DFI CrossFire Mobo in the [H]ouse

R1ckCa1n said:
DFI always recommends that the CMOS be cleared prior to using and after all memory module changes. I typically just take the power cable out of the power supply, remove the backup battery and jump the CMOS jumper for 15 minutes for good measure.


HardOCP recommends that be done with every single motherboard we work with. SOP here.
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Following? I am living it. What is clear to me is this is not a n00bie friendly board. People are either going to love it for all the flexibilty or hate it because you have to tweak it to make it sing.
I want this board to kick ass big time!
 
R1ckCa1n said:
DFI always recommends that the CMOS be cleared prior to using and after all memory module changes. I typically just take the power cable out of the power supply, remove the backup battery and jump the CMOS jumper for 15 minutes for good measure.
Oh yee have little faith in kyles IT skills!
 
It seems as though the installation of the 3114 drivers has cleared up my reboot issues. (Thank god as that is something that can throw a huge wrench into good stability testing.) It was my fault for installing the 3112a drivers that came on the included floppy, as the 3114 drivers were there as well. But in my defense, the chipset still identifies the Silicon image controller as "3112a" when the RAID BIOS appears after post. Thinking back now I am quite sure this issue existed over a year ago and caused me an issue back then. :( Oh well, live and learn.....again.
 
I cant just see the beads of sweat form on your brow as the frustration increases. I wish I was there to throw out some input.
 
purefun65 said:
I cant just see the beads of sweat form on your brow as the frustration increases. I wish I was there to throw out some input.

Actually as RAID issues go, these are nothing. The nForce 4 chipsets are still flaky at best when it comes to building a motherboard with proper NF4 RAID implementation. And the NF1 2 3, and 4 had terrible CD/DVD compatibility issues here really untill earlier this year when their drivers finally started fixing some of the issues. I am pretty sure some of the compat issues still exist on the earlier NF boards. Huge pain in the ass.
 
Well, seems I spoke too soon. It is not failing to reboot every single time I cycle, but it just did it once more after a hard power off, hanging on the first Sil controller again. This board also seems to not like to reboot when you F10 out of the BIOS.
 
Well, I have gotten the system about fully set up with a new OS and driver set. She has an X600 AIW in her currently. Brent is dropping by a set of X850 CrossFire boards tomorrow. I will let her fun a few loops of World Bench 5. That will let her fun and reboot for 7 or 8 hours depending on how I set it up. Will know in the morning if the BIOS is going to continue to be a pain in the ass. Hope not.... Night all.
 
Better put on a pot of coffee cause it's going to be a long one.I personally wont build a rig for a client based on a dfi board. I use them for myself and only for myself.I have had so many problems with them. I love them but not for clients!
 
Kyle, I'm wondering what configurations of RAM you're going to be testing this board with. Seems most people are likely to install either 4x512mb, 2x512mb or 2xgb and some nutters may even put 4x1gb.

Be interesting to see what you make of the 1T with 4 DIMMs. What performs better in real world scenarios:

- 2x512mb @ 1T OC'd vs 2x512mb @ 2T OC'd
- 4x512mb @ 1T OC'd vs 4x512mb @ 2T OC'd
- 2x1gb @ 1T OC'd vs 2x1gb @ 2T OC'd
and just for completeness sake:
- 4x1gb @ 1T OC'd vs 4x1gb @ 2T OC'd

Good luck with the board!
 
Kyle,

Are there any plans to also review either the EQS A72K9-CF or Sapphire PC-A9RD480Adv? You can get them thru www.overclock.co.uk for $138.57 for the EQS and $146.17 for the Sapphire before shipping.

I'd be really curious to see how either of these boards stack up against the DFI since the only thing stopping me right now is there not being a HardOCP Review. ^__^
 
I argued with one of these mobo's this weekend. Very similiar problems, plus I couldnt get it to run any 3dmark or any game without freezing/rebooting very shortly after the app starts
 
Aaron_ATX said:
I argued with one of these mobo's this weekend. Very similiar problems, plus I couldnt get it to run any 3dmark or any game without freezing/rebooting very shortly after the app starts
You are using a non supported CPU and a power supply that is suspect at best (meaning 480watt min). Considering your problems are in 3d, which requires more power, it sounds like power supply problems. Here is a quote regarding min requirements on DFI boards. I would personally go with power supplies that are on their "A" list.

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10854
 
Cheers for the good link to that forum R1ckCa1n, good info there.

It has a sub forum for the Crossfire RDX200 CF-DR. Lots of people having trouble with the board, memory boot-up compatibility (the Ballistix stuff that Anandtech quoted was 'optimised', oops :eek: ). Anyone with difficulty with this board should read up there. But be warned though, the resident moderator is an unhelpful obnoxious twat, to put it politely.
 
Mysterae said:
Cheers for the good link to that forum R1ckCa1n, good info there.

It has a sub forum for the Crossfire RDX200 CF-DR. Lots of people having trouble with the board, memory boot-up compatibility (the Ballistix stuff that Anandtech quoted was 'optimised', oops :eek: ). Anyone with difficulty with this board should read up there. But be warned though, the resident moderator is an unhelpful obnoxious twat, to put it politely.


Hasn't been a big help for me. I think this board needs a new BIOS and quick. Even with relaxed timings I can't run my 2x1GB OCZ Pt above 166 on this board and the F10 reboot failure is amazingly annoying. Getting 2/3 of the way through and XP install only to lockup owing to RAM running at SPD was very frustrating. Unfortunatly I only had a couple days to tweak before I had to head to Bangkok. Tweakage resumes Wednesday so hopefully someone else figures out how to run 2x1GB by then.
 
DFI must have had the forsight to release a LanParty a month or so early so people can do all the tweaking their boards need by the time everything else comes out, am I right?

Just kidding, I doubt that any of the problems with this board are DFI's fault.
 
SomeoneWhoIsntMe said:
DFI must have had the forsight to release a LanParty a month or so early so people can do all the tweaking their boards need by the time everything else comes out, am I right?

Just kidding, I doubt that any of the problems with this board are DFI's fault.

You'd be surprised, DFI MB ROCK, when they work, even the NF4 ones have problems with raid, booting issues and etc, problems kyles having is really no diffrent than any other DFI motherboard, DFI motherboards are uber AFTER you get them working, with DFI's theres always that coaxing period where theres lots of problems but once you coax them all out(or work around them :p) its an uber MB, but even with all the headaches the DFI motherboards give are nothing compairred to the uber overclocking, stablity, high volts, quality and etc you get once you get them working (I build the PC's for pretty much all my friends and have gone thru my share of DFI board, but do not run one on my main computer as I use it for work, so I got a K8T800 thats moderatly overclocked from 2.2 to 2.4GHz mainly because I can't afford the headaches with DFI MB installations, I'm planing a new PC thou and I'm and ati fan waiting for the x1850xl/xt (spring refresh) and benches o of M2 vs S939 (remember newer isn't always better/faster) so I'm looking at this board for crossfire in S939 if I stay S939)
 
Chilly said:
You'd be surprised, DFI MB ROCK, when they work, even the NF4 ones have problems with raid, booting issues and etc, problems kyles having is really no diffrent than any other DFI motherboard, DFI motherboards are uber AFTER you get them working, with DFI's theres always that coaxing period where theres lots of problems but once you coax them all out(or work around them :p) its an uber MB, but even with all the headaches the DFI motherboards give are nothing compairred to the uber overclocking, stablity, high volts, quality and etc you get once you get them working (I build the PC's for pretty much all my friends and have gone thru my share of DFI board, but do not run one on my main computer as I use it for work, so I got a K8T800 thats moderatly overclocked from 2.2 to 2.4GHz mainly because I can't afford the headaches with DFI MB installations, I'm planing a new PC thou and I'm and ati fan waiting for the x1850xl/xt (spring refresh) and benches o of M2 vs S939 (remember newer isn't always better/faster) so I'm looking at this board for crossfire in S939 if I stay S939)

Mind you I like the NF4 but still remember this is still coming from an ATi bia-ist person :p

Edit: Sorry about double post I thought I was editing

Edit#2: BTW Kyle, new bios is out http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29040
 
R1ckCa1n said:
You are using a non supported CPU and a power supply that is suspect at best (meaning 480watt min). Considering your problems are in 3d, which requires more power, it sounds like power supply problems. Here is a quote regarding min requirements on DFI boards. I would personally go with power supplies that are on their "A" list.

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10854


Those seem to all be NF4 boards my friend.

And my "suspect" powersupply should certainly be up to the task at hand....but since dfi boards seem to have "problems" with powersupplys that are generally regarded as perfectly fine for other boards or even overkill...I suppose its a possibility. Grrr back to frys I go :mad:
 
I sent my board back to ATI for evaluation yesterday morning and DFI shipped me a replacement out of stock. Have not gotten to it yet. Dealing with X1800 XT stuff, EVGA mobo, B3D forum craziness, writing a mag artice, and a few other things. Should get to it tonight.
 
Are the 1800XL and 1800XTs Crossfire ready? So you only need 2 of those cards or 1 of each to run in XFIRE correct? Just want to see some real world benchmarks of this thing in action.
 
Marcdaddy said:
Are the 1800XL and 1800XTs Crossfire ready? So you only need 2 of those cards or 1 of each to run in XFIRE correct? Just want to see some real world benchmarks of this thing in action.


No they are not, expect them in a few weeks to a over a month out.
 
Hey Kyle, totally off topic but have you heard anything about the 7800 512MB?
 
acroig said:
Hey Kyle, totally off topic but have you heard anything about the 7800 512MB?
Could not be more off topic, acroig.

[/ONTOPIC]

Kyle - what were the major problems you experienced? The cold boot problems or more?
 
yeah the new bios and my new somewhat less "suspect" power supply didn't do a damn thing.


R to the M to the A
 
Aaron_ATX said:
yeah the new bios and my new somewhat less "suspect" power supply didn't do a damn thing.


R to the M to the A

DFI "quality" strikes again ;)
 
acroig said:
Hey Kyle, totally off topic but have you heard anything about the 7800 512MB?


Only what the InqWell tells me. ;)
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Could not be more off topic, acroig.

[/ONTOPIC]

Kyle - what were the major problems you experienced? The cold boot problems or more?

The experience is pretty well documented here. I think what I was seeing was simply BIOS issues, then DFI turns around and tells me that they think they cannot be fixed, then ATI asks me if they can purchase the board from me, I refuse to sell it to them, but give it to them. (I don't need someone pulling out an invoice one day showing ATI giving me money.) I got the new board yesterday, but I have not gotten to it yet. Hopefully Sunday I will have 8 or 10 hours to beat on it. Dealing with nForce 4 issues now with the EVGA board. NVRAID is great when it works and shit when it don't. :(
 
Bar81 said:
The ATI logo on the packaging perhaps :p


Well, when dealing with motherboards, now that you mention it, this might be part of the issue!!! :eek: :D
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Errrr.. is this board short on life expectency in the retail channel? I am about to spend the better part of today getting it watercooled and don't plan on having to rip it back out, unless it is a POS and can't be fixed via BIOS updates.

nah I think hes just pointing out DFi = good when works :p
 
"My name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Now prepare to die!"

that was a good movie :p

I'd like to see some crossfire action...real gaming stuff too...against the competitive Nvidia SLI setup. I may be upgrading in the next couple months (actually...building a machine for my son using some parts from mine and upgrading mine to something a little better )
 
So Kyle, I know you don't want to do a full blown review on a motherboard sent by the manufacturer because it might be cherry picked, but why don't you do some internal testing with it? You don't HAVE to write a review but it might be good to have as controlled variable or reference point. Sure it may be custom made or whatever but it could help with troubleshooting issues.

Or you could send it to me....
 
Back
Top