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
Overclocking: DFI LANParty UT RDX200
The DFI matched the highest stock speed overclock that we have achieved with this Clawhammer 130nm processor. There is little to complain about with this kind of stock overclocking with this CPU.
When we discussed results with the DFI Design Engineer, we were told that our results were typical of what could be expected on this. The highest clock does not reach to 315 to 318 as a few other boards have because of the compromises made to achieve reliable operation with 4 double-sided DIMMs at 1T. However, most boards should be able to reach a 300 to 310 Clock frequency in overclocking with appropriate ratios.
| DFI LANParty UT RDX200 Overclocking Testbed |
|
| Processor(s): | Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz, 1MB Cache) |
| CPU Voltage: | 1.425V (default 1.40V) |
| Cooling: | Thermaltake Silent Boost K8 Heatsink/Fan |
| Power Supply: | OCZ Power Stream 520W |
| Memory: | OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 (Samsung TCCD Memory Chips) |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA 8MB Cache |
| Maximum OC: (Standard Ratio) |
245x12 (4x HT, 2.5-3-3-10) 2940MHz (+22.5%) |
| Maximum FSB: (Lower Ratio) |
305 x 9 (3x HT, 1T) (2718MHz, 2 DIMMs in DC mode) (+53% Bus Overclock) |
The DFI matched the highest stock speed overclock that we have achieved with this Clawhammer 130nm processor. There is little to complain about with this kind of stock overclocking with this CPU.
Lowering the multiplier to reach the highest CPU clock was a bit more difficult. While it was easy to reach a stable 270 with the default (mostly AUTO) memory timings in BIOS, getting to the eventual 305 proved more of a challenge. The design team tells us that the RDX200 was optimized for Crucial Ballistix 1GB DIMMs and not our standard OCZ TCCD DIMMs. We finally reached a stable 305 setting with the following settings:
- Tref (Refresh Period) - 2592
- DRAM Drive Strength - 7
- DRAM Data Drive Strength - 2
- Max Asynch Latency - 9
- Read Preamble Time - 6.5
When we discussed results with the DFI Design Engineer, we were told that our results were typical of what could be expected on this. The highest clock does not reach to 315 to 318 as a few other boards have because of the compromises made to achieve reliable operation with 4 double-sided DIMMs at 1T. However, most boards should be able to reach a 300 to 310 Clock frequency in overclocking with appropriate ratios.
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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.