The reason for the VASTLY increased interest in RAID (especially SATA RAID) is the availability of big cheap SATA hard drives (such as the Hitachi DeskStar and Seagate's *smaller* Barracudas). Four such 500 GB drives and you have a 2 GB array. The big problem is that everybody (including Promise) has to compete with Intel's killer SATA RAID solution (which, oddly enough, has its roots in the long-dead ICH5R SATA/RAID solution of S478 Northwood yore).
I realize that hard drive prices have come way down and sizes are way up, that is obvious. However, Just because drives are cheap doesn't mean that RAID is a good idea. RAID is one of the most oversold functions on mobo's these days and it offers little performance benefit to the *average* end user. Oh, and there is RAID 5, it is just provided by the Promise controller, not the ATI SB.
You don't have a printer? The biggest use for USB (other than keyboards, mice, iPods/MP3 players, and webcams) is for printers; in fact, most folks have *at least five* USB devices. I use a PS/2 mouse and keyboard and have *four* USB 2.0 ports; all four are in use, too (RF remote, webcam, MP3 player, printer). Unless you go with some sort of multifuction device (which I still refuse to recommend for anyone for any reason), you will want extra ports for things like scanners and printers (in my case, more so printers than scanners). Because of the increased need for more USB ports, the *ten* that the DFI supports (tied with the nForce 680i for the most USB 2.0 ports in the Intel chipset camp) is definitely a good thing.
Nope, no printer connected. I have no use for it. Rarely do I ever have to print anything, and when I do, I use my networked printer that has a built in Ethernet jack. You also aren't addressing my point. You are addressing demand for number of ports, not the performance of those ports. The only device you listed that would really even care about USB 2 performance is a mp3 player. The other devices wouldn't ever be bottlenecked by 20MB/s performance. The demand for ports is there, but USB 2 performance shouldn't be a critical factor in your purchase choice, especially with the advent of e-SATA for use with external hard drives.
While the RAID support trails Intel (but then, so does everyone else) the support for SATA devices other than RAID is second to nobody (including Intel). The big problem is that SATA is, at best, a point-to-point connection strategy (one device per port). Given two optical drives and a RAID array of four drives, you need six ports. And in the case of most 965-based motherboards, you *can't* bring any PATA devices with you, because they aren't supported; worse, most 975X-based mobos won't support that many SATA devices. Heaven help you if you dual-boot and want to have each OS on its own drive and separate from the pair of OS-specific two-drive arrays (this is proving to be a wanted option if you dual-boot XP and Vista). That means *three hard drives* per operating system. If you go all-SATA (which is now possible) that is *eight* SATA ports. No Intel chipset supports that many SATA ports without help (the same is equally true of nForce 680i). That's where the motherbaord manufacturers separate themselves from each other.
Ok. I agree with that, but how many people use all 8 ports? Yes, it is nice to have and the DFI board does have them, but how many use them. Also, most people still use PATA optical drives, not many use SATA. The use of SATA optical drives is on the rise, as is the addition of PCI express lanes added to support the increased bandwidth. SATA was designed as a point to point connection for a reason, so two devices don't have to share bus bandwidth. Now it isn't as much of a problem, but as time progresses it will be come necessary to have dedicated bandwidth. Granted, now there are no devices to max out the SATA 150 spec, but with the bandwidth there, someone is bound to use it.
THG's quibbling isn't with DFI. The problem THG has is more that the chipset is facing uncertain support from a company (AMD) that has expressed a determination *not* to remain in the chipset business, especially supplying chipsets for its competition.
You have to rely on DFI. When they make a board, they go all out. They will keep the BIOS updated and the drivers as fresh as they can. I don't see AMD dropping the ball on this just to piss off Intel, especially when Intel's chips are doing so well. If I were AMD, I would continue to make chipsets for Intel because there will always be a market for them and you can grab up some revenue by making good chipsets for Intel or give up and let Intel/Nv have the entire pie. DFI has a dedicated forum where multiple BIOS revisions have come out of due to end users posts. DFI actually monitors their boards and has official rep's that contact engineers to resolve BIOS level issues and compatibilities. That is where the version of my BIOS that I use on my RD580 board came from, users requests to fix compatibility with certain memory modules.
Hmmm . . . it's not cheaper than current offerings, not faster and has some rather eyebrow-raising I/O bottlenecks. Couple that with (based upon past ATI statements about not being a chipset company) a questionable future of responsive BIOS support and one has to wonder what the draw will be.
I mean, be faster, cheaper, or better supported - pick at least one - and *maybe* there's market opportunity. To be none of the above and to be substantially more expensive than other offerings that ARE fast and well supported (e.g. Gigabyte DS3) just doesn't bode well.
Kudos to DFI for finding creative ways to shine this up beyond the rather steamy pile it appears that ATI gave them.
This pretty much sums it up. For the money they are asking for other vendors do better - a lot better. Most 975 Boards are cheaper and offer the same things. PCIe 2.0 is on its way, but instead of keeping up with Nvidias 2x 16 PCIe Links, AMD takes a step back and splits a single x16. If they issued a statement saying that x8 will be enough for any dx10 crossfire card they´ll manufacture, i wouldn´t argue, but i have my doubts. Confused
I hope there is a follow up chipset coming soon. This one is probably just for their platform business.
DX9 in crossfire could have worked on 2 x4 PCI-e lanes. THG did a test and current GPU's only needed about 4x PCI-e bandwidth to perform at their best. While, DX10 are more powerful cards (obviously), do you really think they will use more than 2x the bandwidth of DX9 cards? I don't have the answer to that, but just think it through. If it were true, they would be forcing people into new mobo's and would require them to pick specific ones which sounds a bit ridiculous, but all be it possible. Also, this chipset has been in the works for 2 years (or more I forget), so its roots are from a time when a split x16 lane was normal.
I wouldn't expect a follow up chipset anytime soon. Given AMD's narrow view to cut off Intel support at the expense of profit, this will most likely be their last Intel chipset for a good while. Only time will tell.
[quote="SuperFly03]I beg to differ. This board is an absolute dream. I am not sure what THG's problem was with the FSB, but anandtech.com and other reputable people achieved the maximum FSB allowed in the BIOS, 511 FSB. That puts the FSB quad pumped at 2044... right up there with 680i... if not besting it.
except that Tony from OCZ says that there is no point running at that as the memory performance & hence overall performance starts dropping from ~470 & advocates a CPU with a multi that lets you max core clock whilst staying under that.
Could you provide a link please? I am not sure I really believe him, unless a new strap comes into play around 470. It is possible, but I don't know. So please show me some evidence.