DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G - RD600 launched

[NH|Delph1]

I know I don't post things often here, but I just couldn't help myself when this one appeared in my inbox:


The merger of ATI and AMD placed the RD600 chipset in an unusual position. Despite all obstacles DFI decided to keep the faith with the eager public , which has been dreaming of the RD600 board, and continued production plans for the RD600. The power of the chipset's graphics processing capabilities with the incorporation of physics processing support has drawn interest from every hardcore gamer and over-clocking enthusiast around the world. Despite a flurry of rumors in the market, DFI's determination to bring excellent products to the market remains unchanged.

The RD600 chipset comes equipped with ATI Crossfire graphics processing technology which supports latest in physics technology. With the combined performance of “Crossfire” from two extreme GPUs and a physics rendering card the real-time 3D processing performance of the system is pushed to new extremes. This insures that the RD600 will remain one of the industry's top performers for a long time to come. The overclockability of DFI's products and their unique R&D expertise with gaming motherboards is legendary in the industry. DFI's unique BIOS solutions offer users the ability to unleash almost limitless overclocking potential allowing users to get the ultimate performance from their systems. DFI's R&D and manufacturing team used all available resources to combine the RD600, the highest performing chipset released by ATI so far, with the latest generation of Intel CPUs. The result is the industry's most powerful motherboard which is guaranteed to satisfy even the most demanding gamer

The release of the LP UT ICFX3200-T2R/G combines power of ATI's chipset with support for the latest Intel CPUs, such as the Core 2 Extreme/Quad/Duo, it may very well be the grand finale of the ATI/Intel partnership but will never be forgotten. The performance of RD600 will easily surpass all previous ATI chipsets in every respect including overclockability, processing power and graphics quality. DFI's expertise in the development of ATI Crossfire motherboards is well known in the industry (the LANParty UT CFX3200-DR motherboard won first place in the ATI China DIY System Overclocking Competition). The latest LANParty UT ICFX3200-TR2/G motherboard using the RD600 chipset will naturally offer only even better overclockability and even more impressive graphics processing power. The engineers, in particular, have made an “epic” effort to give the board superb overclocking potential. DFI has also designed entirely new packaging for the LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G to symbolize the company's intentions to reach all new heights in performance.



Most Powerful Partnership in History – Core 2 Extreme Meets CROSSFIRE
When ATI first released its RD580 chipset, DFI's motherboard implementation took the market by storm and won countless awards for performance. As the RD580 supported x16 bus dual card Crossfire technology, the boost to graphics processing power made it perfect for overclockers and gamers. Earlier in the year ATI also released the RD600 chipset supporting Intel dual core and quad core CPUs. This chipset not only provides true Dual Crossfire VGA support technology but also introduces the latest 3D rendering technology – Physics Rendering support. The RD600 also received major improvements in overclockability and memory support. The LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G supports all of Intel's latest Core 2 Extreme/Quad/Duo series processors. By using the ATI RD600 chip for the Northbridge and utilizing the SB600 for the southbridge the LP UT ICFX3200-T2R/G will certainly have an all-star line-up of components.

Support for All New Physics Rendering Card
Hardcore gamers, designers, and engineers working with physical effects have all been eagerly waiting for physics processing technology to mature and become more widespread. Unlike traditional 3D graphics processing, physics rendering can accurately simulate real-world physics such as the influence of gravity on moving objects, how game characters' clothes flutter in the breeze, how objects behave when blown up and where all of their fragments fly to. This technology will provide gamers with an even more realistic “Virtual World” and provide them with a gaming experience completely different to that of traditional graphics processing methods. The LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G provides users with 3 sets of PCI Express x16 slots. Two of the slots are used for ATI Dual x8 Crossfire processing while the other PCIe slot (the 3 rd slot) provides PCIe x2 for the physics rendering card.

Six Phase Digital PWM
When a CPU is overclocked it not only requires more power but also demands a more stable power supply. For this reason the DFI engineers have built a Six Phase Digital PWM on the DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G to ensure that the power that the CPU receives is always 100% stable. This power supply design allows users to rest assured that they will never experience “Blowouts” and that the CPU will be provided with clean currents up to 200A ensuring that the extra load from CPU overclocking is completely met.

Designed to Withstand Overclocking
Overclocking performance is intimately linked to the motherboard quality. Fortunately DFI always demands extremely high quality from its motherboards and therefore their motherboards easily surpass others in performance due to design and quality. This is particularly true of the LANParty series which is targeted at high-end overclocking enthusiasts and hardcore gamers. The new LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G motherboard supports voltage adjustments for the memory, Northbridge, HT, Southbridge as well as the CPU core. The wide range of BIOS options allows users to easily fine tune the board to an unparalleled degree. These carefully designed overclocking adjustment options together with DFI's BIOS technology designed for overclocking will be sure to provide enthusiasts with a whole new level of overclocking experience.

Latest DDR2 1066 Support
To maximize its overclocking potential the DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G motherboard is equipped with four DDR2 slots. Support is provided for single or double sided DDR2 800 and DDR2 1066 memory and also allows the memory voltage to be raised up to 3.2V.

Teaming Technology
For gamers the greatest benefit of Teaming technology comes through in LAN Games. When transferring large data files between computers, this technology effectively doubles the original Ethernet bandwidth. When gamers are battling each other across a LAN equipped with Teaming technology it will provide them with fast, bottleneck free gaming. DFI's new LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G motherboard is provided with two Teaming technology equipped GbE LAN interfaces controlled by the high-performance Marvell 88E9052 GbE PCI-E and Marvell 88E8053 GbE PCI-E chips.

SATA-2 and RAID Support
The SATA-2 interface provides increased hard disk transfer performance and RAID offers increased data transfer rates between hard disks. RAID also improves data access performance and offers secure data storage. The LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G offers a total of 8 SATA interfaces that would not seem out of place on a server grade motherboard The Southbridge chip controls 4 of the SATA-2 interfaces enabling the setup of RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 arrays; the other 4 SATA-2 interfaces are controlled by a Promise PDC40719 chipset that supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5.

Vista Premium Edition's KARAJAN Audio Module
For audio, the Karajan audio module familiar to enthusiasts returns once more in the DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2/G motherboard. It's worthwhile to note that the module uses the RealTek ALC885 8CH sound decoder chip certified by Microsoft as Windows Vista Premium Ready for significant improvements to audio quality. Gamers can not only enjoy ultra-realistic 7.1 channel audio in their battles but they can also enjoy improved theater quality DVD movie sound effects. The Karajan ALC885 chip offers sound quality that is simply unmatched by other integrated audio technologies.

EDIT:
http://us.dfi.com.tw/press/press_hea...38.jsp&SITE=US

[XeRo]

Does this mean NDA has been lifted?

[Gambit_2K]

Hmm i got to conflicting reports. In the pressrelease it says that both GB ports are PCIE while in the specs it says that one is PCI??? Anyone know for sure.

[ZeroX]

Up to 3.2v

[ozzimark]

Up to 3.2v

yay for being to kill any ddr2 kit pretty quick

[roibm]

any early reviews?

[Eldonko]

Give us some boards already!

[Zucker2k]

You can download online manual in pdf file format here:
http://eu.dfi.com.tw/Upload/Manual/93500642.pdf

[Dublin_Gunner]

hmm, damn nice board but.......

x8 x8 x2????


Thats like, soooooo last year

[mascaras]

first results by Tony (allendale E6400 @ 510 FSB) >> http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=156

511 puts this board slightly better than the 975 for FSB clocking.

[xlink]

ahh... finally...

only bad part is that I allready bought my DFI Infinity 975X/G a while back...

ohh well...
I'm content.

hoping next official BIOS revision hits 400FSB easy, current one doesn' want to do past 385 stable for me without any voltage increases to the chipset.

[Fred_Pohl]

Does this mobo offer any advantages over existing 965/975/680i mobos other than allowing the user to run an Intel CPU on a mobo that uses a chipset made by a company that is now owned by AMD?

It looks good but I don't see how it matches all the pre-release rumorage that it would be the "ultimate" C2 mobo.

[xlink]

well, there is the matter of PCI-e overclocking and asynchronous memory clocking, not to mention the possibility of running RAM at 1T...

if you have the money and the desire, it's a great board.

[Fred_Pohl]

well, there is the matter of PCI-e overclocking and asynchronous memory clocking, not to mention the possibility of running RAM at 1T...

if you have the money and the desire, it's a great board.

Since (AFAIK) existing C2 mobos allow all of those things, I assume the main benefit must be finer tuning of the asynchronous memory clock and the usual extra bios tweaking permitted by DFI?

[Helmore]

There isn't any intel chipset that features all that AFAIK, maybe a little bit of PCI-E overclocking but probably not as far as this chip.

[Fred_Pohl]

Not meaning to knock RD600 but even my cheapo DS3 allows PCIe bus overclocking up to 150MHz (50%), 1T DC memory and several asynchronous memory settings.

Is there much benefit to PCIe overclocking? IIRC there is virtually no performance difference between 16x and 8x so why would overclocking the PCIe bus make much difference?

[Kin Hell]

First pricing I've manged to Google....

Wonga!

With such a late release date & availability, I reckon I got more chance of "Seeing" Father Christmas this year than getting one of these boards this side of!

[FischOderAal]

230€ doesn't sound that bad, instead, it sounds damn good! don't forget it's DFI and still it is cheaper than 680i Mainboards of other manufacturers
but I thought I've read something about ~150$/€ (you can say prices are 1:1)

or am I totally wrong?

[xVeinx]

The prices should be lower soon. Pricing from small shops like the one above seems to always be a lot higher than retail price at places like newegg when it becomes available. By January, I imagine it will be between $150-180 USD...

[camouflage]

yay for being to kill any ddr2 kit pretty quick

You are wrong - try CELLSHOCK, won't die up to 3.4 volts.......

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=117559

[exhausted mule]

You are wrong - try CELLSHOCK, won't die up to 3.4 volts.......

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=117559

good luck running anythign close to that 24/7 though.

[EnJoY]

You are wrong - try CELLSHOCK, won't die up to 3.4 volts.......

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=117559

This is most certainly not the norm, and was that also not a "standard" kit. Don't go spreading rumors that Cellshock is a 3.0v+ ram, because even with 8-layer pcb, they aren't going to last long with this sort of voltage.

[Marlowe]

I still don't understand why they nerfed the number of pci-express lanes from the RD580

Edit: Found the answer over at the Intel section:

RD600 is actually quite old, I have a board here from over a year ago using a very early version of the chipset.

As far as i know there are 14 revisions of the chipset now, 13 and 14 being the best.

So....this chipset was actually designed ways back with RD480 which was 8 x 8 also.

[EnJoY]

I still don't understand why they nerfed the number of pci-express lanes from the RD580

Two entirely different architectures designed at different times, unfortunately in some regards.

[camouflage]

This is most certainly not the norm, and was that also not a "standard" kit. Don't go spreading rumors that Cellshock is a 3.0v+ ram, because even with 8-layer pcb, they aren't going to last long with this sort of voltage.

I won't recommend 3.4 volts for a 24/7 use - only for short period benching.

But for me 2.71 Vdimm is no problem 24/7 with cold air ambient and two 120mm fans blowing to them: