DFI RD600

[Idontcare]

Must have been some pretty darn serious bugs in this thing to take 2+ months to be ready.

Wicked indeed.

 

[imported_neloX]

Any idea of what the price range of this board will be? This will be the first board to support Intel and 16x Crossfire on 2 slots?

 

[Skott]

The best RD600 info I have seen is over on the XS site. They got a admin/tech there playing around with one. NDA is still in effect but he's leaked some info. Suggested price is to be well less than $300 from the rumors I heard. $230-$250 is being bandied about. Pricing hasnt been fixed yet though last I heard. About another 10-11 days will know for sure.

 

[msgclb]

Originally posted by: Skott
The best RD600 info I have seen is over on the XS site. They got a admin/tech there playing around with one. NDA is still in effect but he's leaked some info. Suggested price is to be well less than $300 from the rumors I heard. $230-$250 is being bandied about. Pricing hasnt been fixed yet though last I heard. About another 10-11 days will know for sure.

This has been up for several days and I wouldn't bet on a lower price.
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=246517

 

[imported_neloX]

Originally posted by: Skott
The best RD600 info I have seen is over on the XS site. They got a admin/tech there playing around with one. NDA is still in effect but he's leaked some info. Suggested price is to be well less than $300 from the rumors I heard. $230-$250 is being bandied about. Pricing hasnt been fixed yet though last I heard. About another 10-11 days will know for sure.

If the 230-250 range (hopefully thats the launch price) is accurate this may well be worth holding out for. I've been looking for a motherboard that will last me 3-5 years with processor/video/memory upgrades along the way, and of course 2 16x pci-e slots for crossfire. Will it have PCI-E 2 slots?

 

[Warren21]

Originally posted by: neloX
If the 230-250 range (hopefully thats the launch price) is accurate this may well be worth holding out for. I've been looking for a motherboard that will last me 3-5 years with processor/video/memory upgrades along the way, and of course 2 16x pci-e slots for crossfire. Will it have PCI-E 2 slots?

No, as of yet no motherboard has PCIe 2.0, it isn't due until 2H+ 2007, probably Q3+.

 

[xenolith]

I thought MSRP was going to be $220?

And I don't know if it's been stated in this thread, probably has, but anyway, DFI is the only manufacturer that picked up the RD600 chipset, AFAIK. DFI always takes much longer to release their offerings to the high end/overclocker/enthusiast market. IMO, that's probably the more plausible reason for the long delay, and not necessarily indicative to this chipset being abnormally buggy.

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: xenolith
I thought MSRP was going to be $220?

And I don't know if it's been stated in this thread, probably has, but anyway, DFI is the only manufacturer that picked up the RD600 chipset, AFAIK. DFI always takes much longer to release their offerings to the high end/overclocker/enthusiast market. IMO, that's probably the more plausible reason for the long delay, and not necessarily indicative to this chipset being abnormally buggy.

I think Asus is also making a board with this chipset.

 

[Centurin]

Asus has the chipset, but no word if they are actually doing anything with it. Mostly will depend on how well the DFI sells.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Centurin
Asus has the chipset, but no word if they are actually doing anything with it. Mostly will depend on how well the DFI sells.

Pipeline for mobo development is far too lengthy for ASUS to leave their decision point to something as belated as DFI sales numbers.

Surely whether or not ASUS is doing a RD600 mobo has already been decided, all that DFI sales sentiment and speculation from channel whispers on move rates would do to ASUS's plans on theor existing RD600 mobo timeline is determine whether to escalate or slow up the timeline.

 

[Praxis1452]

I'd bet they already have production samples however whether they will ever mass produce it depends on the sale of DFI's board. If it does well Asus will release theirs maybe a month or two later. It's like that.

 

[regpfj]

VRZone has some pics of the final retail version of the DFI RD600 motherboard, or LanParty CFX 3200.

Also in there are pictures of the DFI Lanparty 680i SLI "Early Engineering Sample 1."

edit... bah, gary beat me to it by 6 hours. And he has more pictures.

 

[Skott]

I'm sure ASUS and some others have some RD600 working models but like mentioned above wether it actually goes into mass production or not hasnt yet been decided. If DFI RD600 sales start out strong then ASUS probably wont hesitate to start up production as well.

 

[BreezeDM]

I been thinking about getting this motherboard, but I am worried about the crossfire speed.

From DFI website
" - 2 ATI CrossFire graphics cards (each operates at x8 bandwidth)."

I did some searching and all the crossfire motherboards I saw for core 2 have the same crossfire speed.

DFI's socktet 939 for AMD, cfx3200 has 16x Crossfire for both cards.
"- CrossFire mode: Each x16 slot operates at x16 bandwidth."

Nvidia's 680i runs at 16x for SLI.

I'm no expert and I was wondering if the difference is large for running 2 NVIDIA cars in SLI at 16x vs 2 ATI cards in Crossfire at 8x with comparable cards?

Also I was wondering why AMD chipsets with crossfire support 16x while intel has 8x crossfire chipsets?

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: regpfj
VRZone has some pics

edit... bah, gary beat me to it by 6 hours. And he has more pictures.

Heh, I missed a really good lunch for those pictures. :laugh: We will have a preview/mini-review up later this week.

 

[Skott]

Originally posted by: BreezeDM
I been thinking about getting this motherboard, but I am worried about the crossfire speed.

From DFI website
" - 2 ATI CrossFire graphics cards (each operates at x8 bandwidth)."

I did some searching and all the crossfire motherboards I saw for core 2 have the same crossfire speed.

DFI's socktet 939 for AMD, cfx3200 has 16x Crossfire for both cards.
"- CrossFire mode: Each x16 slot operates at x16 bandwidth."

Nvidia's 680i runs at 16x for SLI.

I'm no expert and I was wondering if the difference is large for running 2 NVIDIA cars in SLI at 16x vs 2 ATI cards in Crossfire at 8x with comparable cards?

Also I was wondering why AMD chipsets with crossfire support 16x while intel has 8x crossfire chipsets?

The difference between 8x and 16x (or 16x and 32x, depending on how you want to phrase it) is only noticeable at resolutions above 1600x1200. And even then its not huge. Its just a few percent. So unless you plan on running resolutions higher than 1600x1200 dont worry about wether its 8x or 16x.

 

[chapellane69]

Originally posted by: Skott

The difference between 8x and 16x (or 16x and 32x, depending on how you want to phrase it) is only noticeable at resolutions above 1600x1200. And even then its not huge. Its just a few percent. So unless you plan on running resolutions higher than 1600x1200 dont worry about whether its 8x or 16x.

I don't get why, if (as I understand it) the RD600 chipset has PCIExpress lanes coming out of its ears, DFI haven't just gone for putting 16 on both graphics slots all the time, as they did on the RD580 board for AMD CPUs.

There will be people who don't believe that it's not required, and surely noone can be certain that there will always (within the life of the board) be no advantage to 16+16 XFire. It must have been worth their while to create another 16+16 board just so as not to have been left behind in the "bragging rights" stakes.

I'm a bit puzzled by the name being CFX3200, which, since the RD580 board came out I had assumed was so-called because it provided 32 lanes for XFire. And now the ICFX3200 only provides 16.

 

[Heidfirst]

apparently it's actually an old chip developed at the same time as RD480 which was x8+x8. Supposedly they are on rev. 14 of the design ...

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: Skott

Originally posted by: BreezeDM
I been thinking about getting this motherboard, but I am worried about the crossfire speed.

From DFI website
" - 2 ATI CrossFire graphics cards (each operates at x8 bandwidth)."

I did some searching and all the crossfire motherboards I saw for core 2 have the same crossfire speed.

DFI's socktet 939 for AMD, cfx3200 has 16x Crossfire for both cards.
"- CrossFire mode: Each x16 slot operates at x16 bandwidth."

Nvidia's 680i runs at 16x for SLI.

I'm no expert and I was wondering if the difference is large for running 2 NVIDIA cars in SLI at 16x vs 2 ATI cards in Crossfire at 8x with comparable cards?

Also I was wondering why AMD chipsets with crossfire support 16x while intel has 8x crossfire chipsets?

The difference between 8x and 16x (or 16x and 32x, depending on how you want to phrase it) is only noticeable at resolutions above 1600x1200. And even then its not huge. Its just a few percent. So unless you plan on running resolutions higher than 1600x1200 dont worry about wether its 8x or 16x.

If that's the case, this is a deal breaker for me. I'll just go with the bad axe 2 for a QX6700 and dual X1950xtx setup. I wanted dual x16 slots for folding performance. Standfords already proven the x8 hampers performance when using the GPU clients. Now there is no reason to go with DFI solution. I don't see why they'd do this when the chipset supposedly supports 48 lanes, unless it doesn't...

Also, if you're going with a crosfire setup, I'd say most people are using above a 1600x1200 resolution.

 

[Praxis1452]

Originally posted by: ND40oz

Originally posted by: Skott

Originally posted by: BreezeDM
I been thinking about getting this motherboard, but I am worried about the crossfire speed.

From DFI website
" - 2 ATI CrossFire graphics cards (each operates at x8 bandwidth)."

I did some searching and all the crossfire motherboards I saw for core 2 have the same crossfire speed.

DFI's socktet 939 for AMD, cfx3200 has 16x Crossfire for both cards.
"- CrossFire mode: Each x16 slot operates at x16 bandwidth."

Nvidia's 680i runs at 16x for SLI.

I'm no expert and I was wondering if the difference is large for running 2 NVIDIA cars in SLI at 16x vs 2 ATI cards in Crossfire at 8x with comparable cards?

Also I was wondering why AMD chipsets with crossfire support 16x while intel has 8x crossfire chipsets?

The difference between 8x and 16x (or 16x and 32x, depending on how you want to phrase it) is only noticeable at resolutions above 1600x1200. And even then its not huge. Its just a few percent. So unless you plan on running resolutions higher than 1600x1200 dont worry about wether its 8x or 16x.

If that's the case, this is a deal breaker for me. I'll just go with the bad axe 2 for a QX6700 and dual X1950xtx setup. I wanted dual x16 slots for folding performance. Standfords already proven the x8 hampers performance when using the GPU clients. Now there is no reason to go with DFI solution. I don't see why they'd do this when the chipset supposedly supports 48 lanes, unless it doesn't...

Also, if you're going with a crosfire setup, I'd say most people are using above a 1600x1200 resolution.

it doesn't have enough lanes.... at all.

This chipset was in devolopment along with the RD480 which is old.

 

[BreezeDM]

"I'll just go with the bad axe 2 for a QX6700 and dual X1950xtx setup. I wanted dual x16 slots for folding performance. "

bad axe 2 is the same deal, when running crossfire each pci-express slots runs at 8x.

 

[PoopyPants]

Originally posted by: BreezeDM
"I'll just go with the bad axe 2 for a QX6700 and dual X1950xtx setup. I wanted dual x16 slots for folding performance. "

bad axe 2 is the same deal, when running crossfire each pci-express slots runs at 8x.

thats the funniest thing i've ever heard. 1950XTX in crossfire making your folding better.

 

[Yreka]

Originally posted by: PoopyPants

Originally posted by: BreezeDM
"I'll just go with the bad axe 2 for a QX6700 and dual X1950xtx setup. I wanted dual x16 slots for folding performance. "

bad axe 2 is the same deal, when running crossfire each pci-express slots runs at 8x.

thats the funniest thing i've ever heard. 1950XTX in crossfire making your folding better.

Why so funny ?

...By writing highly optimized, hand tuned code to run on ATI X1900 class GPU?s, the science of Folding@home will see another 20x to 30x speed increase over its previous software (Gromacs) for certain applications. This great speed increase is achieved by running essentially the complete molecular dynamics calculation on the GPU; while this is a challenging software development task, it appears to be the way to achieve the highest speed improvement on GPU's.

Are there any plans to enable the client to take advantage of dual-GPU systems like CrossFire, or even 3-slot systems that can support three GPUs? We will not support this at launch, but we are aggressively working to support multi-GPU systems.

 

[imported_RedStar]

i have yet to see any crossfire solution run 16x, 16x.

I am beginning to think that crossfire itself must not be capable of it.

 

[Warren21]

One word: RD580

This is ATI's current AMD enthusiast chipset which runs full dual x16 electrical.

The RD600 is supposed to be based off of RD580 which would justify the CrossFire 3200 Xpress moniker (it's the same name used on all of ATI's dual x16+x16 Crossfire motherboards)... but now I'm hearing that it's based on the ancient RD480 (Crossfire Xpress 1600)... A little clarification, Gary..?? I was planning on gaming with software CrossFire... not anymore I guess..?