DFI CFX3200-DR: ATI RD580 Tweak Attack
by Wesley Fink on May 8, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
There is a scene in the movie Amadeus, Best Picture of 1984, where Emperor Joseph II is talking with the composer Mozart after seeing his first Mozart opera. He assures Mozart it is a brilliant piece, but there are just "too many notes".Why does this matter in our review of the DFI CFX3200-DR? Much like Mozart's opera this motherboard has more options than we have ever seen. Unfortunately there are so very many options that even experienced overclockers will be intimidated by the sheer range of controls available on this board. As with Mozart's opera that does not indicate the DFI CFX3200 is a bad board; it just means you have to be willing to work very hard to get the best from this DFI board. We never thought we would be complaining about too many tweaking options on any motherboard, but this DFI does make us wonder how many end users will actually devote the time to master 32 levels of drive strength, and DQS skew levels of +/- 0 to 255 in 511 levels.
The DFI CFX3200 is otherwise a brilliant ATI RD580 design. While it is very expensive, you do get value for your dollar. Every component on the board is first rate and the highest practical grade available. This attention to detail is typical of recent DFI boards and it's one of the reason enthusiasts love DFI boards. We do think DFI engineers would do well to devote more time to a BIOS that will work right out of the box for more end users. We have received many complaints from buyers of past DFI boards that they were just too hard to master. Those complaints will likely grow into a loud chorus with the CFX3200. It is always difficult to find the proper balance between ease of use and the range of controls available to the end user. The DFI is after all an enthusiast board and enthusiasts demand maximum levels of control. The CFX3200, as it is now configured, is just a bit too much.
In Amadeus, Mozart wryly asked Emperor Joseph II which notes he would have him remove - a question the Emperor never answered. We would answer a similar question by saying that DFI doesn't need to remove any adjustments or tweaks at all. It does, however, need a refined and simplified menu with many options hidden and auto controls that work with almost any memory that might be used on the board. From those auto levels enthusiasts who want to would then be able to delve deeper. We know some enthusiasts out there will find a use for almost every control on the DFI. The problem is you shouldn't be required to master drive strength levels and levels of skewing just to use and overclock the CFX3200 - unless you choose to.
DFI does listen to buyers. They included capable Firewire options this round and they replaced last generation's SB450 with the more capable ULi M1575 Southbridge. We suggest DFI dump their Silicon Image 3114 supply and put a more up-to-date controller on these top-end boards. No enthusiast we know is waiting breathlessly for a 3114 controller on a $240 motherboard. They are, however, breathlessly waiting for DFI's AM2 and Conroe motherboards.
The CFX3200 is a much better board than the RDX200. The RDX200 was a very good first effort, but DFI has learned a great deal about ATI chipsets and done some great things with the ATI RD580 chipset. With a better organized BIOS, more universal auto settings, and a rethink of the 3114 option this motherboard would be just about perfect. If you're already set to build a completely new system using socket AM2 and DDR2 memory, you'll want to wait a few more weeks, but as a final top-end CrossFire 939 board the CFX3200-DR is a great choice.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
25 Comments
View All Comments
rqle - Monday, May 8, 2006 - link
"...breathlessly waiting for DFI's AM2 and Conroe motherboards."Great board, but not sure where this new mainboard will fit in since AM2 is coming, many can opt for the nforce expert if they need a board before AM2.
hoping AM2 version is in the works and will be release soon as well.
electronox - Monday, May 8, 2006 - link
*sigh*as far as gaming benchmarks go, what we really need to learn to do is to focus on the lowest framerates rather than the highest framerates (or even the average framerate). fink, anand, and co., you guys offer a progressive tech-journalism and no doubt have thought about what FPS performance really means.
in its most important application, FPS performance means the ability to convey a smooth, fluid visual experience without noticeable dips or jerks in motion. sadly, with the way things are marketed now, the overall fluidity of gaming is sacrificed to reach those peak framerates we all obsess about in our benchmarking suites.
as a long time gamer and enthusiast-sector consumer, i wish such high profile websites as yours would pay more attention to the worst parts of FPS gaming - the parts of the game where the intensity of in-game content is notched up, but often our video settings must be turned down in order to prevent epileptic siezures. such media attention might, in turn, lead industry developers to optimize their drivers for this exceedingly common problem which, in my opinon, is just as easily quantifiable and ever bit as important as average FPS performance.
my thoughts, electronox.
Dfere - Monday, May 8, 2006 - link
I have to agree. I make good money, but I no longer have the time to play with bleeding edge components and do modding. I know this is an enthusiast site, but at least for me , and I think a large amount of readers, an analysis of the max you might get out of a bleeding edge system is not all the value your site brings. A lot of posts by the readers show they have mid range systems. Thus I can only agree that an analysis of the FPS "issues" described above with a mid range system would help readers identify what would best go with their current system, not just a top of the line upgrade. I know your testing tries to determine , for example, CPU limits or GPU limits...... but it really only does so on bleeding edge systems..... and these comments were already mirrored in the latest AGP vid card releases......(why compare a new AGP card with new processor when most AGP owners have 754 systems.... etc)JarredWalton - Monday, May 8, 2006 - link
I think it all depends on what game you're talking about, and how the impact is felt in the fluidity of the FPS score. These days, the vast majority of first-person shooters have a pretty consistent FPS, at least in normal gaming. In benchmarks, you're often stressing the games in a somewhat unrealistic sense -- playing back a demo at three or four times the speed at which it was recorded. Why does that matter? Well, depending on the game engine, loading of data can occur in the background without actually slowing performance down much, if at all. In a time demo, you don't generally get that capability, since everything moves much faster.There are several other difficulties with providing minimum frame rates. Many games don't report instantaneous frames per second and only provide you with the average score. (Doom 3, Quake 4, Call of Duty 2, Half-Life 2, Day of Defeat: Source all generate scores automatically, but don't provide minimum and maximum frame rates.) If we notice inconsistent frame rates, we do generally comment on the fact. About the only game where I still notice inconsistent frame rates is Battlefield 2 with only 1GB of RAM -- at least on a system of this performance level. (I suppose I should throw in Oblivion as well.)
Sure, we could use tools like FRAPS together more detailed information, but given that there's a limited amount of time to get reviews done, would you rather have fewer games with more detailed stats, or more games with average frame rates? Realistically, we can't do both on every single article. Our motherboard reviews try to stay consistent within motherboards, our processor reviews do the same within CPU articles, and the same goes with graphics cards and other areas. If we have an article where we look at results from one specific game, we will often use that to establish a baseline metric for performance, and readers that are interested in knowing more about the benchmark can refer back to that game article.
Average frame rates are not the be-all, end-all of performance. However, neither are they useless or meaningless. we run into similar problems if we report minimum frame rates -- did the minimum frame rate occur once, twice, frequently? As long as people understand that average frame rates are an abstraction representing several layers of performance, than they can glean meaning from the results. You almost never get higher average frame rates with lower minimum frame rates, or conversely lower average frame rates with higher minimum frame rates -- not in a single game. In the vast majority of benchmarks, an increase in average frame rate of 10 FPS usually means that minimum frame rates have gone up as well -- maybe not 10 FPS, but probably 7 or 8 FPS at least.
In the end, without turning every article into a treatise on statistics, not to mention drastically increasing the complexity of our graphs, it's generally better to stick with average frame rates. Individual articles may look at minimum and maximum frame rates as well, but doing that for every single article that uses a benchmark rapidly consumes all of our time. Are we being lazy, or merely efficient? I'd like to think it's the latter. :-)
Regards,
Jarred Walton
Hardware Editor
AnandTech.com
OvErHeAtInG - Monday, May 8, 2006 - link
Good answer :) Also I think that minimum framerates (while very important in gameplay) are much more impacted by the videocard used. With a motherboard review, we're much more concerned with overall performance, which is exactly what you gave us with the avg. framerate numbers...