Foxconn Renaissance X58 Digital Life -Retail- (Core i7, Nehalem)

[Monstru]

Nice board, can't wait to see it perform.

[SaiNRuB]

Yep Achilleus! BloodRage is just around the corner

I like the sound of that, cant wait to see the quantum force x58.

[pajaa]

[...]

This motherboard is targeted to the mainstream market and it will not have all the features, that upcoming Quantum Force series X58 motherboard will have.
[...]

Mainstream with SAS?
The Quantum Force board will use the same deep black pcb?

[MomijiTMO]

I can't exactly explain this but the aesthetics of the mobo are fantastic. The digital life series are aimed at the more upper mainstream end [similar pricing to the deluxe range in ASUS] but have always looked bland and come with a stupidly high price. Hopefully this board will be at a reasonable price and oc fairly well. Some Quantum Force features would be great.

[BreeSpree]

Some dudes told me the x58 was going to support Sli. It sounded like bullcrap, and I guess now that you are testing one is the time to ask. The problem with me just dismissing this notion is that I was told by multiple people. And that is a lot of RAM slots.

Doesn't even look much like a mainboard, but like something you took out of a stereo or something. In a good way, it looks very streamlined.

[Slovnaft]

Yep Achilleus! BloodRage is just around the corner

ooo "BloodRage", catchy!

reminds me of a certain classic DFI board...

[saaya]

OK so first question.
WTF is that THING on the NB?!
...it looks like a .... speaker??

... it wasnt my idear and i recommended them to change it as soon as i saw it.

heheh so that you will be like this when u use it:



Saaya will understand that joke
Nice pics SF3D!

i still havent figured out who that guy is supposed to be, who made that drawing anyways, zenno? :P

so this board...doubles as...a....boombox?

guys, it's clearly more than meets the eye.
I would even say it's a ROBOT IN DISGUISE

its actually the first board of our new transformer series!
it can transform from a mainboard into a boombox with 5 simple steps

speaker???

that was my first thought as well - which socket revision is this slated to be?? and have they finished the debate on if x58 will be CF only or include SLI ??

possible I'm behind the times....
great looking board - thanks for the preview

what do you mean with socket revision?
x58 will be xfire only, but you can send some boards to nvidia to certify that sli works on them, then you gotta pay a one-time fee and then a fee for every board sold afaik.

As for which boards will be CF, which will be SLI and which ones will be both (if that's possible!?), will be dependent on licensing agreements and what features the manufacturers choose to enable i believe. For example, for a board to support SLI, even without the nForce200 chips, it will have to go through NVIDIA's SLI qualification process and this obviously costs money so could still continue to see the lower end of the multi-GPU market dominated by CF setups.

both is possible, if you certify for SLI you can still use xfire. and xfire works fine even when you use nf200 chips, so in any case, if it supports sli, it support xfire as well. the only exception beeing nvidias own chipsets

I heard the speaker is for the board to talk to you, ie tell you off for putting too much vmch etc

yes, itll beg for mercy if you turn up the volts too high

I tested those ram yesterday , and i get 2000mhz 7-6-5-15 32M stable for 2.1v on 4 sticks.

what board? pretty impressive for 4 sticks! how about 2 sticks?

I love the board, but the cooling makes the whole thing look like a cheap hi-fi.

: / i forwarded your feedback, thats all i can do unfortunately...

layout seems perfect, except the NB cooler, i don't like it, saaya be creative but not that much
BUT... if they focus on "digital life / digital home" support and looking, i can smell some quantum force x58 in the future, am i wrong?

hey, i didnt design that heatsink! :P

I can't exactly explain this but the aesthetics of the mobo are fantastic. The digital life series are aimed at the more upper mainstream end [similar pricing to the deluxe range in ASUS] but have always looked bland and come with a stupidly high price. Hopefully this board will be at a reasonable price and oc fairly well. Some Quantum Force features would be great.

thanks for the feedback, i forwarded it to the digital life team

Mainstream with SAS?
The Quantum Force board will use the same deep black pcb?

why not? and yes, BloodRage will be black pcb too

[massman]

BloodRage will be black pcb too

Black Blood? ... doesn't sound that healthy to me.

Petri, can you give any first impressions? Is it easy to work with in terms of overclocking? Will we need to use a different approach to reach the limits of the chips? Another approach to find the best working settings? Any info on your first LN2 results?

[saaya]

Black Blood? ... doesn't sound that healthy to me.

put on your glasses?

Petri, can you give any first impressions? Is it easy to work with in terms of overclocking? Will we need to use a different approach to reach the limits of the chips? Another approach to find the best working settings? Any info on your first LN2 results?

Nehalem works with a base clock which gets multiplied to create cpu clock, qpi clock and imc clock. other than amd which used 200Mhz as base, Intel is using 133Mhz as base. the base clock works pretty much like the fsb, as in cpu clocks is multiplier x Bclock. Just like with amds hyper transport the bus speed is created using the base clock and a bus multiplier.
So when you overclock the base clock to get a higher fsb and better throughput for the cpu, the qpi speed will come up as well.
so to max out the Bclock you need to lower the qpi multiplier, just like with amd... even when changing the qpi multiplier the max Bclock is around 220, so with the 920 you guys will be limited to 20x220=4400Mhz. Which is fine tho, to max out a chip on air the base clock limit is just fine, but when you go for ln2 or phase change the 220 will be limiting.

[MomijiTMO]

Thanks for the nehalem oc input saaya

[massman]

Nehalem works with a base clock which gets multiplied to create cpu clock, qpi clock and imc clock. other than amd which used 200Mhz as base, Intel is using 133Mhz as base. the base clock works pretty much like the fsb, as in cpu clocks is multiplier x Bclock. Just like with amds hyper transport the bus speed is created using the base clock and a bus multiplier.
So when you overclock the base clock to get a higher fsb and better throughput for the cpu, the qpi speed will come up as well.
so to max out the Bclock you need to lower the qpi multiplier, just like with amd... even when changing the qpi multiplier the max Bclock is around 220, so with the 920 you guys will be limited to 20x220=4400Mhz. Which is fine tho, to max out a chip on air the base clock limit is just fine, but when you go for ln2 or phase change the 220 will be limiting.

Okay, the basics are still similar to the things we already know: Increase Bclock to increase CPUfreq, QPIfreq and NBfreq. If I understand correctly, the Bclock will be limited to around 220MHz due to technology limitations, much like we see with the Phenom processors, which mostly hit the limit at 250Mhz, no matter what voltages are increased.

How about the QPI/NB freqs? What would be the limits on air? Will there be multipliers available to finetune these? Any special ratios we need to keep in mind (~AMD's NB/HT ratio)?

[massman]

For those that are interested in the bios options on other X58 boards, Coolaler posted detailed pics on OCX: http://www.ocxtreme.org/forumenus/sh...6634#post56634

[saaya]

Okay, the basics are still similar to the things we already know: Increase Bclock to increase CPUfreq, QPIfreq and NBfreq. If I understand correctly, the Bclock will be limited to around 220MHz due to technology limitations, much like we see with the Phenom processors, which mostly hit the limit at 250Mhz, no matter what voltages are increased.

the 220 isnt the limit i think, its the resulting qpi speed that, even when using the lowest qpi multiplier, is still too high.

How about the QPI/NB freqs? What would be the limits on air? Will there be multipliers available to finetune these? Any special ratios we need to keep in mind (~AMD's NB/HT ratio)?

higher qpi doesnt really help performance... just like with hypertransport the bandwidth is way more than you need... its only gonna be saturdated in the server segment i think

[Pt1t]

Sacha, Could you take pictures of inside of NB cooling ?

[SF3D]

I just flashed the latest bios and there is some nice improvements. Thanks Saaya!

Check your PM-

I will continue testing now

[saaya]

Sacha, Could you take pictures of inside of NB cooling ?

huh? what do you mean?

I just flashed the latest bios and there is some nice improvements. Thanks Saaya!

Check your PM-

I will continue testing now

good to hear!
was about to check why the flash didnt work for you at first

[massman]

Did you test multiple cpu's already? If so, does the max qpi frequency vary between processors, or will we have to search for gem motherboards? .

[Pt1t]

huh? what do you mean?

good to hear!
was about to check why the flash didnt work for you at first

I found !

[SF3D]

Hahaha Tomas!

Here is the true image of the cooler:



This is working very well and NB is cool. Fan is attached to fanmate, so it's not spinning 100% all the time.

[saaya]

I found !

and yes petri, i did the same thing

[pajaa]

[...]
why not? and yes, BloodRage will be black pcb too

Well, SAS isn't exactly mainstream, is it?
Hopefully the BloodRage (where do you get those names from?) will not feature this speaker-inspired heatsink design, which shows quite well the entertaining charakter of this board, suitable for digital life.

I thought, you are the mainboard therapist, to do your job

[BenchZowner]

I tested those ram yesterday , and i get 2000mhz 7-6-5-15 32M stable for 2.1v on 4 sticks.

What the hell!
DDR3-2000 7-6-5-15 32M stable @ 2.1V ???

Are those Steven's new pieces of work ?

[saaya]

Well, SAS isn't exactly mainstream, is it?

it wasnt my decision to put it on there, but i dont see whats wrong with it?
you prefer a board with less features? :P

the ports can be used for SATA drives or SAS drives, which gives a nice perf boost and adding sas doesnt cost a lot, so why not? asus did it and i think others will do it as well.

Hopefully the BloodRage will not feature this speaker-inspired heatsink design, which shows quite well the entertaining charakter of this board, suitable for digital life.

obviously not, it has a way different heatsink

(where do you get those names from?)

theres this alley in taipei with a small run down shop that sell them
whats wrong with the name?
if you have a better one let me hear it

I thought, you are the mainboard therapist, to do your job

for quantum force, digital life is a different department

FYI, reading spots for vtt and vnb:

What the hell!
DDR3-2000 7-6-5-15 32M stable @ 2.1V ???

Are those Steven's new pieces of work ?

well well well... guess you should have come to the GOOC to pick up 4 sticks as well hows it going bill?

[Johnny Bravo]

sure that NB readpoint is correct Saaya?

[boblemagnifique]

beautiful motherboard !!