Ati R600 Crossfire with Intel CPU..

[uberowo]

I just bought a new system and frankly I'm fed up with nvidias piece of ****** 680i chipset.. (On my second board now, different manufacturers, and they all suck apparently..)

So I've been considering returning my 2nd 680i as well, and selling my two 8800GTX cards. That said, I want to keep my QX6700, so I was wondering if there was any info about the R600 Crossfire setups.. Will they be widely available or only for AMD chipsets now?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: uberowo
I just bought a new system and frankly I'm fed up with nvidias piece of ****** 680i chipset.. (On my second board now, different manufacturers, and they all suck apparently..)

So I've been considering returning my 2nd 680i as well, and selling my two 8800GTX cards. That said, I want to keep my QX6700, so I was wondering if there was any info about the R600 Crossfire setups.. Will they be widely available or only for AMD chipsets now?

So because you had 2 apparently screwed up chipsets you are selling and swearing off the best chipset and Graphics Cards on the market??

R600 isn't due out until March and the new AMD chipset isn't due out until a little before that time.

What problems could you possibly have had with the chipset. The only one I know of right now is that it is VERY picky about the RAM you use.

-Kevin

 

[uberowo]

The EVGA board had massive SATA RAID issues (yes, even after the "fix" had been applied), and the Abit IN9 has had similar problems, and a number of others as well. Including extreme instability running 4 DIMMs, and absurd temps on the PWMs on stock speed.. (as high as 150 degrees celcius even with extra fans added..)

Frankly I dont have the time of patience for "unfinished" products like I believe the 680i chipset is.. I bought my computer 3-4 weeks ago and its still not stable. If I can get an R600 crossfire setup that works nicely with my QX6700 I'm likely to opt for that instead now. I have no allegiance to nvidia or ati, I simply buy whatever is the best at the given time of my PC purchase..

 

[uberowo]

Think I may have found my answer in the DFI LAN Party UT ICFX3200-T2R/G..

 

[CP5670]

The 975 boards work with Crossfire. The DFI ICFX3200 that was just released may be a better option, but there isn't much information available on it yet.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: uberowo
The EVGA board had massive SATA RAID issues (yes, even after the "fix" had been applied), and the Abit IN9 has had similar problems, and a number of others as well. Including extreme instability running 4 DIMMs, and absurd temps on the PWMs on stock speed.. (as high as 150 degrees celcius even with extra fans added..)

Frankly I dont have the time of patience for "unfinished" products like I believe the 680i chipset is.. I bought my computer 3-4 weeks ago and its still not stable. If I can get an R600 crossfire setup that works nicely with my QX6700 I'm likely to opt for that instead now. I have no allegiance to nvidia or ati, I simply buy whatever is the best at the given time of my PC purchase..

I have heard of the SATA issue, but I heard it was resolved.

Outside of that I haven't heard of those issues (150C indicates a faulty sensor. At that temperature things would start to melt, but the rest are certainly valid if you have had a problem).

I have no allegiance either, but the fact right now is the 680i is the best chipset on the market by far (For the foreseeable future) . The 8800's (I'm not sure why you are selling these as well, you can still use them in another board) are the best Graphics Cards on the market at this time (Until March when the R600 attempts to dethrone it).

There isn't anything else out there man. You could try the 975X chipsets; however, they are also very picky about memory and lack a lot of the features the 680i has.

As for graphics cards, nothing else comes close...not even remotely close to what the 8800's have achieved so far.

-Kevin

 

[JAG87]

Originally posted by: uberowo

Frankly I dont have the time of patience for "unfinished" products like I believe the 680i chipset is.. I bought my computer 3-4 weeks ago and its still not stable.

every product is like that at launch, and R600 in crossfire will have plenty of problems too.

as a rule of thumb id suggest you stay away from ati chipsets. if you must go crossfire use 975x. frankly I think you giving up on 680i is a mistake. I may have gotten lucky, but I have a similar rig (qx6700, 8800 gtx sli, raptors in raid 0) and I never had 1 problem. never had one with P21, never had one with P23, and I never have one now with P24. yes i get the random crash (mostly caused by me) but its normal, anything that is brand new on the market will have problems, and will need time to be looked after and fixed. so far i think the evga group has a done a great job dealing with 680i. 4 bios releases in 2 months. on the other hand, i would like to see nvidia get of their chair and release some drivers that fix some major bugs (scaling, MPEG bsod, source fog, and so on).

dont think that switching to R600 will get you out of stability problems and headaches. anything new on the market will do that to you. i would stick to nvidia who released their things first, because by the time R600 comes out, they will have had enough time to work all the quirks out.

 

[nrb]

Originally posted by: uberowo
Think I may have found my answer in the DFI LAN Party UT ICFX3200-T2R/G..

That board has its problems too. Not only is it hard to come by and expensive, the board layout is positively idiotic: you have to remove the graphics card in order to swap memory in and out, you can't use most high-performance air coolers because the CPU socket is too close to the edge of the board and the cooler is jammed against the case, and there are problems fitting anything into the lowest expansion slot. On top of that, although it is Crossfire-compatible it's only dual x8, not dual x16, which would annoy the hell out of me if I owned one.

Hop over to the motherboards forum and search for "RD600"....

 

[uberowo]

The reason I figured I'd get rid of the 8800GTX cards as well was that I assumed the crossfire mobos didnt support sli..? Theres a pretty positive review of the DFI LAN Party UT ICFX3200 here on Anandtech, so it looks like an option.

I actually have one huge gripe about nvidia SLI.. lack of dual monitor support in SLI mode. So if it turns out that the R600 crossfire has roughly similar performance its starting to look very good to me.

 

[uberowo]

Does the dual x8 vs dual x16 issue actually matter in terms of real life gaming performance though?

 

[CP5670]

No, the difference is less than 2%. I wouldn't worry about that. However, Gary's comments in here don't leave a good impression about it.

 

[enz660hp]

Originally posted by: uberowo
Does the dual x8 vs dual x16 issue actually matter in terms of real life gaming performance though?

nope...

 

[josh6079]

Actually, the P965 chipset is a good choice also for a cheaper price. In fact, some are getting better overclocks and such with the P965 than the 975X.

Here's a review comparing the 965 and 975.

I've heard of several issues with the 680i chipset, I read that that board fried $1,000 or so worth of one guy's RAM, sound cards weren't working properly on them, SATA issues, etc. However, I thought most issues were resolved in bios updates. One of the only problems I still hear is existent with your setup is SLI AA being broken, but that's not a motherboard problem.

If you do make a switch, the new ATi chipset seems like it's good, but I honestly haven't heard to much about it, and in the review I saw, it didn't do that much better than say the 975X and friends. If you're really wanting to make a switch, an Intel chipset is a great route to go.

...I never had 1 problem.

yes i get the random crash (mostly caused by me) but its normal, anything that is brand new on the market will have problems...

 

[uberowo]

Originally posted by: CP5670
No, the difference is less than 2%. I wouldn't worry about that. However, Gary's comments in here don't leave a good impression about it.

Thanks for the heads up! That said, I dont really need to increase my FSB to overclock my extreme intel cpu.. And his main concern seems to be high NB temps when increasing voltage to enable higher fsbs?

 

[CP5670]

I was mainly referring to his first post about the memory compatibility and dodgy Kentsfield (C2Q) support. The DFI boards I have now are the best ones I've used, but it looks like a good idea to wait on this one until all the issues have been worked out.