ATI Backs Up CrossFire Quality @ [H]

[AACDIRECT]

Smells like weak power to me. Again. Went through this with someone not too long ago; they're expecting an old and known-weak Athlon MP board to run a brand new card. Uhm, no. Tigers never could run heavy video cards because, duh, weak power. You want to run a heavy video card, you got a Thunder. But in a situation like this? Man.. that's worse than the Neo2. And that is saying something.

The issue was not power but had to due with the software switch for Crossfire. (Going from 16X to 8X,8X)

The issue is not availability so much as "we're going to have one" announcements and "here's the model name" announcements. Abit and Asus both follow a fairly predictable naming scheme, so one would have expected a pre-announce at least around the time DFI shoved out the door. Especially from Asus.

I'm aware of the ATI vs ULI debate, and personally, I avoid it. I don't do ATI/ATI boards because of stability and support concerns. I also know that Abit's been committed to the ATI/ULI for quite some time. Another thing to bear in mind is that the UL8's been shipping, so Abit definitely has not had a problem getting certain ULI parts, and I think it's fair to say that they're in bed with ULI. e.g. They likely had samples long ago. Abit is not exactly known for underengineering or rushing boards, though. (For example, the KW7. They took forever to get that board out, but it is undoubtedly the most stable KT880 board out there.)
I really cannot see any valid reason for DFI to have screwed up this badly. On top of that, now they're going to have to eat the cost of taking back a large number of the defectively designed boards and replacing them with working parts. Supplies get very strained, and you get into a situation where all production is going out to replace previous production. Meaning even if it is finally a usable board, you can't get it.

Both the Abit and Asus boards have been anounced for awhile. So has ECS and Sapphire. I know for a fact that the ULI southbridge did cause delays. Also with Abit they historically never are first out of the gate. Look at SLI....the AN8 SLI was almost a year later and still has issues. I know the guys over at Abit and have been a fan of thier product for a long time. No one is perfect.

Finally DFI has not screwed up badly. The board just needs some bios work. My example of the AN8 SLI having issues are for the same reason...BIOS. I have an AN8 SLI Fatal1ty that is sitting in a box because it would not run stable in SLI or OC'd. I keep retesting it from time to time to see if things improve. (SLI is better...OC and memory compatablity...still needs work.) With that being said the last bios seems to have helped it tons. DFI released a new beta bios for the RDX today....so they are working on it.