DFI Infinity 975X/G

[v_lestat]

yes its on newegg right now but those a-holes want 250 bucks for it.

and it can hardly break 350mhz FSB for conroes.

its definately not the conroe baord until dfi is able to release a bios to up the fsb kinda like gigabyte did.

 

i just picked up a P5W DH until my boys at DFI (you guys will always be my favorite thanks to the awesome NF3 and NF4 boards.) release their killer LP board.

and dont look for the R600 boards to do too much.. they were that spectacular for amd,, i doubt they will be anything special for intel. but only time will tell. i wont give up on them yet. but i fear ATI should stick with video cards. and let other to chipsets.

the upside the the ATI chipset is that it has Independant FSB and Dram freq. settings. so you can up the ram without upping the FSB and vise versa. this brings to the table something totally new! max the cpu and then max the ram to a level never seen before

[Angry_Games]

but i fear ATI should stick with video cards. and let other to chipsets.

 

if Nvidia followed that same advice with their tragic, terrible chipsets at the beginning, then we'd really be screwed...so lets keep pushing for ATI to continue refining their chipsets as their latest AMD offering (CFX 3200-DR) is quite a fantastic board...better than the NF4 I'd venture (other than a few minor annoyances but hey, every Nvidia chipset has has plenty of minor annoyances...there will never be a perfect board)

 

as for overclocking...there is no guarantee in overclocking as you know, and there's no basis for judging what one person's overclock means to another (ie just because you cannot get 350FSB doesn't mean the board won't do it...too many times you guys go into a platform thinking you know it all and have nothing to learn only to find out that you don't know as much as you thought you did when users with open minds hit overclocks that were closed to you)

[G.N.U.Fragman]

true HG...eksamples showing 533 FSB with an ES of a conroe on xs.org, shows it isnt the board that wont go past 350fsb.....

 

btw this new ati chipset. will it be possible to run nvidia sli with hacked drivers on them too ?

[red930]

Fragman']true HG...eksamples showing 533 FSB with an ES of a conroe on xs.org, shows it isnt the board that wont go past 350fsb.....

 

btw this new ati chipset. will it be possible to run nvidia sli with hacked drivers on them too ?

 

If somebody writes some hacked drivers that allow it...then yeah why not. As if anybody knows anything about it at this point.

[raju]

for those thinking of overclocking an E6600 on the current boards here's some info posted by Tony (OCZ),

 

"975 and 965 chipsets will have various chipset and CPU straps. You will know these as 400,533,667,800,1066,1333.Usually to overclock above a certain FSB with an Intel chipset board you have to move to the strap that is close to the max clock you see at the default strap.

 

So if you have a 1066fsb CPU there will be some headroom in the 1066fsb mode but the chipset will eventually give in and overclocking will be hard. We are seeing this with the boards that are stuck on the 1066 strap like the DFI etc. Now you can move to the 1333 strap but if both the chipset and the CPU are moved to this strap internal latency within the chipset is relaxed. So if you see boards stopping at 370fsb this will be the limit of the chipset on the strap ratio it is on, if you move the CPU to the next strap the cpu will clock higher but the chipset will lose performance.

 

Now, it looks like Asus have found a way to engage the 1333 strap on the CPU but are tricking the NB into thinking its on the 1066 strap. It also looks like they have the strap auto switching in bios with the end user not seeing they have moved to the 1333 strap on the CPU, while this is a slick way of overclocking it also will confuse some.

On badaxe, you force 1333 strap and it does both the NB and the CPU, ram suddenly will clock a lot higher but performance is not as good. You will also notice that the ram can again do low latency overclocks which it can not do at the upper end of the 1066 strap. this is because the NB internal latency has been relaxed.

 

Remember PAT on the 865 chipset...all you had to do was force the 533 strap and you had full on PAT on a chipset that did not officially support it. And in reality all you were doing was forcing an overclock on the chipset and reducing its internal latency...this is what we need to do here also.

 

The ultimate system will allow the CPU strap to hit 1333 so you can push over the 370fsb wall, but the NB needs to be fooled into thinking it is still working with a 1066 CPU and stay on the 1066 strap to keep the internal latency low..so in theory we are engaging PAT on 975 etc.

 

ATI and NV chipsets do not clock in this way, this only applied to Intel chipsets and really was a tweak to bring back some of the performance loss by using 2T command."

 

 

regards

raja

[v_lestat]

if Nvidia followed that same advice with their tragic, terrible chipsets at the beginning, then we'd really be screwed...so lets keep pushing for ATI to continue refining their chipsets as their latest AMD offering (CFX 3200-DR) is quite a fantastic board...better than the NF4 I'd venture (other than a few minor annoyances but hey, every Nvidia chipset has has plenty of minor annoyances...there will never be a perfect board)

 

as for overclocking...there is no guarantee in overclocking as you know, and there's no basis for judging what one person's overclock means to another (ie just because you cannot get 350FSB doesn't mean the board won't do it...too many times you guys go into a platform thinking you know it all and have nothing to learn only to find out that you don't know as much as you thought you did when users with open minds hit overclocks that were closed to you)

 

 

i am glad nvidia did the chipset.

but ATI hasnt done anything with their chipsets but dissapoint. espeically on the price point of most of the ati boards. which isnt much more than the nvidia but the nvidia chipsets are just better.

i havent seen anything specacular from ati on the mobo scene.

i hope that changes dont get me wrong. but they have done nothing but disappoint so far.... so i say stick with video cards. the X1900 series is killer.. let them keep that snowball rolling..

[v_lestat]

for those thinking of overclocking an E6600 on the current boards here's some info posted by Tony (OCZ),

 

"975 and 965 chipsets will have various chipset and CPU straps. You will know these as 400,533,667,800,1066,1333.Usually to overclock above a certain FSB with an Intel chipset board you have to move to the strap that is close to the max clock you see at the default strap.

 

So if you have a 1066fsb CPU there will be some headroom in the 1066fsb mode but the chipset will eventually give in and overclocking will be hard. We are seeing this with the boards that are stuck on the 1066 strap like the DFI etc. Now you can move to the 1333 strap but if both the chipset and the CPU are moved to this strap internal latency within the chipset is relaxed. So if you see boards stopping at 370fsb this will be the limit of the chipset on the strap ratio it is on, if you move the CPU to the next strap the cpu will clock higher but the chipset will lose performance.

 

Now, it looks like Asus have found a way to engage the 1333 strap on the CPU but are tricking the NB into thinking its on the 1066 strap. It also looks like they have the strap auto switching in bios with the end user not seeing they have moved to the 1333 strap on the CPU, while this is a slick way of overclocking it also will confuse some.

On badaxe, you force 1333 strap and it does both the NB and the CPU, ram suddenly will clock a lot higher but performance is not as good. You will also notice that the ram can again do low latency overclocks which it can not do at the upper end of the 1066 strap. this is because the NB internal latency has been relaxed.

 

Remember PAT on the 865 chipset...all you had to do was force the 533 strap and you had full on PAT on a chipset that did not officially support it. And in reality all you were doing was forcing an overclock on the chipset and reducing its internal latency...this is what we need to do here also.

 

The ultimate system will allow the CPU strap to hit 1333 so you can push over the 370fsb wall, but the NB needs to be fooled into thinking it is still working with a 1066 CPU and stay on the 1066 strap to keep the internal latency low..so in theory we are engaging PAT on 975 etc.

 

ATI and NV chipsets do not clock in this way, this only applied to Intel chipsets and really was a tweak to bring back some of the performance loss by using 2T command."

 

 

regards

raja

 

 

 

so far from the badaxe standpoint, using the 1333 strap does infact yield a higher clock with SLIGHTLY less performance.. there isnt much of a performance loss clock for clock.

so use the 1333 strap it isnt going to HURT performance.. it simply slows it down A LITTLE. its not a huge hit but for those who want to squeeze every last drop out of it.. yes.. it dose hinder performance slightly.

[raju]

Only trouble is that the DFI board is locked at the 1066 strap for the time being, which means a max fsb of around 370 or so. Hopefully a new bios will fix this and allow for higher fsb's...

 

I have ordered my DFI board and have a Conroe arriving shortly (e6600)..

 

I could have purchased other boards instead, but I only like DFI these days..

[raju]

A quick question for Happy Games.

 

HG, whats the raid performance like on this board (assuming you are using raid)..

[Angry_Games]

but ATI hasnt done anything with their chipsets but dissapoint. espeically on the price point of most of the ati boards. which isnt much more than the nvidia but the nvidia chipsets are just better.

 

as I said, you are not remembering how tragic and awful Nvidia chipsets were for a long time...they were just as weak and poor as ATI's initial chipsets. ATI's RD580 chipset however, is better than even the NF4 as far as I am concerned, so I am already waiting in anticipation for their newer (SB600) releases.

 

I never judge a company's efforts until they've failed miserable too many times in a row...right now, ATI is on the same path Nvidia was on...a miserable start, but quickly they've turned themselves around and their latest 939 AMD (RD580 as mentioned) chipsets are excellent...better than the NF4 in my opinion.

 

Intel chipsets...no one makes a better chipset for Intel cpu's than Intel. Nvidia might make a good one, ATI might make a good one, only time will tell.

 

i havent seen anything specacular from ati on the mobo scene.

 

you obviously have no experience with the DFI Lanparty CFX3200-DR then

 

(the one in my sig)

[Angry_Games]

so far from the badaxe standpoint, using the 1333 strap does infact yield a higher clock with SLIGHTLY less performance.. there isnt much of a performance loss clock for clock.

so use the 1333 strap it isnt going to HURT performance.. it simply slows it down A LITTLE. its not a huge hit but for those who want to squeeze every last drop out of it.. yes.. it dose hinder performance slightly.

keep in mind that there's still a pretty significant difference between Intel setups and AMD setups for the sole fact that AMD has the memory controller integrated into the cpu's die.

 

this means that Intel STILL has to rely on a separate memory controller hub...a bottleneck or a pass-thru if you will...so when you turn the strap up, the latencies go up...this has and always will be a negative of any cpu platform that relies on separate memory controllers.

 

AMD64 architectures do not have this problem because the memory controller is on-die, so latencies, dividers, etc...none of that means much of anything. With AMD64's, it is all about the cpu speeds.

 

With Intel/AthlonXP's etc, it is still very much about memory bandwidth and memory latency (until proven otherwise).

 

The Conroe architecture is so strong that if Intel would possibly make the move towards the AMD style of on-die memory controller, I think everyone would be truly amazed at just how powerful these cpu's really are...but as long as you are limited by a bottlenecked NB memory controller...(this isn't to say that even with this NB the Conroe cannot outmuscle the A64 cpu's...because right now they can...but AMD's next series will once again prove what a limited, old-school architecture Intel's cpu's are...no matter how strong the cpu core is)

[Angry_Games]

A quick question for Happy Games.

 

HG, whats the raid performance like on this board (assuming you are using raid)..

RAID was quite good

 

awww

 

i thought I saved my RAID results grrrr

 

they were as good as the NF4 RAID results

 

I'm waiting for a better cpu (i only have this crappy old Prescott 2.8Ghz 520) to show up and then I will run everything again with Hitachi SATA II 80GB RAID-0