is this anygood DFI RDX200CF-DR

Nitrams64 · 16 Nov 2006 at 20:23

Is this board anygood DFI RDX200CF-DR need a new board but just a stopgap until i upgrade at a later date.Have a 4400X2 and 2gig of gskill.
Have heard of probs with sata.Can you use the silicon image as boot in raid setup.

pieman109 · 17 Nov 2006 at 15:48

The only probs with this mobo that I know of is the fact that it doesn't have sata2, just sata1, and there are supposedly issues with the speed of USB2. I have one of these mobos in the kid's pc, and I had no probs at all with it (just use the orange dimm slots, not the yellow). I've got a64 3500 @ 2.5ghz with no probs at all.
Considering the price, you can't go wrong.

Nitrams64 · 17 Nov 2006 at 15:59

Thanks for the info

Stav_13 · 17 Nov 2006 at 18:25

i've always wanted a DFI board and for this price looks like a deal, i have a Asus A8R MVP iknow the difference between the sata ii but does it really make that much difference as i have a sata ii and sata i HD . . . . cheers

Stav

perry081064 · 17 Nov 2006 at 19:07

pieman109 said:
(just use the orange dimm slots, not the yellow). .

picked one of these up today for the lad, hes got 2gb corsair value select 3200 (4x512mb)so hes gonna need to use the yellow slots..will he have any problems?

Rab · 17 Nov 2006 at 20:06

perry081064 said:
picked one of these up today for the lad, hes got 2gb corsair value select 3200 (4x512mb)so hes gonna need to use the yellow slots..will he have any problems?

some ppl, get the 4x 512 to work on dfi boards, tbh most dont, would go with 2 sticks in orange 1st c how it goes, if works go from there. these board fussy on ram & psu, should get away with ram, kinda psu u got? dfi state 480watt min
.
grt boards thou when up & running

Super Tigers · 17 Nov 2006 at 21:01

Rab said:
kinda psu u got? dfi state 480watt min

The board has a sticker over the 24pin atx socket,
it states for x800 in non xfire mode with single core cpu needs 350watt
x800 in non xfire with x2 cpu needs 400watt
2x x800 in xfire with x2cpu needs 450watt psu.

I have this board and it isn't that power hungry at all.
I have a 450 watt sansun psu with 29amps on the 12v line, with a san diego 3700 overclocked to 2.8ghz, with xfx6800xt, 512mb TCCD ram and my rails are absolutely spot-on.

I paid £35 for my board, but at £29inc vat it is an absolute steal and clocks like a speed-demon. Don't forget you get a 2 year guarantee from DFI with this board. If you flash to the latest 23/12/2005 bios it does allow four dimms to run at 1T but I haven't tried it. Huge amount of info on the DFI street forum pages.

Rob H

perry081064 · 17 Nov 2006 at 22:36

Rab said:
kinda psu u got? dfi state 480watt min
.

we shouldnt have any probs with the psu , its a seasonic(typo?) 600w ..that is under a year old , voltages are stable on it too.

yeah, we will go with 2 in the orange as you have said and take it from there.

...dont think he wants to o/c until he gets some better ram, just wants it up and running stable...after using a rubbish sapphire board that keeps crashing out i dont blame him.

hes gonna be running:
250gb hdd ( ide)
x1800xt 512mb
dvdrom and dvdwriter
x64 3200 venice

fester · 18 Nov 2006 at 00:51

Got one a few weeks ago it's and it a great board there nothing at twice the price £50

as good as it.It will do 315 htt with no fuss or extra volts to the north bridge chipset.You can also control the speed of all the fans with Smartguardian to keep your computer quite.Also there are 2 giga lan, 8 sata and firewire ports.

Opteron 146 2750 mhz AC freezer 64
DFI LANPARTY RDX 200 FC-DR 2GB cheapo PNY ram
Galaxy 7600 gt 660 mhz core 1560 mhz memory
Artic cooling T2 350 watt Seasonic

Tagman · 18 Nov 2006 at 08:50

Just ordered one of these myself.Sounds like a real bargain

kitfit1 · 18 Nov 2006 at 11:43

Super Tigers said:
If you flash to the latest 23/12/2005 bios it does allow four dimms to run at 1T but I haven't tried it. Huge amount of info on the DFI street forum pages.

I'm sorry to dissapoint you but 4 sticks will not run 1t. 2t is what's needed for 4 sticks and that applies to all NF4 mobo's. It's not really anything to do with the mobo's either, but a limitation of the mem controller on A64 cpu's.

Minstadave · 18 Nov 2006 at 15:11

kitfit1 said:
I'm sorry to dissapoint you but 4 sticks will not run 1t. 2t is what's needed for 4 sticks and that applies to all NF4 mobo's. It's not really anything to do with the mobo's either, but a limitation of the mem controller on A64 cpu's.

This isn't an Nforce 4 board, its an ATI chipset. I believe it was tweaked by Oskar Wu specifically to get 4 modules running at 1T and is the only board that can do it.

"To DFI's credit, many of the features of their new RDX200 board seem to be geared toward an understanding of what it will take to succeed with their new ATI chipset motherboard. Crossfire dual-video is on the board, but the emphasis is on performance and features. DFI lavished all the adjustments and tweak options of their nForce4 board on the RDX200 and then went even further. Oscar Wu found out how to make 4DS DIMMs run at 1T Command Rate and launched that solution with this board. He also claims that he has a working CAS 1.5 on the ATI motherboard, and the options for CAS 1.0 and 1.5 are available in the BIOS. Memory voltage extends to 4.0V, so any memory is supported, but this is done without special jumpers or a heat-producing work-around."

kitfit1 · 18 Nov 2006 at 16:45

Minstadave said:
This isn't an Nforce 4 board, its an ATI chipset. I believe it was tweaked by Oskar Wu specifically to get 4 modules running at 1T and is the only board that can do it.

"To DFI's credit, many of the features of their new RDX200 board seem to be geared toward an understanding of what it will take to succeed with their new ATI chipset motherboard. Crossfire dual-video is on the board, but the emphasis is on performance and features. DFI lavished all the adjustments and tweak options of their nForce4 board on the RDX200 and then went even further. Oscar Wu found out how to make 4DS DIMMs run at 1T Command Rate and launched that solution with this board. He also claims that he has a working CAS 1.5 on the ATI motherboard, and the options for CAS 1.0 and 1.5 are available in the BIOS. Memory voltage extends to 4.0V, so any memory is supported, but this is done without special jumpers or a heat-producing work-around."

That was a slip on my part, off course i knew it was an ATI chipset. The rest of my satement stands though. You show me anyone that has got 4 sticks in an RDX200 running 1t, with an 8hour Prime run to show for it(other than Oskar Wu)and then i will believe it. Just for the record Happy Games over at DFI Street has 2 entries in the Stock Speed Database for the RDX200:
4 sticks
2 sticks
As you can see, even he did not get 4 sticks running at 1t. But as i said, a screen shot of 8 hours Prime with Cpuz showing cpu tab and mem tab, and i'll believe it.

xsnv · 18 Nov 2006 at 18:04

I read up about the 4 dimms at 1T and apparantly it's rubbish. Think there's a tech report review where the cfx3200 dr is compares to an abit and there wasn't any diff at all between 4 dimms on the abit at 2T and the dfi at 1T. will try n dig it up

xsnv · 18 Nov 2006 at 18:08

"With the Athlon 64's memory controller on the processor die, any differences in memory bandwidth and latency are due to how each mobo manufacturer has chosen to tune that on-die memory controller.

Athlon 64 motherboards don't always deal well with four-DIMM memory configurations, so we also populated each board with four matched modules and re-ran our memory performance tests. None of the boards had a problem running the memory at its default timings and DDR400 speeds, but the Asus and Abit boards wouldn't boot until we dropped the command rate from 1T to 2T. The LANParty board would boot with a 1T command rate set in the BIOS, and although even CPU-Z claimed that the board was running at 1T, our memory performance scores suggest otherwise. "

Subcat001 · 18 Nov 2006 at 19:33

I am considiring one of these too. Would it be a worthwhile replacement/upgrade from my asrock dual sata 2?? Has anyone had any problem when overclocking?? As at the moment I am struggling with the limitations of the bios :mad:

.

perry081064 · 19 Nov 2006 at 02:15

update..

detected 4 sticks of corsair value 512mb with no probs.
didnt bother with the floppy connector on the board as he wasnt running crossfire just a x1800xt 512mb .
he wont be o/c yet untill he gets some better memory.
i can report that for the last three hours he's been playing bf2142 solid and no probs at all.
as ive already said, his psu is a seasonic 600w so plenty of power there...seems a cracking board, i think ill get one next week too.

KELTICKNIGHT · 19 Nov 2006 at 08:57

after the newer version at moment,if i dont get,will order one of these
have 680 watt psu and 4 sticks of munshkin pc3500 black,so hope willbe ok as paid a lot at time for memory

Nitrams64 · 20 Nov 2006 at 23:43

Thanks all got one ordered today.Will a tagem 480 psu be ok to power a radeon 1950 xt and a 4400x2 overclocked slightly.Not planning a second GC for a while.

bfar · 21 Nov 2006 at 00:40

Nitrams64 said:
Thanks all got one ordered today.Will a tagem 480 psu be ok to power a radeon 1950 xt and a 4400x2 overclocked slightly.Not planning a second GC for a while.

You should get away with it so long as your not powering tons of other hardware. I had one powering a DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra D with a slightly overclocked 4800 x2, a 1900xt, an Audigy 2, 1 hard disk and 2 dvd drives. No stability problems whatsoever, but I did notice the 12v rail dipping very slightly.