicting June/July for the release of those mobos...the Powercolor board is out now.

The DFI nF4 is a great buy at any time. If you feel u need to get the Sapphire when it comes out, the dfi nf4 will go VERY fast in the FS forums so its a very liquid investment...and a good one at that.

Perkam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by perkam

Well they're predicting June/July for the release of those mobos...the Powercolor board is out now.

The DFI nF4 is a great buy at any time. If you feel u need to get the Sapphire when it comes out, the dfi nf4 will go VERY fast in the FS forums so its a very liquid investment...and a good one at that.

Perkam

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Thanks, you make me feel better about my purchase.

Now if my damn CC company would stop fusckin around and change my address, I can finnaly have my order filled :slapass:

The 754 Tul/Powercolor ATI Xpress PCI-E Mobos are now out of stock ;)

...and ONLY 1 939 PCI-E Board remaining !!!! (if no one gets it ... :wasntme: :D)

But yeah only one left ;)

Perkam

I cant wait to see some results on these, mabe ill be selling my DFI and getting a PURE :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AMD-me

I cant wait to see some results on these, mabe ill be selling my DFI and getting a PURE :D

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LOL A pure may not be out for a while...but I've been busy lately :( so I might be wrong.

Perkam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by perkam

LOL A pure may not be out for a while...but I've been busy lately :( so I might be wrong.

Perkam

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Yea, till then I'll have this awesome DFI :toast:

This is one hell of a retail package and a sexy PCB to boot :banana:

Last TuL 939 has been sold...both 754 and 939 boards are now out of stock ;)

Perkam

And not a single XS member ordered? Or are they all hiding. Come on, tell us how these boards are! ;)

WTF? They were out of stock, but now the TuL boards are not even listed on NewEgg and Chiefvalue. :confused:

Yeah, looks like only a no. of these boards were ever produced. For more, you'd want to wait until July for the real thing :)

Perkam

Oh noes! I need a motherboard now... :(

Am I right in thinking that these boards with the xpress chipset are crossfire ready?

I've got Tul AX480A-GF, but I have used it in my system only for a few days because of the early bios. I've been planning to put it back soon if I can get a newer bios for it. So not much overclocking experience with this one, but here's some pictures.

What exactly are the shortcomings of the early BIOS? It isn't unstable or anything like that is it? If you tinkered around with it even a little, what kind of overclock did you get?

Thanks. :)

Besides the cold boot issue and not working with SB2 audigy, the bios lacked option to change Vdimm. I received also a beta-bios, but that was corrupt, or something else went wrong and i had to change back to DFI. I'm thinking of trying it again if TUL sends me a new bios. So I didn't get to try any OC'ing yet...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kantonen

Besides the cold boot issue and not working with SB2 audigy, the bios lacked option to change Vdimm. I received also a beta-bios, but that was corrupt, or something else went wrong and i had to change back to DFI. I'm thinking of trying it again if TUL sends me a new bios. So I didn't get to try any OC'ing yet...

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darn :(

Bummer.

Hopefully a BIOS update will fix the issues you're having. Maybe I'll give it another month or two and see what other manufacturers have to offer for Xpress 200, or if TuL is able to fix problems from the release BIOS.

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

EDIT: Oh, one more question. How hot does the northbridge run? Cooler than NF4? As cool as Via K8T800/Pro and K8T890? What about the southbridge?

I didn't have a temperature monitoring program, so I can't tell the temperatures, but I'll look into it when I install it again. SB doesn't even have a HS... And some of the problems (like with audigy) could be because the board is a golden sample.

Hardwarezone has tested ECS's express 200P board and somewhat liked it.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...?cid=6&id=1600

Too bad they didn't tell much about OC'ing or bios.

I've also tested Tul Xpress 200P, at the time (was in March) v-core only 1,45V and no v-dimm options. They told me that they will put more options in the final version (the one i tested was beta), but one more thing i don't like was the imature drivers, windows takes to long to load...
Grab a translator if tou want
http://www.oc-zone.com/modules.php?n...onteudo&id=102

They sure do look lke a carbon copy of the MSI board...Which I hate with a passion. takes 10mins to clear the cmos...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kantonen

I didn't have a temperature monitoring program, so I can't tell the temperatures, but I'll look into it when I install it again. SB doesn't even have a HS... And some of the problems (like with audigy) could be because the board is a golden sample.

Hardwarezone has tested ECS's express 200P board and somewhat liked it.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...?cid=6&id=1600

Too bad they didn't tell much about OC'ing or bios.

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Kantonen, firstly, thx for sharing info on the board :) and :welcome: Welcome to XtremeSystems :welcome: :D

Also, is this the bios you were using on it : AX480A7-940317-2 ?? That's the latest one and you can find it here: http://www.tul.com.tw/global/bios.as...2=136&cat3=332 . Dont know if its been updated though :( .

Perkam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by perkam

Kantonen, firstly, thx for sharing info on the board :) and :welcome: Welcome to XtremeSystems :welcome: :D

Also, is this the bios you were using on it : AX480A7-940317-2 ?? That's the latest one and you can find it here: http://www.tul.com.tw/global/bios.as...2=136&cat3=332 . Dont know if its been updated though :( .

Perkam

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Thank you! And that looks like a later bios if 0317 is the date, unfortunately that's for the s754 model and bios for my board is still in the same release version.


http://www.tul.com.tw/global/bios.as...2=146&cat3=337

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kantonen

Thank you! And that looks like a later bios if 0317 is the date, unfortunately that's for the s754 model and bios for my board is still in the same release version.


http://www.tul.com.tw/global/bios.as...2=146&cat3=337

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Ah yes, I see that now...Tis a pity they dont have an updated bios...though they never mass produced these boards so that makes sense. I just hope things start rolling by June/July...cos I'm this close --> || to making a decision to go Intel.

Perkam

Jetway now has an Xpress 200 board on S754.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813153028

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frostedflakes

Jetway now has an Xpress 200 board on S754.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813153028

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Nothing to be excited about I'm afraid: :(

http://images10.newegg.com/productim...153-028-02.JPG

Perkam

Heh, sometimes I forget that this is XtremeSystems.org. You're right, Jetway isn't exactly synonymous high performance, but as with the TuL boards, I'd assume it includes a few modest overclocking options. Just figured somebody out there might be interested. :)

Here's a new review for this board:

http://www.techniz.co.uk/modules.php...content&id=257

It seems like they have got a new bios for it because it has 2.9V option for VDimm?!? :woot:

I gotta get that too and put this baby back into biz...

Does the southbridge support SATA II and NCQ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sgt_Strider

Does the southbridge support SATA II and NCQ?

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No it doesn't.

Subscribed :D

New bios for AX480A-GF at Tul site:

http://www.tul.com.tw/global/bios.as...2=146&cat3=337

if anyone who has this wants/cares to try. Unfortunately no release notes...