ATi chose arguably the best motherboard manufacturer they possibly could when drafting the first enthusiast-grade RD480 motherboard. This board is it – the DFI LANParty RDX200 CF-DR - and comes packed with extras and features, as you would expect for a motherboard of this expense. Unfortunately, the RDX200 CF-DR is a victim of its own high-end nature. It is DFI’s only RDX200-chipset board at the moment, and costs as much or more as premium RD580 chipset boards from competing brands. Because of this, it becomes immediately difficult to recommend, but let’s take a look at the board on its own merits nevertheless.
Aesthetically, this is one of the prettiest motherboards around, with an all-black PCB and UV-reactive slots and sockets. The DFI shares the same slot layout as the Asus, with two PCI Express slots for video cards, a single 1x PCIe slot and three standard PCI slots. This is a good mix, as it allows the installation of a number of high-end PCI add-on cards whilst retaining the provision for future PCI-E variants. As you would expect for a board like this, there are a total of 8 SATA ports. 4 of these are provided by the ATi Southbridge, with 4 more by a Silicon Image SATA controller. Unfortunately this is of the older SATA 1 design rather than SATA2, leaving the LANParty with no support for SATA2 at all. This is a perplexing choice, as a more sensible option would have been to augment ATi’s slightly limited Southbridge with a top of the range Silicon Image SATA 2 controller. Nevertheless, the real-world performance benefits of SATA 2 are virtually zero, so this shouldn’t be a major factor in your buying choice, despite nVIDIA PR to the contrary.
The layout on the LANParty is typical of DFI products and is therefore almost totally non-standard. The CPU socket is moved over to the right of the board, with the memory slots to its left. Whilst this is an odd choice, it certainly allows you to use coolers as large as you want. Even the colossal Zalman 7700-Cu had no mounting issues on this board. As is now customary with DFI boards, extremely large heat sinks have been physically welded onto the MOSFET chips providing unrivalled cooling for the voltage circuitry. Unfortunately the DFI uses a fan-based Northbridge cooler, but this is a relatively quiet unit and is RPM controlled, making it quiet when running idle, and sufficiently fast to keep things cool when overclocked.
The board’s performance, as you would expect, is very competative, and amongst the fastest on test. The DFI also has Azalia High Definition audio, which provides FAR better quality than traditional AC97 solutions. As usual, the overclocking options on the DFI are almost overwhelming, with the provision to alter almost every possible setting, timing and voltage in order to get the very fastest speeds from your CPU. DDR voltage support up to 4V means even Winbond-based chips can be unlocked to their full potential, and CPU voltage options are equally superb. If your goal is to extract the absolute highest possible clock speed from your crossfire setup, this is undoubtedly the board to choose, even with the introduction of more recent RD580 alternatives – though DFI should certainly reduce the price in light of ATI’s new chipset.
