DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R: ATI's, err, AMD's RD600 finally arrives
by Gary Key on December 16, 2006 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Initial Thoughts
We have been a bit overwhelmed while testing this board over the course of the last week. The sheer number of BIOS settings and tweaks available has sent us into a constant scurrying mode to find the proper settings for improving performance and retaining stability at the same time. This is not to say it has not been fun; it has, but we figure the typical enthusiast is going to need three or four solid days with the board before locking in on a few preferred settings. We say a few preferred settings as this board's personality and performance changes tremendously when swapping out memory or CPUs. Any changes require additional tuning routines to extract the best possible performance from a given set of components.
We found ourselves constantly changing a set of conditions and then testing them non-stop to figure out if what we thought would work actually did. Sometimes we saw tremendous improvements, and other times we witnessed erratic behavior from the board. The most difficult part of the performance tuning has been trying to figure out what happens when you change an obscure setting and how it interrelates with the rest of the BIOS tweaks. During our initial testing phase, we were presented with a beta BIOS build that opened up further memory options in the BIOS that allowed us to improve both overclocking stability and memory performance. It also changed our way of thinking about tuning the board. Although DFI ships an extensive user's manual, there is not a chart that specifies each BIOS setting and how it interrelates with other settings in the same group. This board requires you to get down in the mud with it and work for its performance potential. The potential is certainly there; it just requires a lot of effort on your part and for it you will be rewarded with an extremely stable and excellent performing motherboard.
The board's overall performance falls in the middle when compared to the venerable Intel 975X and the new hotshot (hot in more ways than one) NVIDIA 680i. This is not necessarily bad and not what we initially expected, but considering the performance of the original reference board, ATI (now AMD) has come a long way with it. We doubt they would have progressed this far without the assistance of DFI but we are glad to see another alternative chipset in the performance market for the Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The sheer flexibility of the memory controller and memory tuning options will allow you to tweak this board for your particular usage unlike any other board currently on the market. For once, we believe those of you who have purchased high-end memory will have a motherboard that can actually take advantage of it in several different ways, and at the same time users with lower end memory are still able to extract the best performance possible.
We witnessed very good performance results from the shipping 12/01 BIOS but we did run into a few issues such as the USB keyboard issue during RAID setup (sometimes it worked, other times not), the PC Health section in the BIOS would lock up occasionally depending upon the fans utilized, and we could not always depend on getting an additional couple of percent improvement in memory performance when setting the burst rate to 8 when dropping our latency timings. We have seen worse shipping BIOS releases and even worse mature production BIOS releases, but currently we are totally blown away by the beta 12/07 BIOS when it comes to extracting the best possible performance from this motherboard. However, with the new options comes a penalty: we just could not get into the BIOS during a warm reboot. We had to shutdown and clear the CMOS or cold reboot the board at least three times to even have a chance at entering the BIOS. Fortunately, DFI includes their CMOS reloaded program so our basic profiles are saved for quick retrieval. DFI is working around the clock to address these issues and others so we feel very confident in the future of this motherboard regarding technical support.
We hope our performance preview provided some necessary details and results about this unique motherboard. Our coming in-depth review will go over the BIOS in detail (once we have a non-beta version), provide performance settings for both stock and overclocked conditions, widen the scope of both application and gaming benchmarks, include quad core performance, and introduce the audio, networking, and complete storage options available to users. In the meantime, we would like to say that our audio testing has progressed very well and we did not notice any significant issues with our Creative X-Fi card while operating with or without RAID enabled. This also holds true for the included Karajan audio system although we wish Realtek would get EAX 2.0 working correctly again. The Marvell network controllers have not given us any grief nor have the USB or Firewire controllers with external storage solutions.
We expect to see retail availability of the ICFX3200 very shortly. However, we have no idea what the future brings from AMD/ATI, as the best may be yet to come or this may truly be a one hit wonder for the Intel market. Also, RD600 may not truly provide the most compelling platform for some people until R600 graphics cards become available and BIOS tuning is completed. Final street prices are also going to be important, considering the performance and value available from DFI's own 975X Infinity, but the LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G definitely offers more in the way of tweaking and tuning options for the serious enthusiasts.
It has taken too long for this board to arrive to the market place but the extra time seems to have paid off with a board that while not perfect is very good. Stability and overall performance are very competitive, and overclocking at this point is among the elite; just remember, you will have to work for that performance but the satisfaction of having done so is well worth it - at least for the serious enthusiasts. We highly commend DFI for persevering and bringing a product of this caliber to market. For those of you looking for the ultimate flexibility in an Intel based motherboard along with excellent stability up to the board's limits, then we suggest you seriously consider the DFI LANParty ICFX3200-T2R/G.
We have been a bit overwhelmed while testing this board over the course of the last week. The sheer number of BIOS settings and tweaks available has sent us into a constant scurrying mode to find the proper settings for improving performance and retaining stability at the same time. This is not to say it has not been fun; it has, but we figure the typical enthusiast is going to need three or four solid days with the board before locking in on a few preferred settings. We say a few preferred settings as this board's personality and performance changes tremendously when swapping out memory or CPUs. Any changes require additional tuning routines to extract the best possible performance from a given set of components.
We found ourselves constantly changing a set of conditions and then testing them non-stop to figure out if what we thought would work actually did. Sometimes we saw tremendous improvements, and other times we witnessed erratic behavior from the board. The most difficult part of the performance tuning has been trying to figure out what happens when you change an obscure setting and how it interrelates with the rest of the BIOS tweaks. During our initial testing phase, we were presented with a beta BIOS build that opened up further memory options in the BIOS that allowed us to improve both overclocking stability and memory performance. It also changed our way of thinking about tuning the board. Although DFI ships an extensive user's manual, there is not a chart that specifies each BIOS setting and how it interrelates with other settings in the same group. This board requires you to get down in the mud with it and work for its performance potential. The potential is certainly there; it just requires a lot of effort on your part and for it you will be rewarded with an extremely stable and excellent performing motherboard.
The board's overall performance falls in the middle when compared to the venerable Intel 975X and the new hotshot (hot in more ways than one) NVIDIA 680i. This is not necessarily bad and not what we initially expected, but considering the performance of the original reference board, ATI (now AMD) has come a long way with it. We doubt they would have progressed this far without the assistance of DFI but we are glad to see another alternative chipset in the performance market for the Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The sheer flexibility of the memory controller and memory tuning options will allow you to tweak this board for your particular usage unlike any other board currently on the market. For once, we believe those of you who have purchased high-end memory will have a motherboard that can actually take advantage of it in several different ways, and at the same time users with lower end memory are still able to extract the best performance possible.
We witnessed very good performance results from the shipping 12/01 BIOS but we did run into a few issues such as the USB keyboard issue during RAID setup (sometimes it worked, other times not), the PC Health section in the BIOS would lock up occasionally depending upon the fans utilized, and we could not always depend on getting an additional couple of percent improvement in memory performance when setting the burst rate to 8 when dropping our latency timings. We have seen worse shipping BIOS releases and even worse mature production BIOS releases, but currently we are totally blown away by the beta 12/07 BIOS when it comes to extracting the best possible performance from this motherboard. However, with the new options comes a penalty: we just could not get into the BIOS during a warm reboot. We had to shutdown and clear the CMOS or cold reboot the board at least three times to even have a chance at entering the BIOS. Fortunately, DFI includes their CMOS reloaded program so our basic profiles are saved for quick retrieval. DFI is working around the clock to address these issues and others so we feel very confident in the future of this motherboard regarding technical support.
We hope our performance preview provided some necessary details and results about this unique motherboard. Our coming in-depth review will go over the BIOS in detail (once we have a non-beta version), provide performance settings for both stock and overclocked conditions, widen the scope of both application and gaming benchmarks, include quad core performance, and introduce the audio, networking, and complete storage options available to users. In the meantime, we would like to say that our audio testing has progressed very well and we did not notice any significant issues with our Creative X-Fi card while operating with or without RAID enabled. This also holds true for the included Karajan audio system although we wish Realtek would get EAX 2.0 working correctly again. The Marvell network controllers have not given us any grief nor have the USB or Firewire controllers with external storage solutions.
We expect to see retail availability of the ICFX3200 very shortly. However, we have no idea what the future brings from AMD/ATI, as the best may be yet to come or this may truly be a one hit wonder for the Intel market. Also, RD600 may not truly provide the most compelling platform for some people until R600 graphics cards become available and BIOS tuning is completed. Final street prices are also going to be important, considering the performance and value available from DFI's own 975X Infinity, but the LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G definitely offers more in the way of tweaking and tuning options for the serious enthusiasts.
It has taken too long for this board to arrive to the market place but the extra time seems to have paid off with a board that while not perfect is very good. Stability and overall performance are very competitive, and overclocking at this point is among the elite; just remember, you will have to work for that performance but the satisfaction of having done so is well worth it - at least for the serious enthusiasts. We highly commend DFI for persevering and bringing a product of this caliber to market. For those of you looking for the ultimate flexibility in an Intel based motherboard along with excellent stability up to the board's limits, then we suggest you seriously consider the DFI LANParty ICFX3200-T2R/G.
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42 Comments
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baronzemo78 - Monday, December 18, 2006 - link
I would like to thank Gary for all the hard work getting this preview out so fast. I am still very excited about this board. I'm waiting for the R600 anyway, so hopefully by then the stability and BIOS options of the board will have improved. I'm very curious to see if the R600 in crossfire will need more then the x8 pcie bandwith. I certainly hope it doesn't as an overclocked RD600 with a R600 sounds awesome to me. Anyway thanks again for the preview and keep up the good work.Lord Evermore - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
First page says SB600 offers multiple LAN ports, but SB600 has no LAN support, and the Marvell controllers are off the PCIe links from the northbridge.It seems odd that ATI didn't design the SB600 with at least a couple of extra PCIe lanes. Right off the bat, this mainboard has zero upgradeability for PCIe devices, if you set up the intended dual graphics and physics cards. No hot new PCIe sound cards, TV tuners, SCSI cards.
SB600 automatically becomes a nice competitor to Intel's chipsets, due to the included PATA support, so there's no need for an add in PCI IDE controller. ATI/AMD's overview page though is a bit misleading, as they claim the built-in SATA controllers support "all RAID levels".
You're blaming DFI's board layout for large heatsinks not fitting into smaller cases? They had to put the socket somewhere, if that's the issue, and no matter where board makers put things, reviewers ALWAYS seem to find some complaint because of odd components not fitting or cabling not being perfect. And you didn't even mention those 90 degree angled SATA ports. I haven't seen that before. Might those not be an issue if you don't use a cable with a clip, since the downward pull of the cables is now going longways instead of across the width of the connector? (Same thing could apply to any SATA or IDE ports aligned perpendicular to the expansion slots really, but most boards don't have them that way that I've seen, possibly for that very reason.) Yeah I know, it might get mentioned in a more in-depth review, but that stands out more to me than 0.1% of the available heatsinks not fitting in a tiny case.
Why would the third PCIe slot need to be "jumpered for PCI Express card operation"?
That Promise RAID looks like crap. The single drive SB600 performance almost beats it. Why no benchmarks with the SB600 RAID, or the Intel or Nvidia RAID? It would be nice to know if ATI can beat the roughly 50% performance gain of the others.
Too bad this might be the only board ever made with this chipset, and that there won't be a more value-oriented line. I can do without the CrossFire support or the physics slot (although having the option of a non-graphics x8 or x2 slot with x16 physical support would be nice), and I can do with a reduction in the amount of tweaking options, or the add-in Promise controller, or dual LAN and the better audio solution. And the color scheme could be done without. I'm tempted by Core2Duo chips, but none of the other chipsets or boards really looks that great to me in terms of features.
Gary Key - Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - link
With the latest beta BIOS release -If you disable Promise and SB600 RAID you can use the second X16 slot (x8 electrical) for a RAID card, it will switch your first x16 slot from x16 to x8 operation.
The physics slot (x2 electrical) works fine with our x1 Network or TV Tuner cards once you switch the jumper now. This is required to change the operation of the slot based upon the switching mechanism employed with the future Physics setup.
I am not blaming DFI for large heatsinks not fitting in smaller cases. I was just pointing out the fact that it could be an issue for those that try it. I like the open space myself due to the offset but that creates another issue for some users. It is just information being provided.
The SB600 can support LAN depending upon how they configure it. DFI that it would be best for dual Lan coming off the RD600 instead.
The other RAID benchmarks are coming in our follow-up as stated in the article.
The 90 degree angled SATA ports are being used in most of the new board designs now. Look at most of the 680i boards and you will find they are being used extensively now. We did not have any issues with the cables slipping out.
yyrkoon - Monday, December 18, 2006 - link
Thats why "we" just review the product, and not send them off to some salt mines, somewhere ;) This is after all, a review, everyone has an opinion, and if it doesn't bother you, simply disregard, and use common sense . . .
Sh0ckwave - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
Looks like a decentn my cramped case. board. I just need to know if my Infinity will fit on it icornfedone - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
From this initial review this mobo sure sounds temperamental and a shaky design if you see dramatic changes with BIOS settings and instability sometimes. The fact that it's performance changes radically with memory or CPU changes is not an indication of a stable mobo design.More BIOS adjustments does not necessarily make for a better mobo design if all the options do is make the mobo unstable or crash. This is a typical case of more is not better. The extra options are used as a rationale to jack the price and increase profits from consumers who lack the technical expertise to understand the motivation for such useless BIOS options.
As far as the ATI/AMD labels go, I don't know why many in the online enthusiasts PC hardware segment make such a big deal out of AMD renaming the ATI products with AMD labels. Every company I know of that has bought another company, renames the products, so this ain't no big deal. If you don't like the product don't buy it. The name of the product has no impact on how it performs.
mino - Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - link
Also on the maning "issue".Most sites "big deal out of AMD renaming the ATI products" not because ot the renaming - no problem there.
The thing is, one of the best chipsets/if not THE best for Intel comming form AMD, well, that IS something.
Also remember, AMD chipset ? That has not been in the consumer market for LONG time. At the same note, most average people have no idea that X200=X3200IE=RD600 and is from the RD480line... to those (aned there are many of them!) this is a big deal as they do not have to dig the info themselves.
Also, at least to me, seeing it makes me smile usually...
mino - Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - link
maning==namingmino - Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - link
Well, at first You should understand what "temperamental when messing with BIOS" and temaperamental at "stock" means.When the board is "temperamental" when messing with BIOS, ti means YOU are messing with something you have no idea what it is or what it does!
If you do not understand what overclocking really means, do NOT overclock at all.
Overclocking is about running things "one the edge" ... and to find that "edge" you NEED to be able to push the board over it.
To be able to do so is a dream of an overclocker as it enables him to get most performance from any set of components.
I love those dumbass "overclockers" who assemble a mid-range machine, install some ClockGen-like utility, overclock it until it becomes unstable and consider themselves "overclockers".
To topic:
!!! I LOVE THE IDEA OF THOSE UNDERVOLTING OPTIONS !!!
More boards should offer those, it is far more usefull and safe than overvolt jet most boards do not offer it... ;-(
mino - Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - link
sry for the typpos :)