The ATI Crossfire motherboard list and URL guide

.::MAGE::. said:
I think the absolute worst USB performance one could want in a motherboard is a huge reason.

The neglect of popular features such as sata II and NCQ are also huge.

The USB performance isn't marginally sucky it's that it sucks balls worse than anything out there lol. I mean christ talk about sucking a shake through a coffee straw!

Tons of external hard drives and flash drives on the market not to mention mice keyboards printers scanners everything runs on USB nowadays. Don't forget there are still broadband ISP's that allow USB on the latest and greatest modems (Bellsouth Sprint Roadrunner) so you are also pulling your internet through on it too.

The sata 1 option blows and no NCQ? DFI came first but who would actually keep this board? Even if you are a mindless money blower you will move on to a better board in 2 months :).

DFI should have revamped it such a waste.

Basically there are still zero xfire motherboards out as the DFI is unuseable it has no future. Anandtech should have bashed the board more.
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hey mage, do you know if NCQ/SATAII will be supported by the ULI southbridge?
 
.::MAGE::. said:
Actually the point being that the board has more negatives than positives being USB sucks horribly with it and no Sata II or NCQ.
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I am running a Crossfire motherboard. (As far as I know I might be the only one in the forum that is?) I have a reference ATI board in my system the following is my personal experiences. Yes the USB is slower. The only time I notice ANY difference is when transfering large files ( multiple gig) to my USB harddrive. For everything else it behaves as fast as my NF4 board did. 2nd...NCQ and SATA II...can you say dedicated RAID controller? ;) Even the ATI reference board had the SIL3132 controller onboard. The controller supports SATA 2 and NCQ....problem solved. (I personally use the add on SATA controller on all the NF4 systems I build. Less issues when you OC.)

Now that is the reference board. I also have a DFI RDX200 CF-DR. DFI did not choose to use a SATA II controller but the layout is great and the board is stable/fast. Also DFI got the board to run with 2GB of ram @ 1T command rate. (All four slots full.) No other board can do this at the moment and unlike SATA II...1T does make a noticeable difference today. (Also I expect other manufactures will include SATA II raid as it is a great marketing "feature")

Finially both boards overclock great and are far less finicky when it comes to ram Vs the NF4 chipset. (Again my personal experience. I have only used the DFI, Asus and Abit NF4 boards...both SLI, Ultra and basic versions so maybe the boards I use are just strange.)

So if benchmarking your USB I/O is important to you....don't buy a CF board. If you want a stable fast motherboard....consider it...they run great.

EDIT: I would like to see anyone show me a link to a SATA II harddrive that beats all the current SATA I drives in all the tests. I would like to see one benchmark were a SATA II drive sustains more than 150MB Sec data transfer. (NCQ....I do wish the SB had that as it does make a major difference in file transfers.)
 
AACDIRECT said:
So if benchmarking your USB I/O is important to you....don't buy a CF board. If you want a stable fast motherboard....consider it...they run great.

EDIT: I would like to see anyone show me a link to a SATA II harddrive that beats all the current SATA I drives in all the tests. I would like to see one benchmark were a SATA II drive sustains more than 150MB Sec data transfer. (NCQ....I do wish the SB had that as it does make a major difference in file transfers.)
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It is not about benching a USB port, it is about the board having half the throughput of any other item out on the market. And you are right on the SATA3G argument when considering one drive. The advantage can however be seen if/when using two or more drives. Also, as far as NCQ goes, it just plain sucks the board does not support it as it makes a definitive difference in hard drive performance.
 
Ingonuts13 said:
It is not about benching a USB port, it is about the board having half the throughput of any other item out on the market. And you are right on the SATA3G argument when considering one drive. The advantage can however be seen if/when using two or more drives. Also, as far as NCQ goes, it just plain sucks the board does not support it as it makes a definitive difference in hard drive performance.
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With regard to NCQ how much of a performance difference are we talking about here?
 
Ingonuts13 said:
It is not about benching a USB port, it is about the board having half the throughput of any other item out on the market. And you are right on the SATA3G argument when considering one drive. The advantage can however be seen if/when using two or more drives. Also, as far as NCQ goes, it just plain sucks the board does not support it as it makes a definitive difference in hard drive performance.
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USB throughput is an issue but may not be for everyone. I don't see why SATA I would be a bandwidth limitation unless you are running multiple drives off one sata port using port multiplexers or something. If each drive is connected to it's own sata port, which most people do, then each drive should have a full 150MB/sec of available bandwidth to it, no sharing involved there. Why is NCQ that important? Many of the benchmarks I have seen show slower performance with NCQ enabled then without.
 
I was looking to place my order for the DFI Crossfire motherboard last night and I noticed that Newegg pulled the motherboard from their website! WTF is up with that? :mad: :eek:
 
The Doc said:
I was looking to place my order for the DFI Crossfire motherboard last night and I noticed that Newegg pulled the motherboard from their website! WTF is up with that? :mad: :eek:
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They sold out.....
 
AACDIRECT said:
I heard they sold out in less than two hours. Not bad for a crappy motherboard. :D
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It's anything but a crappy motherboard. Most of the people on these forums are bitching about the USB performance, but unless you're moving large amouts of data across the USB interface then there's really no reason not to buy this motherboard. DFI didn't use the ULi South Bridge for two reasons:

1) At the time DFI was producing thier motherboard only the ATI SB480 South Bridge was available.

2) The ULi South Bridge is not pin compatiable with the ATI SB480.
 
The Doc said:
It's anything but a crappy motherboard. Most of the people on these forums are bitching about the USB performance, but unless you're moving large amouts of data across the USB interface then there's really no reason not to buy this motherboard. DFI didn't use the ULi South Bridge for two reasons:

1) At the time DFI was producing thier motherboard only the ATI SB480 South Bridge was available.

2) The ULi South Bridge is not pin compatiable with the ATI SB480.
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LOL....The board rocks. I was being sarcastic. :p
 
The underlying issue is that the board is obsolete before Newegg even had it for sale. The board is the worst choice if you plan on keeping it for more than a year. The Nforce boards have been out for how long? Why did DFI choose the route they did?

Lacking features that come standard on easily available performance boards which this one is trying to be make it a crap board. I am all up for a ATI board and have held off on buying new gear since it was billed as a solid chipset minus the USB and SB suckiness.

Regardless buying this board and not waiting for a better product is like buying a Athlon XP or Pentium 3 now oh hey great thanks yesterdays crap.

So buy the Athlon XP when the 64's and X2's are out amirite? :confused:
 
.::MAGE::. said:
The underlying issue is that the board is obsolete before Newegg even had it for sale. The board is the worst choice if you plan on keeping it for more than a year. The Nforce boards have been out for how long? Why did DFI choose the route they did?

Lacking features that come standard on easily available performance boards which this one is trying to be make it a crap board. I am all up for a ATI board and have held off on buying new gear since it was billed as a solid chipset minus the USB and SB suckiness.

Regardless buying this board and not waiting for a better product is like buying a Athlon XP or Pentium 3 now oh hey great thanks yesterdays crap.

So buy the Athlon XP when the 64's and X2's are out amirite? :confused:
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Sadly, you just don't seem to get it. You don't have the faintest clue about the relevance of SATA II and USB throughput. You continue to parrot the same line over and over. SATA II and USB throughput are not relevant concerns for 99% of the users out there. The USB issue is only relevant if you have a USB hard drive. That's it. You can load up all the printers, mice, scanners, etc and it just won't make a difference; performance will be *exactly* the same as your precious nforce4 boards. Frankly, if you have an external hard drive I don't understand why you wouldn't be using Firewire anyway as it's just a better interface. And regarding SATA II, NCQ is mostly irrelevant in the desktop environment and as I mentioned before unless you're running RAID 0 with more than two 74GB Raptors then the enhanced bandwidth doesn't matter. If you're that concerned about it go out and buy a SATA II controller card. You can afford it if you're buying a crossfire/nforce4 SLI board and two vid cards.

As a further note on the SATA II issue, it seems that you're ignoring the whole huge data corruption issue that's been prevalent on nForce4 mobos. Having a feature that hoses your hard drive isn't likely to be a selling point for nForce4 boards.

And your comments regarding obsolesence and your embarassingly futile analogy to CPUs further show your complete lack of understanding of the subject matter. It would be best for all involved if you educate yourself as to the topics at hand before further posting.
 
YES!!! Hexus managed to get one of the EQS A72K9-CF motherboards and has posted a review here:

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3700

I've got some questions in on their forum which I'll post here if a reply is made. *crosses fingers* This definatly looks like the better board layout to use and I hope that someone will release a board with this same layout but use the ULI southbridge chip. In the meantime, I'm going to keep watching for a reply to my post and start preparing to make an order. -_^
 
.::MAGE::. said:
The underlying issue is that the board is obsolete before Newegg even had it for sale. The board is the worst choice if you plan on keeping it for more than a year. The Nforce boards have been out for how long? Why did DFI choose the route they did?

Lacking features that come standard on easily available performance boards which this one is trying to be make it a crap board. I am all up for a ATI board and have held off on buying new gear since it was billed as a solid chipset minus the USB and SB suckiness.

Regardless buying this board and not waiting for a better product is like buying a Athlon XP or Pentium 3 now oh hey great thanks yesterdays crap.

So buy the Athlon XP when the 64's and X2's are out amirite? :confused:
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I think you're making a big deal about this USB issue and I really don't see the point. Do you plan on moving a lot of data across the USB interface? If not, then this board will suit your needs just fine. The only issue about this motherboard is DFI's choice of the ATI SB480 South Bridge chip, but DFI already explained why they went with that chip. Don't let the minor South Bridge issues tarnish your opinion of an otherwise awesome motherboard.
 
pjladyfox said:
YES!!! Hexus managed to get one of the EQS A72K9-CF motherboards and has posted a review here:

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3700

I've got some questions in on their forum which I'll post here if a reply is made. *crosses fingers* This definatly looks like the better board layout to use and I hope that someone will release a board with this same layout but use the ULI southbridge chip. In the meantime, I'm going to keep watching for a reply to my post and start preparing to make an order. -_^
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Nobody here will want it since it uses the ATI SB450 South Bridge "sigh"
 
The Doc said:
Nobody here will want it since it uses the ATI SB450 South Bridge "sigh"
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Well, that would be their option but, let's look at our choices:

a. Go with a ULI 1575 southbridge motherboard from Asus, or Gigabyte and have only 1 PCI slot open

b. Go with a SB450 southbridge motherboard from DFI, ECS, MSI and have 1 PCI slot open.

c. Go with the Abit AT8, based on the ULI 1575 southbridge and have no PCI slots available.

d. Go with a SB450 southbridge motherboard based on the PC Partner RD480AK9-A72D or RD400AS7-A73D and have 3 PCI slots open.

For me, while I may have a slight dislike for the SB450 the EQS/Sapphire/PC Partner board makes up for it with the 3 usable PCI slots which would allow me to easily add a USB 2.0 card, a SATA card, and have the last slot left over for whatever. ^__^

As for everyone else, well, it really depends upon what is important to you; features, overclocking, or flexability. *shrug*
 
pjladyfox said:
Well, that would be their option but, let's look at our choices:

a. Go with a ULI 1575 southbridge motherboard from Asus, or Gigabyte and have only 1 PCI slot open

b. Go with a SB450 southbridge motherboard from DFI, ECS, MSI and have 1 PCI slot open.

c. Go with the Abit AT8, based on the ULI 1575 southbridge and have no PCI slots available.

d. Go with a SB450 southbridge motherboard based on the PC Partner RD480AK9-A72D or RD400AS7-A73D and have 3 PCI slots open.

For me, while I may have a slight dislike for the SB450 the EQS/Sapphire/PC Partner board makes up for it with the 3 usable PCI slots which would allow me to easily add a USB 2.0 card, a SATA card, and have the last slot left over for whatever. ^__^

As for everyone else, well, it really depends upon what is important to you; features, overclocking, or flexability. *shrug*
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Great post. I'm looking at the DFI Crossfire motherboard because of the overclocking features.
 
Got an Opty 146, x1800xl and a crossfire DFI board on the way to me today. Everything I ordered seemed to be in stock, so I should be assembling by friday.....
 
Well, received a response from Boyd at EQS and he had this to say about their new Crossfire board:

1. PCI Slots - The top-most PCI slot is blocked by the installation of a double-wide PCI-E video card. However, the other two slots are available.

2. Fan Headers - There are two on the board; one for the CPU and one for a case fan. This choice I found a bit odd since most cases nowadays come with at least 2 or 3 fan mounts and not having a header means connecting them directly to the power supply or some sort of fan controller; neither which are very appealing.

3. Support - They will definatly cover North American customers via phone or email but any RMA will require sending the board back to them overseas since they do not have a U.S. distributor.

4. Drivers and manual - They are in process of uploading the drivers and a .PDF version of the manual to their website and are hopeful to have those up by the end of the week. Have inquired about XP 64 drivers as well and am currently awaiting a response.

5. X2 processors and RAM - The board has no problems being fully populated with 4 1GB sticks of RAM (however only 3.2 will be addressable unless running XP 64) or using X2 processors.

Hopefully this will help some of you decide on this board or not. So, right now, it looks like we have the following choices:

a. Go with a ULI 1575 southbridge motherboard from Asus, or Gigabyte and have only 1 PCI slot open

b. Go with a SB450 southbridge motherboard from DFI, ECS, MSI and have 1 PCI slot open.

c. Go with the Abit AT8, based on the ULI 1575 southbridge and have no PCI slots available.

d. Go with a SB450 southbridge motherboard based on the PC Partner RD480AK9-A72D or RD400AS7-A73D and have 2 PCI slots open.

I'm still probably going to go with the EQS/PC Partner/Sapphire board myself. It's just a question of waiting for Sapphire to get up off of their butts or just importing it thru Overclock. ^__^
 
Why do you say the DFI RDX200 only has 1 PCI slot open after dual graphic cards are installed? It looks to me like there are 2, unless your giving the graphics card near the PCI slots a bit extra space to breathe.

I'm for the DFI board. USB speed isn't a problem for me as it only has a keyboard, mouse, bluetooth and the occasional flash stick connected to it. As for the SataII shortfall, I reckon the memory at 1T (4GB if you got the wallet!) and the overclocking potential more than makes up for it. You don't need fast hard drives when your actually playing a game, just when it's loading - the boost in memory 1T and overclock will be with you all the time!

Another thing that's cool with the board - the layout. I'm water cooling this board and will be placing a crossflow fan along the edge opposite the I/O ports to sweep air over the entire board. The layout will ensure the entire board gets a gentle breeze :)
 
Mysterae said:
Why do you say the DFI RDX200 only has 1 PCI slot open after dual graphic cards are installed? It looks to me like there are 2, unless your giving the graphics card near the PCI slots a bit extra space to breathe.

I'm for the DFI board. USB speed isn't a problem for me as it only has a keyboard, mouse, bluetooth and the occasional flash stick connected to it. As for the SataII shortfall, I reckon the memory at 1T (4GB if you got the wallet!) and the overclocking potential more than makes up for it. You don't need fast hard drives when your actually playing a game, just when it's loading - the boost in memory 1T and overclock will be with you all the time!

Another thing that's cool with the board - the layout. I'm water cooling this board and will be placing a crossflow fan along the edge opposite the I/O ports to sweep air over the entire board. The layout will ensure the entire board gets a gentle breeze :)
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The main reason being that the X850 or the X1800 XT are double-wide cards and if you look closely at the image located here, http://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=983923 , you will see that the topmost PCI slot is clearly blocked by the lower X850 card; making it impossible to mount any card in that slot.

So, by using that single image you can look at the board layout of the others that are available or will be soon and come to the same conclusions. From all appearances the most efficient layout is the one that the EQS/PC Partner/Sapphire board is using; with the PCI-E 1x slot below the PCI-E 16x slot rather than the opposite.

Please do not get me wrong, I think the DFI board brings a lot of nice features to the table. However, for those who have issues with the RD480's lackluster USB and lack of SATA II features just the idea of having a couple of free PCI slots to plug in a USB 2.0 card or a SATA II controller is appealing and gives more options.

I just wish Asus or DFI had gone with the board layout like the EQS/PC Partner/Sapphire board is using AND used the ULi 1575 southbridge. Just thinking of it gives me a nice feeling in my tummy and puts a smile on my face almost as big as seeing Pierce Brosnan as Bond or Ewan as Obi-Wan. ^___^
 
Crossfire works just fine on intel platforms. ive got a friend who has his P5WD2 on BIOS 0519 in crossfire right now.
 
Skanks said:
There are 3 PCI slots, if 1 is blocked that still leave's 2???
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If you mean on the EQS/PC Partner/Sapphire board then that would be a yes. If you mean on the Asus or DFI boards then that would be incorrect since the two PCI slots would then be covered by a X850 or X1800 XT in the lower PCI-E 16x slot; leaving one remaining PCI slot available.
 
Sentential said:
Crossfire works just fine on intel platforms. ive got a friend who has his P5WD2 on BIOS 0519 in crossfire right now.
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However that's only good news for those who wish to run Intel silicon. ^__^

All kidding aside, I'm just tickled that both sides are going to get a taste of Crossfire. Now, if only those X1800 XT's will hurry up and get here. -_^
 
pjladyfox- looking at the image you linked to does show that 1 pci is blocked, and 2 free - however, it may block the airflow to the vid card right next to it! So, remove the hsf, fit a water cooling block on it (with a low profile!) and you may be able to use that second slot. Of course, not everyone is going to want to do that!

Interestly, that post you linked to shows RD482 printed on the board which has Sata2 present. I wonder when that board is available. I doubt I would wait unless it's in the next 2 weeks...
 
Mysterae said:
pjladyfox- looking at the image you linked to does show that 1 pci is blocked, and 2 free - however, it may block the airflow to the vid card right next to it! So, remove the hsf, fit a water cooling block on it (with a low profile!) and you may be able to use that second slot. Of course, not everyone is going to want to do that!

Interestly, that post you linked to shows RD482 printed on the board which has Sata2 present. I wonder when that board is available. I doubt I would wait unless it's in the next 2 weeks...
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Mmmm, that is a good point. I thought about trying a water-cooled system just to see what it was like but got a bit nervous after doing some reading about it and the upkeep involved. I think I'll stick with stock hardware and do some software tweaks instead. ^__^

*goes back to check URL*

The DFI one that I think you're talking about should be available now 'tho it's been selling out quite frequently over at Newegg everytime I've gone to look at it. Unless you're mentioning a different one?
 
pjladyfox said:
Well, received a response from Boyd at EQS and he had this to say about their new Crossfire board:

1. PCI Slots - The top-most PCI slot is blocked by the installation of a double-wide PCI-E video card. However, the other two slots are available.

2. Fan Headers - There are two on the board; one for the CPU and one for a case fan. This choice I found a bit odd since most cases nowadays come with at least 2 or 3 fan mounts and not having a header means connecting them directly to the power supply or some sort of fan controller; neither which are very appealing.

3. Support - They will definatly cover North American customers via phone or email but any RMA will require sending the board back to them overseas since they do not have a U.S. distributor.

4. Drivers and manual - They are in process of uploading the drivers and a .PDF version of the manual to their website and are hopeful to have those up by the end of the week. Have inquired about XP 64 drivers as well and am currently awaiting a response.

5. X2 processors and RAM - The board has no problems being fully populated with 4 1GB sticks of RAM (however only 3.2 will be addressable unless running XP 64) or using X2 processors.

Hopefully this will help some of you decide on this board or not. So, right now, it looks like we have the following choices:

a. Go with a ULI 1575 southbridge motherboard from Asus, or Gigabyte and have only 1 PCI slot open

b. Go with a SB450 southbridge motherboard from DFI, ECS, MSI and have 1 PCI slot open.

c. Go with the Abit AT8, based on the ULI 1575 southbridge and have no PCI slots available.

d. Go with a SB450 southbridge motherboard based on the PC Partner RD480AK9-A72D or RD400AS7-A73D and have 2 PCI slots open.

I'm still probably going to go with the EQS/PC Partner/Sapphire board myself. It's just a question of waiting for Sapphire to get up off of their butts or just importing it thru Overclock. ^__^
Click to expand...

Well, got more info in regards to the EQS A72K9-CF motherboard:

1. A ULi 1575 or other ULi southbridge motherboard - Currently there are no plans from EQS to produce a board using any chipset other than the ATI flavor. A bit of a bummer but, from what I understood they are close partners with ATI so doing so would be somewhat of a conflict of interest for them.

2. Low number of fan headers - They explained that, due to time constraints and concerns over stability, that they limited the number of fan headers. Granted, I was a bit surprised about more than 2 fan headers causing an issue but, then again, I do not design them. ^__^ They did say however that they would like to put more fan headers, at least 3, on future models.

3. Manual - They uploaded the manual which you can see here: http://www.eqscomputers.com/manuals/?model=A72K9-CF&Submit=Submit

However, they did have a bit of a disclaimer in that some features are optional and not stock.

4. Windows XP 64 driver support - The CD that ships with the motherboard does not have them on there due to not having a stable one at the time it went to retail. However, he was confident that both ATI and Realtek would have stable drivers available if not now then sometime very soon.
 
Bar81 said:
Too bad Xfire and SLI are pointless :p
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Pointless to you, perhaps. I suppose fast cars and hot women are pointless too, cause they are expensive and give the best 'bang for buck'? :D
 
Mysterae said:
Pointless to you, perhaps. I suppose fast cars and hot women are pointless too, cause they are expensive and give the best 'bang for buck'? :D
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That was quite an application of logic. Take a bow :rolleyes:
 
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