DFI AD77 KT400 Motherboard
DFI AD77 KT400 Motherboard
Price: £TBC
Site: www.dfi.com For information
Buy: check www.aventi.co.uk for retailers
Test Setup
The setup consisted of the following parts;
- XP 2000 Athlon CPU
- 512MB Crucial RAM (2*256MB modules)
- MSI Geforce 4200 TI 128MB
- Maxtor D740X 60GB
- Pioneer DVD/CD 16x/40x
- TAISOL 760 60mm Heatsink (using Artic Silver)
- 350WATT PSU (P4 AMD Approved)
- Coolermaster 201
From the sample bios screen below the memory section clearly shows the options that are available to the user. Due to the lack of a standard in DDR400 the Crucial RAM that was used in the test was clocked at 333MHZ CAS2 and 400MHZ CAS2.5. As most tests have compared DDR333 boards with the RAM at CAS2 and DDR400 boards with RAM at CAS2.5, I don't see how they can compare the boards. The new RAM will soon be available throughout the retail world and so then the speed advantage will be observed.(CAS latency is the time interval in which the memory dumps)
Benchmarks
SiSoft Sandra Pro CPU (Arithmatic)
SiSoft Sandra Pro CPU (Multimedia)
SiSoft Sandra Pro Memory
Memory @ 333MHZ CAS 2
Memory @ 333MHZ CAS 2.5
Memory @ 400MHZ CAS 2.5
SiSoft Sandra Pro Hard Disk
Maxtor D740X on Raid Channel
IBM 120GXP on Raid Channel
SiSoft Sandra Pro CD DVD
(not particulary relevent)
Q3Bench RESULTS
BENCHMARK SETUP: Demo: DEMO001
Configuration Files Run: Normal High Maximum
Resolutions Used: 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200
NORMAL Configuration File Settings:
640x480 AVERAGE: 176.83
800x600 AVERAGE: 173.83
1024x768 AVERAGE: 164.23
1280x1024 AVERAGE: 131.9
1600x1200 AVERAGE: 100.3
HIGH Configuration File Settings:
640x480 AVERAGE: 178.43
800x600 AVERAGE: 174.1
1024x768 AVERAGE: 151.63
1280x1024 AVERAGE: 109.9
1600x1200 AVERAGE: 81.2
MAX Configuration File Settings:
640x480 AVERAGE: 170.5
800x600 AVERAGE: 165.17
1024x768 AVERAGE: 142.8
1280x1024 AVERAGE: 104.7
1600x1200 AVERAGE: 78.2
SuperPI
Sysmark 2002
3Dmark 2001
| Score 9001 |
Conclusion
The feature set of the board is good, and the addition of a 2xUSB back-plate bringing the total USB ports to 6, and the 2x Firewire port bracket was a good feature. It is unfortunate that the MIDI and SPDIF connectors are optional, however the target price of this board doesn't really allow for this. The board fitted into the Coolermaster 201 without a hitch, and I found no problem with any of the connector's placements.
The SiSoft Sandra benchmarks show that the board is performing well, but for some reason the highpoint failed to work at anything like a reasonable speed when the IBM 120GXP was installed. The drive worked fine on the normal IDE channel, which leads me to believe the problem is a highpoint firmware bug or at least can be solved with new firmware. Despite the main testing disk being a Maxtor I felt I should include this problem, I had no problems what-so-ever with Western Digital or Maxtor disks.
The other problem being the 400 MHz DDR's performance. As the RAM running beyond its stated specification at the time, I think that this is simply not a fair representation of what DDR 400 could do for the board. At a guess I would have thought that properly supported DDR3200 400MHZ @ CAS2 would reach a SiSoft Sandra memory benchmark of around 2100-2200 respectively, and look forward to testing this or any KT400 board with 400MHZ CAS2 RAM.
Using the stated test setup the stability of the board was simply outstanding. It was left for 2 days looping 3D Mark 2001 and didn't crash or slow down, nor did it with any of the other benchmarks, this includes benchmarks and tests that have not been submitted into this review. In fact it's fair to say I was trying to find someway to cause an error or at least trigger instability but there was none.
Summing up
The board has a few niggles some of which could be solved with new firmware. As the board is marked as preliminary firmware bugs are expected.
Without a doubt the DFI AD77 Infinity is an impressive solution from a manufacture that I have previously unheard of. DFI could do well with this board and I especially look forward to future hardware from them.
