News: DFI Crossfire

[krille]

WE HEARD from people that have seen and partially tested it that DFI's upcoming Crossfire board is a state of the art design. It's highly overclockable, well designed, stable and has all the features that you'll need.

The company demonstated it back at Computex but it's getting ready to start selling it. The boards should be ready in next two weeks.
...
All in all, this board will be among the first and people has high expectations about this board. It should ship within weeks but I guess that will be mainly ATI's call as you need two graphic cards to explore the possibilities of this board.

It will start shipping in two weeks? If this is anywhere near the truth it's definitely awesome news! Let's just hope ATI does make the call.

If it's stable that's a very good thing too. Moreover it has 4xSATA and 4xSATA-II with RAID 0/1/0+1/5 capabilities, and the 4 Mbit BIOS chip ofc.

l'inq: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24794

[Cooper]

DFI gonna have another outstanding mobo - as usual with LP series
4xSATAII and 4Mbit(!) BIOS - just wow.

[Qkjhfhaiguihfma]

edit: i forgot, the ati southbridge is only sata 150.

my mistake

[ChongL]

thats what I was thinking...why not just have 8 sata2 ports?

[krille]

why even bother with sata (i) tho? if your putting 4 sata ii ports in, just leave the "slow" ones out?

2x4xSATA-II would mean adding two extra SATA-II controllers (extra cost!), while SATA1 is part of the chipset south bridge iirc. Also, this is exactly what's needed (as in minimum) in order to compete with their current nF4 offering.

Edit: If I understand you correctly, you want to leave the SATA ports out completely? Well, like I said, SATA's part of the SB and ATI wants to use its own SB, not have to pay for a VIA/ULI.

[situman]

SATAII is irrelevant. until theres a hard drive that spins fast enough and has enough cache to saturate the bus, it wouldnt matter if its SATAI or II. Raptors on SATA still rules over anything.

[Shadowmage]

Exactly.

However, I would have liked SATAII for the Gigabyte i-RAM...

[Goone]

I am staying away for now, look at all the troubles they have for the ultra 3 LP agp.

[krille]

SATAII is irrelevant. until theres a hard drive that spins fast enough and has enough cache to saturate the bus, it wouldnt matter if its SATAI or II. Raptors on SATA still rules over anything.

Fool! Raptors on SATA never ruled in the first place (SCSI!), moreover the Raptors DO saturate the SATA bus, just raid three of them in RAID-0.

Exactly.

However, I would have liked SATAII for the Gigabyte i-RAM...

Fool of a fool!

You blatant fools!

You don't seem to know the first thing about "SATA-II". I think you better read this

SATA-II has nothing to do with speed, even Gen 1 PHY compliant devices can be said to be SATA-II compliant. However I take for granted that this controller is Gen 2 PHY compliant, otherwise this isn't much to be very happy over.

For Gen 2 PHY (which I think you are refering to), RAID-0 anyone? Myself, I'm getting 4x3Gb/s capable drives (either WD SE16 or Hitachi SATA-II) in RAID-0 for my new rig, now these four drive won't saturate the 3Gb/s interface, but it would have saturated the SATA 1.5Gb/s interface (during bursts). And, as you said, I-RAM would be dying to get AT LEAST 3Gb/s bandwidth (2.4Gb effective). This is apart from the new features SATA-IO, however I don't know which of these will be supported by the controller.

Hope things are a little more clearer now!

[cadaveca]

You forgot hotswapping....

[situman]

[QUOTE=krille]Fool! Raptors on SATA never ruled in the first place (SCSI!), moreover the Raptors DO saturate the SATA bus, just raid three of them in RAID-0.

1)Uhhhh I hope u realized I was comparing NON SCSI hard-drives right? I was only comparing SATAI to II. Sooo shut up FOOL!

2)Uhhhh ok u go ahead and raid three of them in RAID-0. Let the people with a little more common sense to RAID only two Raptors.

[krille]

[QUOTE=situman]

Fool! Raptors on SATA never ruled in the first place (SCSI!), moreover the Raptors DO saturate the SATA bus, just raid three of them in RAID-0.

1)Uhhhh I hope u realized I was comparing NON SCSI hard-drives right? I was only comparing SATAI to II. Sooo shut up FOOL!

2)Uhhhh ok u go ahead and raid three of them in RAID-0. Let the people with a little more common sense to RAID only two Raptors.

1) Out of the SATA compatible drives available, I'd say the WD74 is the highest performing overall, however the Maxtor DMAX10/MaxLineIII with 16MB cache are supposed to be almost as fast (and faster in certain benches), although only 7200. But you do get 300GB (for roughly the same price iirc). WD74s are good, however they are old technology too, so they aren't as good as people seem to think.

Here's an interesting review including various top-perfomers
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2...6/index.x?pg=3

WD74 is best overall, although it doesn't win it all, and the competition is very close. Much closer than it could have been, had WD released anything useful till now. However, it might change. I've heard rumors of november.

2) Four 80GB hitachis (i e double the total space of two raptors) cost less than two raptors. In Sweden you get 6.5x80GB Hitachi SATA II for the price of two WD74 raptors.

Fool!

You forgot hotswapping....

That's one out of many SATA-IO requirements, yes. Your point was?

Some more links if you're interested
http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp
http://www.sata-io.org/faqs.asp
or simply read about what you wish: http://www.sata-io.org/

[|SiLA|]

and as usual they use cheap sound onboard

[situman]

1) Out of the SATA compatible drives available, I'd say the WD74 is the highest performing overall, however the Maxtor DMAX10/MaxLineIII with 16MB cache are supposed to be almost as fast (and faster in certain benches), although only 7200. But you do get 300GB (for roughly the same price iirc). WD74s are good, however they are old technology too, so they aren't as good as people seem to think.

Here's an interesting review including various top-perfomers
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2...6/index.x?pg=3

WD74 is best overall, although it doesn't win it all, and the competition is very close. Much closer than it could have been, had WD released anything useful till now. However, it might change. I've heard rumors of november.

2) Four 80GB hitachis (i e double the total space of two raptors) cost less than two raptors. In Sweden you get 6.5x80GB Hitachi SATA II for the price of two WD74 raptors.

Fool!

That's one out of many SATA-IO requirements, yes. Your point was?

Some more links if you're interested
http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp
http://www.sata-io.org/faqs.asp
or simply read about what you wish: http://www.sata-io.org/

quite impressive for "old" technology, no?

[krille]

quite impressive for "old" technology, no?

What?
That something spinning 39% faster and costing more than 3.5 times the money per GB, performs slightly better?

[turtle]

and as usual they use cheap sound onboard

Word. Where's Azalia or whatever Sapphire's using?


You'd think someone would put out some good envy24, azalia, or something or other on an high-end AMD board.

IOW: Me misses soundstorm, part 2.

[n00b 0f l337]

Well we''ll see how it punches SLI in the sack won't we? And we'll also be able to clear up all the rumors about dual matching vga's working in crossfire and such...

[jot]

Monarch is right down the street from my house and I am pretty good friends with one of the guys who work there will find out what I can.

[einCe]

i forget is the "pure" series going to be from every manufacturer ie: dfi avit etc. or is it going to be ati only, i want to get one but i want dfi.

[dippyskoodlez]

Word. Where's Azalia or whatever Sapphire's using?


You'd think someone would put out some good envy24, azalia, or something or other on an high-end AMD board.

IOW: Me misses soundstorm, part 2.

Yea.. If Nvidia would have went with soundstorm this time around they would probably be a much better competitor than they are this round...

Since, I've brought my SB live! PCI out of retirement. I plan on getting the DFI or the sapphire, whichever is out by middle of august, but I dont wanna have to buy another sound card just to have half decent sound Especially with a $150+ mobo.

I think the sapphire is using azalia. Which, since it looks like DFI is using the same PWM layout, the boards will be probably be very similar.

[|SiLA|]

Word. Where's Azalia or whatever Sapphire's using?


You'd think someone would put out some good envy24, azalia, or something or other on an high-end AMD board.

IOW: Me misses soundstorm, part 2.

jah red aboutmonths ago Soundstorm is not dead and will be back but i was hoping not his long

[3Tripnip]

Board looks great, but I'm a little leary after all the troubles with my LP nF3.

[turtle]

Yea.. If Nvidia would have went with soundstorm this time around they would probably be a much better competitor than they are this round...

Since, I've brought my SB live! PCI out of retirement. I plan on getting the DFI or the sapphire, whichever is out by middle of august, but I dont wanna have to buy another sound card just to have half decent sound Especially with a $150+ mobo.

I think the sapphire is using azalia. Which, since it looks like DFI is using the same PWM layout, the boards will be probably be very similar.

Chalk one up for Sapphire then, as high-end on-board should be something manufacturer's should definately consider. I know at least me and you think it's something that goes toward our decision of buying a mobo.

But not all is lost though...You know even if Sapphire's board has stuff like Azalia, the DFI board will have some crazy tweaks the other boards can't do. Who knows, real crossfire without a master card or something. Plus, they have Oskar. He's always the variable. Dammit though, I wish they'd stop using the ALC8xx audio codecs, the on-board on my ultra-d sucks, I know azalia has to be better. If it's included on the ATi SB (and apparently ULI SB), why not use it? Even The NF5 boards are going to use Azalia, not to mention the previous-gen DFI intel boards that had azalia + karajan. I wonder why they didn't go that route?

[dippyskoodlez]

Chalk one up for Sapphire then, as high-end on-board should be something manufacturer's should definately consider. I know at least me and you think it's something that goes toward our decision of buying a mobo.

But not all is lost though...You know even if Sapphire's board has stuff like Azalia, the DFI board will have some crazy tweaks the other boards can't do. Who knows, real crossfire without a master card or something. Plus, they have Oskar. He's always the variable. Dammit though, I wish they'd stop using the ALC8xx audio codecs, the on-board on my ultra-d sucks, I know azalia has to be better. If it's included on the ATi SB (and apparently ULI SB), why not use it? Even The NF5 boards are going to use Azalia, not to mention the previous-gen DFI intel boards that had azalia + karajan. I wonder why they didn't go that route?

I dunno if its integrated,,

[turtle]

it is.

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/mvp/ - ATi
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/uli/m1573/g2.htm - ULI

I get the codecs and chips mixed up. Apparently ALC880 is coupled with azalia (on most intel boards, and now ATi boards) I would imagine that both Sapphire and DFI are using Azalia + ALC880, and DFI's karajan IS a variant of azalia...I think. So the only update over the nf4 built-in audio is the update from the ALC850 to ALC880 codec, since karajan already uses azalia. I dunno, it's confusing to me. Apologies for making inaccurate comments in my earlier posts, intergrated audio chips and codecs confuse me as i'm not very educated on them...I just know that whatever karajan is, it ain't soundstorm or even a via envy. I doubt the codec upgrade will make that much of a differance. So we can still expect crappy sound...Or I can...and you can expect to keep using your SB.

OT apologies - Whatever happened to nvidia's announcement of SS2 coming at some point in time...Wasn't it confirmed it was coming at some point in time post-nf5 in some mysterious manner, like intergrated into the southbridge, a stand-alone card, gpu controlled..or something like that?