DFI RD600

[ND40oz]

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.

Yeah, that's the point, why put up with a DFI that will take me a week to get stable when I can run the bad axe 2 which has the same features and was optimized for kentsfield.

Originally posted by: PoopyPants

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

Where have you been, people have been folding on 1900 series cards since september. Around 660 ppd per card.

 

[Gary Key]

The RD600 core was developed right after the RD480 and before the RD580. It is a hybird chip in essence. It has more in common with the RD480 than RD580.

 

[daInvincibleGama]

Thats probably a bad thing..

isnt RD580 the newer chip with dual x16? If RD600 is a step back in time then their naming scheme chould indicate that.

nVidia 680i w/ 2 less PCIe lanes has dual x16. So the extra 2 lanes can only be more helpful (unless they put in some 25 SATA ports).

And with a retail price above 200$ and targeted at the enthusiast, there shouldn't be skimping on any important features.

And no x16 and x8 PCIe have huge differences. (exactly double the interconnect bandwidth).

Current gen cards cannot use all that power, but that wll probably change with next-gen cards on XFire (they would need to load more textures, etc + Xfire coordination takes up some interconnect bandwidth)

 

[daInvincibleGama]

DFI publicly demonstrated their new LanParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G motherboard based on the RD600 chipset. The board features dual PCI Express based Gigabit controllers from Marvell that can be teamed together, Karajan audio module featuring the Realtek ALC885 HD audio codec, IEEE 1394 support, four 3Gb/s SATA ports via the SB600 Southbridge, four 3Gb/s SATA port via the PCI based Promise PDC40719 (TX4300) chipset, three PCI Express x16 slots (1 x16 electrical or 2 x8 electrical, along with 1 x2 electrical), three PCI slots, and one Ultra133 IDE port via the SB600. The board is designed for mid to upper range overclocking, low power consumption, and true asynchronous memory speed capability. While initial testing shows this board will not break any SuperPI records, it is one of the top performing motherboards in applications and 3D gaming available today. The BIOS offers an incredible amount of tweaking options for those looking to extract the last ounce of performance out of their board and other components.

damn.

disappointed.

 

[PoopyPants]

the heart of folding and the majority of its prowess isnt your video card for pete's sake jesus people.
its hilarious to see someone specing a folding machine for folding.
your'd be far better off spending that money on a kentsfield and letting it carry the burden.
folding isnt 3dmark

 

[Praxis1452]

Originally posted by: PoopyPants
the heart of folding and the majority of its prowess isnt your video card for pete's sake jesus people.
its hilarious to see someone specing a folding machine for folding.
your'd be far better off spending that money on a kentsfield and letting it carry the burden.
folding isnt 3dmark

the gpu's parallel structure is much much better for folding than any cpu so far as I understand it but let's not get too off topic.

 

[lar2r]

Clearing up some mis-information...

1) RD600 was designed AFTER RD580 (Anandtech had RD580 samples last year, RD600 came out this year)

2) The RD600 has all of its graphics PCIE on one chip - the 680i has to use two chips, which while it may be linking in at x16 - introduces additional latency and competes with peripherals for bandwidth across the interconnect

Cheers!

 

[Warren21]

Nah man, that's what I thought but now I know: RD600 is an older design than RD580.
Also, the dates Anandtech had board samples doesn't prove anything other than RD580 was released first -- which no one here is debating.

It only has 20 PCIe lanes, thus x8 + x8 + x2 for CrossFire + Physics.

I do believe RD580 has 40 PCIe lanes.

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: PoopyPants
the heart of folding and the majority of its prowess isnt your video card for pete's sake jesus people.
its hilarious to see someone specing a folding machine for folding.
your'd be far better off spending that money on a kentsfield and letting it carry the burden.
folding isnt 3dmark

Yeah, I build all my rigs just for folding...no wait a minute, maybe I optimized what components I am buying so that it not only does it's day job but also folds for me.

I currently have a PD 930 with a gigabyte 975 board running two x1950xtx's in non crossfire configuration driving a 2405 and two 1905s. I'm upgrading that with a kentsfield and a new board, which at this point looks like the Bad Axe 2. I wanted a board with dual x16 electrical slots to provide better bandwidth to the cards, but it doesn't look like I have that option with a board that capable of crossfire should I at one point want to drive my single 2405 with both cards.

I don't want this to become a thread about folding, that should be kept to the DC forum. But please do some additional research on GPU folding before making statements implying that GPUs aren't useful for the folding community and they're only good for 3dmark and gaming.

 

[lar2r]

Originally posted by: Warren21
Nah man, that's what I thought but now I know: RD600 is an older design than RD580.
Also, the dates Anandtech had board samples doesn't prove anything other than RD580 was released first -- which no one here is debating.

It only has 20 PCIe lanes, thus x8 + x8 + x2 for CrossFire + Physics.

I do believe RD580 has 40 PCIe lanes.

???? There is almost a year's difference between the die's coming out, with RD600 coming out just this year. The number of lanes do not make it an older part.

Hoping that the Anandtech review will have some clarification from the ATI / AMD team on this as well as performance comparisons vs 2x16 parts. (Hey anyone have a driver which disables NV's block on chipsets? - and that's in the 9x.xx series?)

 

[Warren21]

Originally posted by: lar2r

Originally posted by: Warren21
Nah man, that's what I thought but now I know: RD600 is an older design than RD580.
Also, the dates Anandtech had board samples doesn't prove anything other than RD580 was released first -- which no one here is debating.

It only has 20 PCIe lanes, thus x8 + x8 + x2 for CrossFire + Physics.

I do believe RD580 has 40 PCIe lanes.

???? There is almost a year's difference between the die's coming out, with RD600 coming out just this year. The number of lanes do not make it an older part.

Hoping that the Anandtech review will have some clarification from the ATI / AMD team on this as well as performance comparisons vs 2x16 parts. (Hey anyone have a driver which disables NV's block on chipsets? - and that's in the 9x.xx series?)

Yeah, there is almost a year's difference between the dies coming out but believe me when I say that RD600 was in development in the RD480 era. This chip has been in development for almost a year, delayed for 3-4 months -- but it bears no relation to RD580 whatsoever.

 

[kindest]

so do i want a dfi rd600 or an evga 680i.. i dont like the fact that the evga 680i uses so much power compared to most of the other intell dual core boards.

 

[Skott]

Originally posted by: kindest
so do i want a dfi rd600 or an evga 680i.. i dont like the fact that the evga 680i uses so much power compared to most of the other intell dual core boards.

I guess it comes down to wether you want SLI or CrossFire. Its too early to say for sure but I'm going to guess (based on early tester's praise) The RD600 is going to be less problematic than the current 680i reference mobos. By reference mobos I mean eVGA, BFG, ECS, etc., This doesnt include the non-reference mobos like ASUS, MSI, ABIT, et.,

 

[Mr Vain]

FINALLY A REVIEW!!

 

[Mr Vain]

Anandtechs 1st review is up.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2891

This chipsets is a non power hog and is very competitive.

 

[Skott]

Yep, its looking like a winner for DFI so far. Still need to wait for production boards get into user's hands for final testing.

 

[Avalon]

I posted in the comments section and got practically flamed for saying I wasn't going to purchase the board after reading the review. It's got some good points, like low power consumption, competitive performance, and competitive features, but mainly I was upset with the price tag and the max FSB of 518Mhz that was achieved with the board. Granted, 518Mhz is pretty good, but not mind blowing.

I can get much cheaper boards that will hit near those overclocks. The rest of the performance and memory tweaks don't seem to account for much real world performance outside of synthetic benchmarks, hence I'll probably be looking for a different board. Sorry, but I'm not a benchmark enthusiast, I'm here for bang for the buck. The Ultra-D provided that back in its hayday, but not this Lanparty IMO. Good board, but I've got better p/p options.

 

[Mucker]

965, 975, 680i, RD600...........

I am holding out until spring for C2D but it's nice to see the strengths and weaknesses of these platforms being exposed.

Will be interesting to see where Commando will end up.......

Really wish a great Micro-ATX board would enter the picture too.....

 

[imported_RedStar]

to me the board's best selling features are:

digital PM(edit: sorry --to be more accurate...6-Phase Digital Power Management) and runs alot cooler than the 680i chipset.

If it had come out on time..then people would have been more excited --a time when all the other boards did 350 FSB -400 FSB and got people excited.

For me the wait has been just too long... even though i still have not decided on a MB (looking since september)

 

[TBSN]

what is digital PM?

 

[SunnyD]

Wow... the layout is rediculous. Only 3 PCIe slots... this board may cater to "legacy" users more with all the PCI slots. Personally, the lack of 1x and 4x PCIe slots, plus the location of the SATA ports seems to be a bit... bad.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: Avalon
I posted in the comments section and got practically flamed for saying I wasn't going to purchase the board after reading the review. It's got some good points, like low power consumption, competitive performance, and competitive features, but mainly I was upset with the price tag and the max FSB of 518Mhz that was achieved with the board. Granted, 518Mhz is pretty good, but not mind blowing.

I can get much cheaper boards that will hit near those overclocks. The rest of the performance and memory tweaks don't seem to account for much real world performance outside of synthetic benchmarks, hence I'll probably be looking for a different board. Sorry, but I'm not a benchmark enthusiast, I'm here for bang for the buck. The Ultra-D provided that back in its hayday, but not this Lanparty IMO. Good board, but I've got better p/p options.

I tend to agree. I've been waiting for this board for a long time and I'm not sure it was worth the wait. The 518MHz was even with a x7 multi. Using a x9 multi they only hit 432Mhz which could be a limitation of the chip or maybe the motherboard. What would be nice is if they would test a chip that is known to overclock very well in another board and than see if the same FSB is acheivable with the DFI.

What I do like about the board is the vdroop being almost nonexistent. That is a big leap over the current C2D boards.

 

[nealh]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: Avalon
I posted in the comments section and got practically flamed for saying I wasn't going to purchase the board after reading the review. It's got some good points, like low power consumption, competitive performance, and competitive features, but mainly I was upset with the price tag and the max FSB of 518Mhz that was achieved with the board. Granted, 518Mhz is pretty good, but not mind blowing.

I can get much cheaper boards that will hit near those overclocks. The rest of the performance and memory tweaks don't seem to account for much real world performance outside of synthetic benchmarks, hence I'll probably be looking for a different board. Sorry, but I'm not a benchmark enthusiast, I'm here for bang for the buck. The Ultra-D provided that back in its hayday, but not this Lanparty IMO. Good board, but I've got better p/p options.

I tend to agree. I've been waiting for this board for a long time and I'm not sure it was worth the wait. The 518MHz was even with a x7 multi. Using a x9 multi they only hit 432Mhz which could be a limitation of the chip or maybe the motherboard. What would be nice is if they would test a chip that is known to overclock very well in another board and than see if the same FSB is acheivable with the DFI.

What I do like about the board is the vdroop being almost nonexistent. That is a big leap over the current C2D boards.

I agree 100%..not to mention the complete lack of availablity for which there is no excuse

Also, Badaxe2 has less of a vdroop

 

[Tyhr]

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed considering the hype and the wait.
If I had to buy today, it would be between 965 and 975. (Don't like the 680i SATA crap shoot).
Now can I afford to wait for the 2nd gen 965's? Probably not. Learned my lesson that some things (RD600) are not worth waiting for, and that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

 

[Agent11]

If it drops below 200 I'll jump on it.