Graphics Performance and Encoding

3DMark03 Performance

3DMark05 Performance

MPEG-4 Encoding Performance - 'Sum of All Fears' Ch. 9

The 3DMark graphics Benchmarks from FutureMark gave a few surprises in testing of the DFI RDX200. We expected the latest and fastest NVIDIA 7800GTX to have a substantial performance lead over the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra, but we did not expect such a strong performance for the ATI Crossfire X850XT. 3DMark05 and 3DMark03 are synthetic benchmarks, but they are designed to test the gaming elements of DirectX 9, using specially written gaming segments.

It has often been pointed out that encoding results should not be affected by the graphics card used during the encoding benchmarks. This is clearly demonstrated by the archive test results for AutoGK using an AMD 4000+ processor with a wide assortment of other components. The performance range of those encoding tests is just 48.1 to 48.9 - a difference form high to low of just 0.8 frames. Clearly, the biggest influence on this encoding benchmark is the CPU used for testing.

General Performance Gaming Performance
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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.

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