DFI's LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G


Truly one of a kind
by Geoff Gasior — 1:02 AM on April 2, 2007

ManufacturerDFI
ModelLANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G
Price (Street)
AvailabilityNow

IF YOU'RE SHOPPING FOR AN enthusiast-oriented LGA775 motherboard, your choice of chipsets is dominated by offerings from Intel and Nvidia. There is a third option, though, and it comes from the unlikeliest of sources. You see, before it was acquired by AMD, ATI was working on a CrossFire Express 3200 chipset for Intel processors. That chipset survived the acquisition, and under new branding as the AMD RD600, it's made an appearance on DFI's LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G motherboard.

The ICFX3200 is an event not just because it's the first—and thus far only—motherboard based on the RD600, but also because it's DFI's only high-end LANParty board for Core 2 processors. DFI has quickly established itself as a favorite among enthusiasts, and many have been waiting with great anticipation to see what motherboard whiz Oskar Wu can cook up for a Core 2-compatible LANParty.

Has DFI's combination of seemingly contradictory ingredients—an AMD chipset with an Intel socket—produced a motherboard with mouth-watering potential? Keep reading to find out.


Board specs
AMD's RD600 is easily the most interesting attribute of the ICFX3200, but the chipset itself is a little short on bells and whistles. The RD600 doesn't even have enough PCI Express lanes to supply CrossFire configurations with a full 16 lanes of bandwidth to each card. Instead, it must resort to a dual-x8 configuration—a trick Intel's 975X chipset has been pulling off for some time now.

As one might expect from a Core 2-compatible chipset, the RD600 supports quad-pumped front-side bus speeds up to 1066MHz and dual-channel DDR2 memory up to 800MHz. AMD is, of course, well known for the memory controllers it's integrated into Athlon 64 processors, but the RD600's memory controller is an ATI design.

CPU supportLGA775-based Celeron, Pentium 4/D, Core 2 processors
North bridgeAMD RD600
South bridgeAMD SB600
InterconnectPCI Express x4 (2GB/s)
Expansion slots3 PCI Express x16
3 32-bit/33MHz PCI
Memory4 240-pin DIMM sockets
Maximum of 8GB of DDR2-533/667/800 SDRAM
Storage I/OFloppy disk
2 channels ATA/133
4 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 support
4 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 support via Promise PDC40719
Audio8-channel HD audio via SB600 and Realtek ALC885 codec
Ports1 PS/2 keyboard
1 PS/2 mouse
6 USB 2.0 with headers for 4 more
1 1394a Firewire via VIA VT6307 with headers for 1 more
1 RJ45 10/100/1000 via Marvell 88E8052
1 RJ45 10/100/1000 via Marvell 88E8053

 1 analog front out
 1 analog bass/center out
1 analog rear out
1 analog surround out
1 analog line in
1 analog mic in
1 coaxial digital S/PDIF output
1 coaxial digital S/PDIF input
BIOSAward
Bus speedsFSB: 0-511MHz in 1MHz increments
DRAM: 133-658MHz in 3MHz increments
NB PCIe: 100-200MHz in 1MHz increments
Bus multipliersCPU: 6x-10x (Core 2 Duo E6600)
VoltagesCPU: 0.44375-1.6V in 0.00625V increments
CPU special: 100-121.25% in 0.05-0.1% increments
CPU VTT: 1.21-1.59V in 0.01-0.03V increments
DRAM: 1.5-3.01V in 0.01-0.02V increments
NB Core: 1.3-2.18V in 0.06V increments
NB PLL 1.8: 1.83-2.51V in 0.08-0.1V increments
NB PLL 1.2: 1.21-1.46V in 0.08-0.09V increments
NB PCIe: 1.22-1.6V in 0.11-0.13V increments
NB Convert: 1.81-2.39V in 0.08V increments
SB Core: 1.23-1.59V in 0.11-0.14V increments
Clockgen: 2.92, 3.4V
MonitoringVoltage, fan status, and temperature monitoring
Fan speed controlCPU, system, north bridge

Follow the four-lane PCI Express link from the RD600 down to the chipset's south bridge component and you'll find the SB600, a chip we've seen in everything from high-end CrossFire Express 3200 chipsets for Socket AM2 to AMD's latest 690G integrated graphics chipset for budget Micro ATX boards. The SB600 is a little light in the features department, sporting only four Serial ATA ports and lacking RAID 5. DFI makes up the difference by including an auxiliary storage controller from Promise that brings an additional four SATA ports to the table along with support for parity-powered RAID arrays. However, the Promise chip is tied to the PCI bus, so it will have to share limited bandwidth with other devices.

Fortunately, the Promise chip won't have to share bandwidth with the board's dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers. DFI calls upon a pair of Marvell chips to supply GigE connectivity, and both use PCI Express interfaces. In fact, the GigE chips hook directly into the RD600 north bridge, so network traffic won't even consume chipset interconnect bandwidth.

The rest of the LANParty's spec sheet fills out as one might expect, with VIA providing a Firewire chip and Realtek handling audio codec duties. You won't find a more ubiquitous tag team of onboard peripherals; if only VIA had a mascot, it could do a buddy movie with the Realtek crab.