DFI RD600, almost peachy...

AlexV

AlexV

Heteroscedasticitate
Moderator
Veteran
I`ve actually gotten my grubby mitts onto one of these rare babies:an ATi RD600 based DFI mainboard. Its historical value lies in the fact that it`ll be the first and last Intel mobo with an AMD chip(probably):)

It`s a cool little piece of technology, and I haven`t even gotten to overclocking, which is said to be it`s strong spot. But, as usual, there must be some party pooper-in this case, it`s teh inability to use AHCI on the ATi SB600 SATA ports. Or RAID. With RAID it reboots, with AHCI it hangs at the Windows loading screen, showing me the nice progress bar cycling infinitely, with the HDD led lit but no activity. The only way to use it is to set the SATA ports to IDE, which is crap as I`d kindof enjoy my 3GBps(theoretical) transfer rate back, thank you very much.

Anybody have any experience with this/something similar?I`m using Vista X64, and when trying to boot into safe mode with AHCI enabled it hangs upon loading crcdisk.sys...
 
I believe you should still be getting full speed out of IDE mode. As far as I know AHCI just enables extra features like "Command Queuing, and "Hot Swap". If you installed your OS in IDE mode, then switch to AHCI, you will probably get a BSOD.
 
Sure, but I haven`t installed it on IDE, and I`m not getting the BSOD that is documented by MS(it would`ve been nice to have been so, as the fix is fairly trivial). I`m thinking it may be something related to this:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931369/en-us, but the MS basterds only have the hotfix available through their support, not as a download:|
 
I have the same problems you are describing with my 965P motherboard.
In RAID mode it will obviously not work unless I do a clean install but AHCI causes my OS to give me a BSOD on booting into Windows.

Our issues are possibly related. I take it you install Windows with AHCI enabled?
To RAID and install Windows you need to specify a different driver with "F6" - forgive me if I am repeating what you already know.
 
A little bird tells me that when running crossfire on RD600, you only get two 8x lanes. Seems pretty poor if true, especially as the older RD580 does dual 16.

Can you confirm or deny that?
 
Why do you have to speak with little birdies, when that`s a well known truth, Dr. Doolittle:) Yes, it is so x8 for Crossfire and x2 for the Physics slot. Even though it`s called the RD600, it was actually designed before R580 and has a lot in common with the older R480...but it spent an age in the making, so everybody assumes it`s cutting edge shiznit. Which it is, kindof, considering that Intel offers no better ATM and you can`t have Crossfire with nVidia.

Again, the take home thing here is that the R580 is actually newer in terms of design, despite the nomenclature.
 
So the 680i is not conformant to Intel specs?Umm, dunno about that:|
 
Its not a question of age, or when it was designed, its a question of pinout. Unlike AMD platforms, for Intel chipsets the Northbridge is has to take care of the memory, which also means having sufficient pins to support the memory bus - there is not enough pad space to support the pins required for the memory bus and 32 lane of PCIe all on the Northbridge.
 
So it`s not due to design?How did NV do it then?If the AMD aquisition hadn`t happened, and all that ensued, ATi would`ve had a dual 16x Intel part, no?
 
Morgoth the Dark Enemy said:
So it`s not due to design?How did NV do it then?If the AMD aquisition hadn`t happened, and all that ensued, ATi would`ve had a dual 16x Intel part, no?
Click to expand...
They split the PCI-E lane between the north and south bridge. By doing this the chipset draws more power and produces more heat. The realy bad thing is this ups the power draw and heat of the south bridge and the need of a high end chipset cooler.
 
I've not looked at nForce 680, so I don't know the detail behind that, but initially they did it by including their AMD single chip chipset (which had all the necessary north and southbridge functions) as the southbridge to provide the extra PCIe lanes.
 
12.jpg
 
So it`s a design trade-off overall:hotter, clumsier etc. It`s a choice...but anyway, I still think the RD600 is sexy:)Although I would`ve liked somebody other than DFI making them.
 
Morgoth the Dark Enemy said:
Why do you have to speak with little birdies, when that`s a well known truth, Dr. Doolittle:) Yes, it is so x8 for Crossfire and x2 for the Physics slot. Even though it`s called the RD600, it was actually designed before R580 and has a lot in common with the older R480...but it spent an age in the making, so everybody assumes it`s cutting edge shiznit. Which it is, kindof, considering that Intel offers no better ATM and you can`t have Crossfire with nVidia.

Again, the take home thing here is that the R580 is actually newer in terms of design, despite the nomenclature.
Click to expand...

Ah, well it was news to me when my pal told me the other day :oops: :)

OT - Why did someone feel the need to leave me negative rep for my post? I was just asking a question. :( They left an odd comment of '?'
What is '?' supposed to mean?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Shortbread
Next-Generation NVMe SSD and I/O Technology [PC, PS5, XBSX|S]
105 106 107
Replies
2K
Views
210K
Karamazov
K
C
Dell XPS: How to enable Intel's RST CTRL+I option when booting?
Replies
1
Views
2K
Davros
D
G
After Effects Rendering PC PrePurchase
Replies
3
Views
1K
Davros
D
digitalwanderer
Blue died, it's time to bring her back to life.
2 3
Replies
54
Views
11K
digitalwanderer
digitalwanderer
S
AMD SB600 AHCI exploration
2
Replies
31
Views
14K
swaaye
S
Back
Top