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
Gaming Performance
It is perhaps a bit unfair to test the latest NVIDIA 7800GTX at 1280x1024 without any eye candy turned on. Turning on Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering demonstrates more clearly the performance advantages of this card. However, the results are interesting. At this somewhat low resolution, the 7800GTX shows a substantial lead only in a few very demanding titles like Half Life 2 and Doom3.
What this shows is that for most the 7800GTX will not be worth the extra cost if they game on a 19" LCD at 1280x1024. Unless you game at 1600x1200 or higher, or mainly play one of those few titles where the 7800GTX performs better at 1280x1024, the 7800GTX may be a wasted expense that will bring you little additional performance for what the 7800GTX costs.
It is perhaps a bit unfair to test the latest NVIDIA 7800GTX at 1280x1024 without any eye candy turned on. Turning on Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering demonstrates more clearly the performance advantages of this card. However, the results are interesting. At this somewhat low resolution, the 7800GTX shows a substantial lead only in a few very demanding titles like Half Life 2 and Doom3.
What this shows is that for most the 7800GTX will not be worth the extra cost if they game on a 19" LCD at 1280x1024. Unless you game at 1600x1200 or higher, or mainly play one of those few titles where the 7800GTX performs better at 1280x1024, the 7800GTX may be a wasted expense that will bring you little additional performance for what the 7800GTX costs.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
SATA2 actually only increases the bandwidth from 1.5Gbps to 3.0Gbps. Since sustained transfer rates are still maxing out at around 100MBps (0.8Gbps), and that's only with RAID-0 and two drives... well, SATA2 isn't a huge deal. I don't recall seeing whether the ATI chipset supports NCQ, which is of course in a similar boat.USB2.0 performance is only really important if you use an external HDD. Most flash cards and other USB2.0 devices don't come anywhere near 60MBps, as Anand's USB Flash Drive article showed. USB2.0 video devices might also have trouble, though - not sure what the throughput on those is. 150Mbps should be enough, really. Isn't 1080i only a 20Mbps stream? (Or is it 20MBps?)
haelduksf - Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - link
Err...that's what I meant, 3 Gbps, not 300Mbps. in either case, it's quite useless, and will be for the forseeable future.erinlegault - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
I would have been nice if DFI would have used the ULI southbridge. Maybe DFI will include the ULI M1575 for the DFI LANParty UT RDX200 Expert motherboard (that's if they do the same as they've done with the NF4 board).DigitalFreak - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
Anyone else think this board is a bit lacking feature wise for the $230 asking price? If you REALLY want Crossfire, then you'll need this board. Otherwise, the Nforce4 seems to be the better choice. I just can't believe that DFI is asking so much $$$ for this!mongoosesRawesome - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
price will likely come down pretty quickly. remember how much the nforce 4 sli boards were when they came out?I've also heard rumors that DFI is going to release a new board with an updated southbridge in a few weeks.
bob661 - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
Only if people buy these things otherwise there would be no reason to lower prices.coomar - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
226-2-2-2-7-2T is going to be faster than 206-2-2-2-7-1Tvdimm and vcore voltage choices were very impressive
how good is azalia compared to good soundcards/ decoders?
muffin - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
DFI was not the first! EQS have had a board on sale at overclock.co.uk for a couple of weeks now. Its the same as the (as yet unreleased) Sapphire board, made by the same people.Linky: http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/product.php?pr...">http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/product.php?pr...
Its been on sale for a while guys, pay attention. Theres an Inquirer story about it too :/
erinlegault - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
There is data for x850XT missing in the Half-Life 2, Wolfenstein, Aquamark and UT2004Wesley Fink - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link
Due to time constraints we did not run a full set of Crossfire benchmarks. We were mainly trying to confirm Crossfire worked as it should on the DFI. We therefore ran those benches where more powerful video makes a difference and left out those where the video power makes little difference. You can find a full suite of Crossfire, 7800GTX, and other graphics benchches in our Crossfire Graphics launch reviews under the Video tab at the top of the page.We did intend to run Half Life 2 but our benchmarks no longer work with the new build Steam forces on you. We are in the process of updating the HL2 benchmark unless some of you tech wizards know of an HL2 benchmark that will definitely work with the new HL2 version.