DFI RDX200 CF-DR First look

[Tony]

WHAT A LOAD OF SH*T!!!
'Tony' even said they couldn't do 4x512 bh-5 so that alone states that its not going to jsut "HAPPEN' for everyone.


And still just those 3 aqumark3 runs where LOD or CPanel settings can casue that drop in perfomance in that benchmark, lmfao.

Gotta Love this Mess!!
ANANDTECH USALLY DOES A BETTER JOB THAT THIS !!

I had an 2 hrs IM conversation with Oskar yessterday, cas1.5 is a TCCD tweak, 4 dimms 1t is also more of a TCCD tweak, this is because the samsung IC is obviosly more stable running huge drive strengths and creates less crosstalk.

Oskar also mentioned he had good performance with a micron 1gig based dimm and i will be testing 4000EB 4 dimms also.

Jason

Go buy the board and play with it, im getting sick of you slamming what we try and say to you. I fully expect to see users with 4xTCCD or 4Xballistix or 4x4000EB running 200fsb 1t in the next day or so...whether they think this is worth it is just for them to decide.

We have not hidden anything here, and not conspired to make the board better than it is....lets not forget the features it does not have.

NCQ
SATA2
good USB

So take from the review what you want,nothing was hidden and nothing was conspired here....

[Vapor]

What about using the CAS1.5 setting on UTT? Will it be a slightly more stable yet equally fast setting like it was with the NF4 series?

[althes]

Well we know tomorrow, one of us will have it in our hands and test the hell out of it, and then return it, hahahahahahaha.

[althes]

Where is dumo results this should be fun

[deception``]

The review looks good, but the lack of SATA 2 support is very unattractive to me.

deception``

[althes]

SO when is the sapphire board coming out, the abit board will be here shortly wonder if epox will be late as usual.

[mrlobber]

So Tony, now when Anandtech has posted the article, feel free to provide us with your personal thoughts on the board And when are you getting the nF4 Expert finally? The layout being almost equal as well as the added tweaks, it would be very nice to see a comparison between the RDX200 and the nF4 Expert.


Btw, not trying to sound offensive, but this Grayskull's comment:

Our policy is to not comment on unannounced products, but there is something coming. Overclockers, get ready. Gamers, get ready.

... was right there for one to think: "so, if ATI is coming out with something better soon, why bother buying the current ATI chipset boards even if they become available finally?" Quite an irony, I must admit

[Grayskull]

There is always something coming next. If we do our job right it'll always be better than the previous generation. This is nothing new and happens in the entire industry...CPUs, graphics, chipsets, memory etc. If you always want to wait for the next generation, you'll be caught in an endless loop of waiting.

So Tony, now when Anandtech has posted the article, feel free to provide us with your personal thoughts on the board And when are you getting the nF4 Expert finally? The layout being almost equal as well as the added tweaks, it would be very nice to see a comparison between the RDX200 and the nF4 Expert.


Btw, not trying to sound offensive, but this Grayskull's comment:



... was right there for one to think: "so, if ATI is coming out with something better soon, why bother buying the current ATI chipset boards even if they become available finally?" Quite an irony, I must admit

[cadaveca]

Go buy the board and play with it, im getting sick of you slamming what we try and say to you.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, Tony, but we cannot buy this board as of yet. IF you find some way that i can purchase this board from Canada to try for my own, please let me know.

[mrlobber]

Btw, a well laid out post from DFI street rep Angry_Games (regarding the 4 dimms 1T issues, USB & SATAII):

in reality though...this is sort of a useless feature for this board since most that buy it (and every that it is marketed to) will want to overclock it...and once you go above about 202 (DDR405) you lose this ability...and you are back at 2T

then you have poor USB performance (which I honestly don't care about...the USB works for me on my board and I only use a jumpdrive, gamepad, digital camera, and they all worked very well for me)....is USB performance that important to you? It really isn't to me...but we are all different.

the biggest drawback is lack of NCQ and SATA II...i am rebuilding my main rig with 4GB of memory, an X2 4400+, and 3 hdd's in RAID-0 for video editing and gaming etc. I thought for a minute about going with the RDX200 board I have...but decided against it because I have 3 Hitachi 80GB SATA II drives that are stellar, exceptional performers, and I want that to translate well on my rebuild...and so I stuck to my NF4 SLI-DR, which is still my overclocking champ, as well as my hdd performance champ.

As I had statetd earlier, the RDX200 CF-DR is a great board in teh sense that it boots right out of the box with EVERYTHING left at AUTO, and with now 11 different kits of memory in it...and they all work very well in the board.

as for overclocking....it probably is just me, but I cannot get this board to overclock for nothing, no matter what i put into it, no matter what settings I try.

I used the same hardware (3200+ Venice, Centon/GEIL tccd and GEIL/OCZ BH-5) that I have entered numerous times in the OC Database...and I cannot get this board to overclock...my highest was with Centon TCCD, and I achieved a measely 223HTT (223x10).

Now..I am not the best overclocker on the planet...and I know this is a new board...but I have spent since Friday morning fooling with this thing, and I have sat at the board with my finger on the reset button over and over and over and over and over and over again trying one setting at a time and nothing seems to work...so maybe I am retarded, maybe the board needs a bios update, or maybe it just is a dog for me (and you might have different results like Wes @ Anandtech did).

But for me....its a great board for stock speeds as it is very compatible and seems to boot with every memory I have.

But if I was going to choose it for overclocking...I would stick with the NF4 Lanparty, or wait for the Lanparty NF4 Expert, or the one I am REALLY looking forward to, our Lanparty RDX200 CF-BT (props to Tony/BigToe for his input on this board). I don't know if the Expert NF4 or the CF-BT ATI board is going to be good, better, worse, etc....but in the meantime, I am sticking to my NF4 Lanparty SLI-DR, and recommending it for overclocking.

I am recommending the RDX200 CF-DR to those who want a flashy board with decent features and ease of use in setting up.

keep in mind this is first generation, first run...so because I have had an easy time with it, does not mean you will, or that i found any of the issues that you guys will find...I've spent most of my time trying to overclock it, not playing any games or listening to music or any of the 'everyday' things that you all will use it for.

And as I stated earlier...my suggestion for you is to wait until we have had more time to play with the board....don't just run out and spend your money because it is new and a single review said that it is a decent board.

Being smart with your money is the most important thing you can do. If you have extra cash and want to check it out, by all means, buy one as they are good boards. If you don't have a lot of cash...then be patient and let the early-adopters come back and tell you what they think of the board.

[MaxT]

did that review seem rushed to anyone else? It's not up to anandtech's usual standards. I guess it's our own fault for being so impatient.

Well, the board certainly seems solid, but fails to impress. Waiting for CF-BT.

[Tony]

I had ther same overclocking issues untill we worked out the drive strength was totally different to the NF4, infact i must thank Rgone for helping get the magic 300 as he was first there after discovering DS7 to 9 worked best with TCCD.

What you all need to remember is this board is a lot different to the NF4, it has more options and will need patience when setting up, I know i have been frustrated by it many times.

Regards the SATA2 etc, I posted its faults back a page, thats all i can really fault on it.

[situman]

Tony,

What drive strength do you recommend for 2*1gig of Ballistix?

[LowRun]

Any results in the cold bug department yet?

[eva2000]

Tony, I wonder how well oc'ing goes when you use 2x or 4x SATA drives in raid 0 ?

[xenolith]

I have to say, the biggest disappointment is DFI's use of the ATI SB450. They knew about it's problems back in May and they decided to take the chance ATI would fix it.

The question I have, did ATI ever plan to have SATA2 support with their SB450? If not, then what the heck was DFI thinking?

For those who don't know. A SATA2 Raid0 config is a real significant bang-for-the-buck performance feature. Especially with two 80GB Hitatchi SATA2 hard drives.

[eva2000]

RALMFAO!!! guess his board is faulty.

well it took me and some oc'ers 3+ weeks to tame the DFI NF4 options for memory, so i guess Crossfire with even more options needs as much time if not longer to tame... no way someone just getting the DFI Crossfire can tame it in a few days - especially for TCCD (for me takes 3x times longer to tame on DFI NF4 than BH-5/UTT BH-5 does)

[althes]

mickeymouse are you going to get the board and test it.

[calcal]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813136165
http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2572
ITS OUT @ 238 bucks!!

[Tony]

I have tweaked the bios already, its allowing TCCD to boot and run at around 280 with no other tweaks apart from Vdimm so we are already taming the board.
LDT has to be set, setting auto does not scale like the NF4 does.Also i have hidden from 3.76V and up and opened up all the inbetween settings for vdimm, so we have options in 0.02v steps all the the way from 2.5v to 3.74V which I really like.

The drive strengths we found nice were 7 8 9, i have set the board to use 8.

To comment on the bios, it needs an update.It is first release and as usual it does need polishing.

Now talking about sata2, I really can't understand why we don't have 3124-2 on this board, it features sata2 and sata1, or you can use 3132 for 2 ports and use a port expander for more, this would have brought the fastest sata2 controller onboard and satisfied many who run Hitachi drives.

The USB is no biggy to me, its fast enough for what i use but you could always add a usb card for faster thru put. Issue is though with the price of the board it kinda leaves a bad taste if you have to do it.

I like the board layout a lot, running this board BTX style with a 120mm fan at the back like the Lian Li would help keep cpu and dimms real cool, I do think this layout is a good move forward.

[dinos22]

yeah not very inviting this board with low HTT OC, crap USB2.0performance and not SATA2 and NCQ......my mobos spend most of their life well above 300MHz HTT so don't want no challenges to break 300 let alone 330/340/350+ no thanks........i realise it's an early bios but yeah let's just wait for this Expert mobo to be released in the next ..............well whenever they make their mind up......wonder if OPB has any word on availability as his hit prediction seems to be coming true about a massive delay....our disties just keep pushing the ETA up and up....now they are saying it is unknown and that is scary

[Tony]

I have a feeling Expert is just like this board in terms of TCCD overclocking, the NF4 first gen we all love was purely tuned to clock TCCD and it really does show, this RDX and i bet the Expert is tuned to clock all dimms well with the exception of hynix which seems to have issues. The only issue is that TCCD clocks have come down a little.

Remember 270x10 2.5-3-3- can be faster than 300x9 2.5-4-3- with the right tweaks, all is not lost with either of these new boards from DFI, you just need to overclock in a slightly different way.

[bachus_anonym]

I kind of think or hope that it's not that HTT cannot go high but TCCD doesn't clock as high. Those are then two different things

Tony, have you tried to see how how on HTT you can get on that mobo with a mem on divider?

[dinos22]

Yeah but you 'NEED" the HT bus for some of the chips with locked low multi's
If you have a 3100mhz air 144 opteron "9x" multi you need over 340mhz HT bus to run to get your max perfomance

So many run 3000+ -3200+ venice chips /144-146 opterons becasue they are so good they can run 3ghz+ on air/water. So you can see high HT "HAS" to be able to be as stable as an nf4 chipset.

and 270x10@2.5-3-3-7 might be faster than 300x9 wihtt he wrong timings, but CPu powe always win so oyu need HT speed to get the cpu up to par.

Tony mentioned a dream workstation with an Opteron inside...........i REALLY REALLY hope they will optimise these bioses to get them working well with the Opterons............

Tony it would be nice to see if Opterons work on them at all..............and about TCCD comment yeah it looks like TCCD is a bit passe cause they don't have 2GB kits anyways so probably not a major concern even tho i have TCCD

[Tony]

I kind of think or hope that it's not that HTT cannot go high but TCCD doesn't clock as high. Those are then two different things

Tony, have you tried to see how how on HTT you can get on that mobo with a mem on divider?

Playing with that now.


Remember there is no performance hit for running a divider as the A64 operates the memory controller independantly, as soon as you hit 300fsb in 183 mode the ram gives exactly the same performance as 1:1 as long as the cpu speed is the same.