DFI LANParty UT RDX200: ATI’s Crossfire AMD for the Bleeding Edge
by Wesley Fink on October 18, 2005 11:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
Tests used OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2, which uses Samsung TCCD chips. All memory ran at 2-2-2-7 timing in all benchmarks.
We tested with our standard NVIDIA 6800 Ultra to allow the best comparisons to benchmark results with other motherboards. To demonstrate performance with various current video options, we also tested with the MSI NVIDIA 7800GTX. Operation of ATI Crossfire was verified with an ATI X850XT Master/X850XT pair and results are reported in several benchmarks for Reference. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1280x1024x32 unless otherwise noted.
Results for the DFI LANParty UT RDX200 with the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra are in red, results with the MSI NVIDIA 7800GTX are color-coded gold, and the Reference comparisons with ATI X850XT Crossfire are in purple. Results for the other boards, all tested with the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra, are in blue.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz) Socket 939 |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM SATA (8MB Buffer) |
| Power Supply: | OCZ PowerStream 520W |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | ATI Catalyst Platform 5.10 |
| Video Cards: | MSI NVIDIA 7800GTX NVIDIA 6800 Ultra ATI X850XT Crossfire |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 5.10 NVIDIA nForce 78.01 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 Direct X 9.0c |
| Motherboards: | DFI LANParty UT RDX200 ATI Crossfire AMD Reference Board SiS 756 Reference Board ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 (ULi M1695/1567) Sapphire A9RX480 (ATI) Jetway 939GT4-SLI-G (nForce4) ULi AP9567A (M1695/M1567) DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D (nForce4) MSI K8N Neo4/SLI Platinum (nForce4) |
Tests used OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2, which uses Samsung TCCD chips. All memory ran at 2-2-2-7 timing in all benchmarks.
We tested with our standard NVIDIA 6800 Ultra to allow the best comparisons to benchmark results with other motherboards. To demonstrate performance with various current video options, we also tested with the MSI NVIDIA 7800GTX. Operation of ATI Crossfire was verified with an ATI X850XT Master/X850XT pair and results are reported in several benchmarks for Reference. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1280x1024x32 unless otherwise noted.
Results for the DFI LANParty UT RDX200 with the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra are in red, results with the MSI NVIDIA 7800GTX are color-coded gold, and the Reference comparisons with ATI X850XT Crossfire are in purple. Results for the other boards, all tested with the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra, are in blue.
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nsk - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
Having 8 SATA ports is very useful. kudos to DFI for putting that extra SiI chip.Diasper - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
What's good about this board IMO is the Azalia Audio and CPU utilisation - *very* impressive for on-board audio. Performance and options are of course very good as well although nothing worth paying significantly more for.However, just to point out one additional benefit of the board that you guys might not have realised yet is that it could very much make a quiet computer guy very happy as the active chipset cooler can very easily be replaced with a passive heatsink eg Zalman one. Trying that with many NF4 is impossible unless resorting to modding - with some coming up with some quite radical solutions. After all there's no point buying a nice and expensive case like the Antec P180 and then a quiet PSU ontop only to have a screaming NB fan in your NF4 - unless resorting to modding.
However, as others have mentioned deal-breakers include poor USB performance and no SATA 2 and possibly cost althought we'll have to wait on that one.
Azkarr - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
Well, it's on newegg now. $239? I think thats just about $50 too much for not having SATA II. Plus, none of the Crossfire cards except the XL are out, so I don't think there's a point to buying this board.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">Newegg
Slaimus - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
Which sound driver was used to get such a low CPU usage score? Realtek or ATI?Wesley Fink - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
We used the Realtek sound driver on the DFI CD with the board for testing. We did use the current 5.10 Catalyst drivers, however, instead of the Crossfire 5.8 drivers on the CD.nourdmrolNMT1 - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/d...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/d...WTF is up with the one SATA connector? sata7 specifically it looks completely off.
emilyek - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
A clawhammer for overclocking?Also,
A real test of the 1T/2T stuff would be gaming benchmarks for 2 x 1G @ 1T and 4 x 512 @ 2T. That's the test I want to see.
ozzimark - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
this stands out at me.http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/dfi%20rdx200_10...">http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/dfi%20rdx200_10...
that data is... somewhat useless for the top 5-9 boards, as it's obviously a cpu limitation. try oc'ing the htt/fsb with the fx-57 and watch the board break 400mhz
Pete84 - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
Horrible!! The only things going for this board is that I. It has Crossfire and II. It has some nice memory capabilities and III. It has Azaliz.Pathetic USB performance, no SATA II!!! When even budget minded boards have SATA II and this one does not, now that is a serious lapse. Having a seperate raid controller with some SATA II ports would help this, especially so if it was on the PCI-E bus, but wow . . . and price at $230!!!
haelduksf - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
I don't understand why SATA-II is such a big deal to so many people. NCQ has a negligable impact unless you're running a server (on a XFire motherboard...), and the 300MB/s transfer speed has no effect at any time with currently available harddrives.