DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR Mainboard on ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Chipset

by Ilya Gavrichenkov
01/20/2006 | 07:14 PM

Is there any alternative to the NVIDIA nForce4 chipsets these days? We have already asked this question many times before, but we always ended up with the conclusion that the competitor chipset solutions for the Athlon 64 platform could not boast the same high performance and comparable feature set. However, some time ago we got hope that the unshaken domination of this core logic set will soon be over. The hope was pinned on the ATI Technologies, NVIDIA’s primary competitor, who started pushing into the market a new Radeon Xpress 200 chipset and its modification supporting two graphics cards – Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire. The very first response this ATI chipset received in the industry was based on the very first mainboard for computer enthusiasts – Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 and was not very positive to tell the truth. But first of all, this mainboard was just the first product built on the new ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire chipset, and secondly, Sapphire Company has never really manufactured top-of-the-line mainboard solutions from the highest price range targeted for gaming and overclocking fans. So, we didn’t make any hopeless conclusions about the new ATI chipset for Athlon 64 platform at that time and decided to wait until other similar solutions appear in the market. We were especially looking forward to the platforms from the well-known developers of enthusiast solutions.

Finally our patience was rewarded and our expectations, which have been warmed up every now and then by the manufacturers revealing their intentions to design a Socket 939 product based on ATI Radeon Xpress 200, came true. Our lab received DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard. And it was not a review sample, but a fully-fledged retail product that can be found in stores today.

I have to say that DFI mainboards for Socket 939 platform have become extremely popular. The company owes it mostly to the fact that they have always paid closest attention to overclocking friendly features when working on their products. Therefore, DFI is one of the most respected brands among overclocking fans today. Therefore, we certainly had very high expectations when we got our hands on the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR. DFI engineers simply had to squeeze all the juices from the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset to reveal its best features and advantages. That is why we were very much excited about the opportunity to review DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard: we hope that it would change our opinion about the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset and would be able to state that NVIDIA nForce4 had finally got a worthy competitor in the market.

So, we were very enthusiastic about this test session. However, before we pass over to the actual results, let’s take a closer look at the formal specifications of this solution.

Specification and Accessories

DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard is shipped in a box with a similar design as the solutions on NVIDIA nForce4 chipset from the same manufacturer. The only difference is the color gamma of the package, which is red for ATI based solution:

The relatively small size of the box suggest that we are quite unlikely to find any additional controllers, as well as any other exotic bonuses, which are usually included with the high-end mainboards targeted for the hardware enthusiasts. In other words, even though DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR is not a cheap mainboard at all, which is even equipped with a pair of graphics card slots for the CrossFire mode, the bundled accessories are quite scarce. Besides the mainboard itself, the box also contains just the following:

• A CD-ROM disk with a standard set of drivers and utilities;
• Four Serial ATA cables and two power cables for a pair of Serial ATA HDDs;
• Two round 80-pin Parallel ATA cables and a round cable for FDD;
• I/O shield for the case rear panel;
• Karajan audio module for the integrated sound;
• User’s guide.

All the cables supplied with the mainboard are of bright yellow color. They glow in ultra-violet light, which is actually one of the brand name features of the entire DFI LanParty family of products. Also, this bright color design makes these cables go very well with the mainboard itself, which is designed in black-and-yellow colors.

The exterior design of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard looks very nice. Here is the list of formal specifications for this product:

I would like to stress that DFI is also offering a similar solution based on the same PCB layout called DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-D, which differs from our today’s hero by the absence of the additional Serial ATA RAID controller from Silicon Image.

So, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR looks like a pretty advanced mainboard with a bunch of great characteristics, which offers the complete set of features even in the basic modification. The remarkable feature of this product is the presence of two PCI Express x16 slots that allows using this mainboard in CrossFire platforms built with two ATI-based graphics cards (for details see our article called Swords Crossed: ATI CrossFire Platform Review ). As a result, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR is relatively expensive, although it cannot boast rich set of bundled accessories at this price point.

Closer Look

DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard doesn’t really differ that much form the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI based mainboards in terms of supported features. The newcomer from DFI supports all contemporary Socket 939 processors including the dual-core Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon 64 FX. It features four DIMM slots for DDR SDRAM.

Just like the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI based mainboards, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR is equipped with two PCI Express x16 graphics slots. It allows installing two RADEON graphics cards and using them in ATI CrossFire mode. As you already know, SLI mode is supported only by mainboards on NVIDIA chipsets that is why it would make sense to use two GeForce based graphics cards in this mainboard only if you need multi-monitor configurations. Two PCI Express x16 slots on this board are only formally x16. There is the total of 16 PCI Express lines allocated for both PCI Express slots. It means that when there are two graphics cards installed they are connected to the chipset via the PCI Express x8 bus. However, if there is only one graphics card installed into this system, it receives the fully-fledged x16 PCI Express bus at its disposal. The second PCI Express x16 slot will work as a PCI Express x1 in this case. You switch between the PCI lines distribution modes on the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR in the BIOS, there are no special jumpers or configuration cards included.

Besides the graphics card slots, this mainboard also features three PCI slots and one PCI Express x1 slot for expansion cards, which should be more than enough for almost any system.

Since Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire chipset consists of two chips: the RD480 North Bridge and SB450 South Bridge, the latter chip is responsible for most external interfaces support. I would like to say that we have already made some critical comments about the ATI SB450 chip for its relatively scarce features, however, it looks like the mainboard manufacturers do not have any other alternative at this time. Some mainboard guys used to replace the ATI SB450 chip with the ULi solution, however ULi has been acquired by ATI’s major competitor, NVIDIA, so this option is no longer available as well. So, they had to put up with the drawbacks of the SB450 and enrich the feature list with the help of additional onboard controllers. All in all, SB450 provides the support for 8 USB 2.0 ports, two Parallel ATA channels, four Serial ATA channels and integrated sound (plus a few older interfaces that we will not even mention here).

Six USB 2.0 ports out of eight laid out on this mainboard are located on the rear panel, and the remaining two ports are designed as onboard pin-connectors. Since the mainboard’s accessories bundle is not very rich, the additional bracket for the case rear panel with a couple of extra USB ports is not available, so cannot really use this connector. So the only way you could actually use these two ports is if your case has a few USB ports on the front panel. The integrated sound on the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR is implemented in a very interesting way. DFI has traditionally placed the analog part of the sound tract on an individual card called Karajan audio module (I believe it was named after the well-known Austrian conductor Gerbert von Karajan). We wouldn’t dare to evaluate how precisely this name represents the sound quality on the mainboard we are reviewing today. The only thing we would really like to stress is the fact that this Karajan audio module is based on the top 8-channel High Definition Realtek ALC882 codec. In other words, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR features an Azalia-quality sound tract: 8 channels (7.1), 24bit, 192kHz sample rate, 103dB SNR.

Besides the analog part of the sound tract, the Karajan module also carries 6 audio-jacks laid out on the mainboard rear panel, which can be used to connect different combinations of different devices, because the ALC882 codec allows reassigning the ports.

I would also like to say that only the analog part of the sound tract of DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR was moved to the separate card. The digital part is laid out on the mainboard PCB that is why you see coaxial SPDIF In and Out on the mainboard rear panel. The important thing is that these digital Input and Output can work even when the Karajan module is not installed.

Integrated sound is one of the major strengths of the ATI SB450 South Bridge. For example the Serial ATA controller integrated into this chip doesn’t look very attractive any more. I would even say that there are much more successful rivalry solutions out there these days. The thing is that those four Serial ATA ports of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboards that are implemented via the South Bridge cannot boast any contemporary features of the Serial ATA-II standard. They support neither NCQ, nor higher 3Gbit/s bandwidth. Even those RAID arrays that can be built with this controller can only be of type 0 or 1 and can consist of two hard disk drives, no more than that.

The additional Serial ATA RAID controller integrated onto the DFI mainboard is the Silicon Image SiI3114 is also not the latest solution out there. Although the four ports it provides allow building RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5 arrays, it doesn’t support NCQ and limits the maximum channel bandwidth to 1.5Gbit/s. However, the biggest drawback of this particular controller is the regular PCI bus it uses to connect to the chipset South Bridge. As a result some high-speed RAID arrays may slow down.

The FireWire bus is also implemented via an additional onboard chip. It is the VIA VT6307 controller. One of the two IEEE1394 ports this controller supports is laid out on the mainboard rear panel, and the other one is only available as an onboard pin-connector. There is no bracket with the second IEEE1394 port included with the mainboard, so you will actually be able to use it only in a few cases.

Since the ATI SB450 South Bridge doesn’t have an integrated network controller, the network support of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard is also provided by additional onboard chips. Following the latest trend in this direction, DFI decided to equip its platform with two Gigabit network controllers: Marvell 88E8053 and Marvell 88E8001. I have to admit though that it looks a little bit unusual: the first controller is connected to the chipset South Bridge via the high-speed PCI Express x1 bus, while the second controller uses the regular PCI bus. As a result, the first port can guarantee higher peak bandwidth than the second one, even though the theoretical characteristics of the two are the same.

Summing up our story about the onboard features of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR I would like to say that this solution offers much better sound quality than the mainboards on NVIDIA nForce4 chipsets, but cannot boast the best Serial ATA support. The Serial ATA controller employed on NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra/SLI based mainboards complies with the Serial ATA-II standard, i.e. supports NCQ and the maximum data transfer rate of 3Gbit/s. And the Gigabit network controller integrated into the NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra/SLI chipset offers hardware-software Firewall, which is absent by the Marvell chips used on the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR solution.

PCB Design

We have already pointed out that DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR impressed us with its stylish looks, especially when the system is running in ultra-violet light. However, the remarkable exterior design is not the only unique feature of the DFI platform. It also stands out due to its unusual components layout.

The first thing that catches your eye is the location of the DIMM slots that have been moved behind the processor socket, while the CPU voltage regulator circuitry remained in front of the Socket 939, where the memory slots have always been. It is really hard to say what inspired this particular layout decision. Especially since the reference design of the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire implies pretty common components location. I don’t think that there are any significant disadvantages about this layout solution. The only thing I am a little bit concerned with is the fact that in this case the memory modules get into a warmer zone inside the system, which theoretically can affect their overclocking potential.

As for the CPU voltage regulator, the current layout allowed engineers to locate both CPU power connectors in front of the Socket 939. This is actually very convenient, because the power cables leading to the mainboard do not hang in the way of any vital air streams. Moreover, the distance to the PSU is minimal, which is also very good.

I would like to mention that the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard is equipped with the 24-pin and 8-pin ATX power supply connectors, but it can work just fine even with the outdated 20-pin and 4-pin cables.

The CPU voltage regulator on DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR features 4-channel design. It leaves the impression of a very thoroughly designed quality circuitry. The MOSFETs are equipped with passive aluminum heatsinks. The coils are all in plastic casings. DFI used high-quality capacitors from the Japanese Chemi-Con Company that is known as a high-end electronic components manufacturer.

The chipset North Bridge is cooled down by a small active cooler, and the South Bridge is equipped with a passive heatsink. Unfortunately, the chipset cooler is not efficient enough. The matter is that its cooling surface is too small to ensure proper cooling of the chip, so the fan speeds up to 7,000rpm. Of course, no silent operation is possible at this fan rotation speed, even though it is built with magnetic bearings.

Almost all the connectors for additional devices are located at the front and left sides of the mainboard PCB, so that you can easily reach them when the mainboard is installed into the system case. The only two things that do not belong to this nearly ideal arrangement are the USB and IEEE1394 pin-connectors. Note that you will face some serious difficulties if you decided to use these connectors. The USB connector is located in front of the PCI slots, and the IEEE1394 connector is hidden behind the first graphics card slot.

The Karajan audio module can actually prepare an unpleasant surprise like that, too. It carries the connector for the case front panel ports. In other words, the cable from the case front panel connectors will go all the way through the case to the mainboard rear panel, because this is exactly where the Karajan module is installed. And this cable will be exactly above the hottest system components such as CPU, memory and video cards.

However, when it comes to expansion slots, DFI engineers have definitely deserved our admiration. The first graphics card slot has not just been moved away from the memory slot locks, but there is enough free space on the left of it for the massive cooling system of the graphics card installed.

Among the pleasing trifles, I would like to mention Power and Reset buttons on the mainboard that allow to significantly simplify the setup procedure. The mainboard is also equipped with the simplest diagnostic tool: four LEDs reporting the status of the major POST stages.

The connector panel of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard carries PS/2 ports for the mouse and keyboard, 6 High Speed USB ports, IEEE1394 port, two network RJ45 ports with diagnostic LEDs and a coaxial SPDIF In and Out.

When you install the Karajan module you also acquire 6 analog audio-jacks. Note that there are no Parallel and Serial ports on this mainboard, there is only a special connector for the external COM-port. However, you should keep in mind that there are no brackets with the COM ports in the mainboard accessories bundle.

BIOS and Overclocking

DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard was tested with the latest BIOS version at the time of the tests, which dates back to December 23, 2005.

BIOS is one of the indisputable strengths of the DFI mainboards. DFI engineers work very hard on optimizing the BIOSes of their mainboards for better performance, add new features and useful technologies and offer the users very flexible configuring options. This approach ensures that DFI mainboards receive the highest review scores and get broad public recognition.

The today’s hero, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR, is no exception from this prospective. Its BIOS Setup boasts very similar features as many other DFI mainboards based on NVIDIA nForce4 chipsets.

The BIOS of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard is based on the Phoenix-Award BIOS v6.00PG enhanced with DFI’s brand name overclocking tools and CMOS Reloaded technology.

First of all I would like to say a few words about the CMOS Reloaded technology. It allows saving all BIOS Setup settings as profiles and restore them later one if necessary. Moreover, the mainboard saves all settings automatically upon each successful boot-up. This way you can always roll back to the working Setup settings anytime.

As for the overclocking friendly settings, the list is quite extensive and includes the following options:

• The frequency of the clock generator forming the CPU frequency can be adjusted from 200 to 500MHz with 1MHz increment;
• The CPU frequency multiplier can be adjusted manually (reduced below the nominal value). The minimal value is 4x;
• The parameters responsible for the working frequency and width of the HyperTransport bus can also be adjusted. The frequency of this bus is set with a multiplier (to the clock generator frequency), which can be set to 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x. The width of the bus can be set to 8 or 16 bits in any direction.
• The VID bits of the processor can also be adjusted, so that the CPU voltage can be increased from 0.8 V up to 1.55V with 0.025V increment. Besides that there is a setting that allows increasing the Vcore by up to 36% (relative to what the VID bits are set to). In other words, the maximum CPU Vcore you can set on this mainboard is 2.11V;
• The memory voltage can be set manually: from 2.6V to 4.0V with 0.05V increment;
• The chipset voltage can be increased from the default 1.2V to 1.3V, 1.4V or 1.5V;
• The voltage on the HyperTransport bus can be increased from the nominal 1.2V to 1.3V, 1.4V or 1.5V;
• The PCI Express bus voltage can also be adjusted. You can increase the nominal voltage of 1.8V – to 1.9V.

Although there are no special tools for adjusting the PCI Express bus frequency in this list, it can be clocked independently of the main clock frequency generator. In other words, the increase in the basic CPU frequency for overclocking needs doesn’t imply that the PCI Express frequency will also go up.

Taking into account everything mentioned above, the overclocking friendly settings offered by the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard can be considered very rich. And the supported maximum voltage settings should be more than enough to satisfy even the most demanding overclockers. However, this is not all yet. I would like to specifically stress that there are a lot of settings for memory subsystem configuring, which is an indisputable advantage of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard.

The corresponding page of the BIOS Setup contains the whole list of settings similar to what a popular A64 Tweaker tool would offer. Of course, this long list of parameters and settings may easily scare away an unsophisticated user, however, all of these parameters may as well be adjusted in automatic mode: each of them may be set to Auto. It is very nice that the BIOS Setup supports higher memory frequency coefficients. You can set the memory to work in DDR400, DDR433, DDR466 or DDR500 SDRAM mode even without any CPU overclocking.

All in all, the overclocking friendly options offered in the BIOS Setup of our DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard are quite impressive. However, we decided we should really check these things out in real life. For our overclocking experiments we assembled a system on DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard with an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ processor on Venice core. First of all we decided to find out the maximum clock generator frequency when the mainboard remains stable. Therefore, we reduced the CPU clock frequency multiplier to 6x and dropped the memory frequency down a little bit, so that the potential of the mainboard itself could be the only limiting factor during our overclocking attempts. Moreover, the increase in the clock generator frequency sometimes requires lower HyperTransport multipliers. So we set it to 3x right away.

As our tests showed, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR can easily compete with the best NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra/SLI based mainboards in terms of clock generator frequency increase. The maximum frequency when our mainboard would boot-up and function without any problems was 370MHz. Note that this is a very high result, and it is very unlikely to find practical application in real life conditions. But in this case our experiment indicates clearly that DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR has great stability reserves for overclocking.

DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR didn’t disappoint us throughout the entire overclocking test session. It worked stably with overclocked memory, which we checked by raising its frequency to 305MHz synchronously with the clock frequency generator. Here we used OCZ EL DDR PC-4800 Dual Channel Platinum memory modules with 2.8V voltage.

I have to stress that 305MHz memory frequency was taken just as an example, and is certainly not the maximum that can be achieved.

Now that we have obtained some efficient overclocking results, we decided to try speeding up our test CPU working at the nominal 2.4GHz frequency. We set its multiplier back to the nominal 12x value and increased the Vcore to 1.55V. With these settings our Athlon 64 3800+ CPU worked just fine at 2.724GHz. It is quite a normal result for our processor working with a regular Thermaltake Silent 939 K8 air cooler. The clock generator frequency in this case equaled 227MHz.

I would like to stress that the memory was working at the same 227MHz in this case, and the timings were set to 2-2-2. We owe this result to OCZ EL DDR PC-3500 Gold GX XTC Dual Channel memory modules supporting 2.9V voltage.

Summing up the results of our overclocking experiments with DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR I would like to say that the mainboard passed this part of our test session with a very high score. And the possibility to set the clock generator frequency to 370MHz can give you every right to be proud, because there are very few mainboards in the market today that can offer similar potential.

I would like to say a few words about the hardware monitoring options offered by this mainboard. The thing is that besides powerful overclocking tools, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR boasts extensive options for managing the fan rotation speeds, which can be very efficient for controlling the level of generated noise. The mainboard BIOS allows managing the rotation speeds of three major system fans depending on the processor, chipset and voltage regulator temperatures.

The mainboard can power the total of five fans: there are five corresponding connectors on the PCB.

Of course, the mainboard allows to monitor all major temperatures and voltage sent ot the CPU from the power supply unit.

Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to enable Cool’n’Quiet technology during our test session. Even though the BIOS Setup provides all the corresponding settings, the mainboard didn’t switch the CPU into power saving mode. Hopefully this mistake will be eliminated in the new BIOS versions.

Software Bundle

DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard is bundled with only one single utility aka SmartGuardian:

This utility allows monitoring all major system parameters from Windows. That’s is about all you can do with SmartGuardian.

Luckily, there are much more software tools for this mainboard online. For example, the utility that allows adjusting the clock generator frequency from the OS.

One utility like that, ATI System Manager, is available among the drivers and tool supplied with the Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 mainboard. Since this mainboard is based on ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset, the utility I am talking about works just fine with the DFI mainboard we are working with today.

Besides ATI System Manager, there is another alternative tool with the same functionality called ClockGen.

So, if you are a happy owner of a DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR, you won’t be complaining about the software and utilities available for this platform. The only thing we were a little bit upset with is the fact that DFI didn’t burn these useful tools onto a CD-ROM disk to bundle with their mainboard.

Testbed and Methods

We will wind up our detailed review of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard with the performance tests. And since this mainboard is based on a relatively rare ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire chipset, we will not stick to just the popular benchmarks. We will also take a look at the performance of different subsystems on this mainboard, which will allow us to make a more complex conclusion about its features.

We will compare DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR against one of the most popular NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra based mainboards – DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D.

So, during our test session we assembled platforms with the following hardware components:

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (Venice, 2.4GHz, 512KB L2).
• Mainboards:
• DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra);
• DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR (ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire).
• Memory: 1024MB DDR400 SDRAM (OCZ EL DDR PC-3500 Gold GX XTC Dual Channel, 2 x 512MB, 2-2-2-10).
• Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX.
• HDD: Western Digital Raptor WD740GD (SATA150).
• OS: Windows XP SP2.

The memory subsystems of the tested mainboards were at their defaults. Note that although both mainboards were designed and made by the same company, they have slightly different memory settings for the same memory modules.

Default timing settings on DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR.

Default timing settings on DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D.

However, I have to admit that these differences hardly affect the performance, which was proven by a special test later on.

Performance

USB 2.0

As we have already pointed out in our reviews, the implementation of the USB 2.0 interface is a weakness of the ATI South Bridges. To double-check it we measured the bandwidth of the USB bus and the CPU utilization during data transfer along this bus to and from the USB 2.0 Maxtor OneTouch 250GB hard disk drive.

The obtained results are far from positive for the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire chipset in general and the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard in particular. USB 2.0 bus of this mainboard turned out almost twice as slow as the bus by the competing product on the chipset from NVIDIA nForce4 family. Here I can only add that the slow operation is not the only drawback of the USB 2.0 bus of our DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard. It also loads the CPU a lot during work. In other words, USB 2.0 bus is a weak spot of our today’s hero.

Serial ATA RAID

The Serial ATA RAID controller of the ATI SB450 South Bridge doesn’t boast the same attractive features as the controller of the NVIDIA nForce4. But is it really so in real applications?

In order to make the final conclusion about the Serial ATA controller performance, we used the Futuremark PCMark05 testing suite. The measurements were made for RAID 0 array built from Western Digital Raptor WD360GD HDDs. Besides the results obtained for the chipset Serial ATA RAID controllers of the testing participants, we have also added the results obtained for the Silicon Image SiI3114 controller integrated onto the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard.

And again the nForce4 based mainboard beats our hero. This chipset works faster with hard disk drives than the Serial ATA controller of the ATI SB450 South Bridge. Even the integrated Silicon Image SiI3114 PCI controller doesn’t help DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR: its results are even worse than those of the chipset one.

Gigabit Ethernet

Let’s see how fast the Gigabit network controllers from Marvell will work. We will compare their performance against the integrated network controller of the NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra chipset and against the PCI network controller – Marvell 88E8001 installed onto DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D. We will use the NTttcp utility from Microsoft Windows NT DDR as a measuring tool. NVIDIA Firewall 2.0 was disabled for this test.

The first surprise awaits us when we try to compare the performance of the Marvell 88E8001 PCI controller on both mainboards. Despite the use of the same microchip on both DFI mainboards, the results are much better on DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D. The only logical explanation of this phenomenon would be the slower PCI bus implemented in the ATI chipset. As a result, the bandwidth-hungry Gigabit Ethernet controller hits against the maximum data transfer rate of the PCI bus.

As far as the performance of the second Gigabit Ethernet controller (Marvell 88E8053) on DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR is concerned, its practical performance is very close to the theoretical one, because it works via the PCI Express x1 bus. Unfortunately, it loads the CPU more than the nForce4 controller, however, its performance looks very good even against the background of a powerful competitor like that.

Integrated Sound

We have already said a lot of good things about the sound solution implemented on DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard. But will our impressions be proven by the results of the practical tests? Let’s find out!

Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB:	+0.25, -0.31	Good
Noise level, dB (A):	-88.6	Good
Dynamic range, dB (A):	88.0	Good
THD, %:	0.0080	Very good
IMD, %:	0.019	Very good
Stereo crosstalk, dB:	-85.0	Very good
IMD at 10 kHz, %:	0.014	Very good

General performance: Good

Nothing surprising: our tests indicate that we are dealing with very high-quality integrated sound. So, the sound solution on ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire based mainboards is a way better than what NVIDIA nForce4 has to offer. And this is not just theory.

Moreover, the integrated sound solution of our DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR can boast not only high quality analog implementation. We have also noticed that the CPU utilization remained very low throughout the test. Here are the results we obtained in the sound test from the 3DMark03 suite:

As we see, ATI SB450 and Realtek ALC882 load the CPU much less than NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra with the typical Realtek ALC850 codec.

General Performance

Now that we have taken a closer look at the performance of different subsystems of our DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard, let’s check how fast it runs in the typical applications and tests.

Unfortunately, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR doesn’t perform as fast as we wish. As we have just seen, it yields to NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra based platform in most applications and games.

Conclusion

In conclusion I have to admit that DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard didn’t manage to change our opinion about the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset. It yields to NVIDIA nForce4 chipset family in many aspects, which certainly affects the quality of mainboards based on it.

DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR could turn into a really terrific platform: it supports CrossFire technology, and its overclocking friendly features are truly admirable. However, it is really hard to build a good house if the foundation is shaky. We believe ATI is the one to blame here, because their South Bridge leaves a lot to be desired. Slow USB 2.0 and PCI busses and a relatively outdated Serial ATA controller can scare away quite a few users. So, looks like DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR may have rally hard times.

I have to add that this mainboard is quite expensive, and this price doesn’t seem justified to us: neither by the specs, nor by the performance. So, I think some of the ATI and DFI fans may be disappointed.

Highs:

• ATI CrossFire technology support;
• Outstanding overclocking-friendly features and excellent overclocking potential;
• Rich list of memory settings;
• High-quality High Definition Audio solution.

Lows:

• High price;
• Unimplemented Cool’n’Quiet support;
• Slow USB 2.0 and PCI busses;
• Outdated Serial ATA controllers without NCQ and Serial ATA-II support;
• Not very high performance;
• Not very rich accessories bundle.