Those who wondered how many more prototypes and market balloons they would have to endure before a retail ATI Crossfire AMD board appeared will be happy to know that this DFI is for real. While this exclusive AnandTech review posts, New Egg has DFI LANParty UT RDX200 boards for sale. Similar to their early scoop in the nForce4 market, DFI is also first to retail with a Crossfire AMD offering.

DFI produced what is arguably the most enthusiast-friendly board on the retail market when they launched the LANParty nForce4 series. They then shocked the conventional wisdom among computer manufacturers when their LANParty nForce4 boards became the best seller in a market crowded with nForce4 products. With firm credentials for leadership in the Enthusiast market, DFI set their sights on producing a similar "Gold Standard" motherboard based on the ATI Crossfire AMD chipset. The question on everyone's mind is, has DFI done it again?

Some of the new performance options required some compromises on the board. For instance, the highest clock that we could achieve was 305 instead of the 318 that we saw on DFI nForce4, but that is an acceptable tradeoff for the incredible 4DSx1T performance option.

While we have no complaints in the performance area or in the overclocking options and controls, we do have some complaints in the features area. It is a total mystery why DFI chose to add the Silicon Image 3114 SATA1 controller to a chipset that lacks native SATA2 support. With a SATA2 controller, buyers would only have to forgive less-than stellar USB performance on a board that is absolute tops in every other area. With the 3114 choice, there will be too much to forgive for some users. Certainly, neither SATA2 nor the zippiest USB are critical to most enthusiasts and those buyers will find everything that they want in the DFI RDX200. However, if these features are very important to you, you will have to add controllers or look elsewhere.

Last, there is the choice of southbridge. The SB450 is out of date as it launches, missing both SATA2 and NCQ support, and showing USB 2.0 performance that is not really competitive. Otherwise, it is plenty fast and capable, but you shouldn't have to make excuses with a chipset as otherwise capable as the Rx480. The good news is that SB600 will fix these somewhat minor failings and is a pin-compatible drop-in for SB450. The better news is that the ULi M1575 southbridge fixes those issues today and is an available option for ATI chipset motherboards. The DFI RDX200 would have been close to ideal with the M1575 features and performance.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2572

Well looks like for Aussies, the DFI Lanparty RDX200 CF-DR will probably be end of this month according to Louis at Mittoni.com.au (yes web site hasn't updated ETA yet) http://www.mittoni.com.au/dfi-lanpar...rd-p-2079.html

Lowering the multiplier to reach the highest CPU clock was a bit more difficult. While it was easy to reach a stable 270 with the default (mostly AUTO) memory timings in BIOS, getting to the eventual 305 proved more of a challenge.