Intel D975XBX (Bad Axe)

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by drayon

HEY??? Well obviously!!!!!!! How can an Analog signal pass thru a motherboard??? What other signals were you thinking about?

Well the link said they had problem with the PCIe bus and I figure if the signals are digital they shouldn't. My CDROM passes through some kinda mobo bus else it couldn't get through my soundcard to the speakers. The only problem I would see would be analog but that should typically stay on the sound card (audio input jack from mic for example) then pass right out again to the speakers.

[drayon]

oh another EFI related question. Would you care to speculate on the possibility that EFI Intel Boards may be programmed with assignable key presses to execute commands at boot time in the future? Eg Apple's new Intel Mac's use EFI (as has always been the case in Open Firmware PowerPC Macs), Apple have programmed EFI, so that when a user starts the machine with the "D" key held down this forces the machine to Boot from the DVD or CD Rom drive . Another is the "Option" Key (ALT to PCers) this will display Disk icons on the screen for all available partitions with bootable OS's. The user can click the desired icon button with the mouse then click the boot button with the mouse, the machine will then boot from the selected OS.

[AHLnut]

Originally Posted by Sandog

I will be getting the D975XBXLKR very soon. I received this short message from Intel this morning. Hopefully I will reveive a notice of shipment today.

"I received my samples, so a board is on its way to you…"

Cool!! Congrats!!!

[drayon]

Originally Posted by Sandog

Well the link said they had problem with the PCIe bus and I figure if the signals are digital they shouldn't. My CDROM passes through some kinda mobo bus else it couldn't get through my soundcard to the speakers. The only problem I would see would be analog but that should typically stay on the sound card (audio input jack from mic for example) then pass right out again to the speakers.

Everything is converted to digital by the Analog/Digital Convertors (AD) on the card. Your CDROM passes a Digital Signal directly to the Sound Chip on your board which is converted to Analog with the chips Digital to Analog convertor.

The problem Creative are having is to do with the way the data is transported from the card onto the bus and back. They obviously stuck a legacy PCI transport chip on a PCIe card and expected it wot perform well. The OS will be under strain converting PCI transport calls to PCIe native Network based stack and back thus the high CPU overhead they witnessed. Audio is a critical realtime process an thus its transport requirements need to adhere to the PCIe native protocol network guidelines.

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by drayon

Sandog- do you think Intel will ship EFI based boards soon? I read than XP does not support nor can it load on an EFI board. I did read Longhorn does support EFI so perhaps the EFI board will ship at that time??

thanks

I just read up a bit on EFI for the first time here. It looks like the OS allows you to choose boot options before it loads and probably more. It does not look like this has much steam behind it right now and I have not heard of Intel pressing it in near future hardware (like a mention at CES). It does need an OS that supports it though like Vista so maybe we will see it soon. If it has anything to do with stability then it will probably get implemented although right now I never have a problem booting into Windows or Windows crashing anymore.

"The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification defines a new model for the interface between operating systems and platform firmware. The interface consists of data tables that contain platform-related information, plus boot and runtime service calls that are available to the operating system and its loader. Together, these provide a standard environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications."

Not to hinder progress but it is very easy to have a screen come up at boot-up allowing you to select which OS you want to load. All you have to do is edit the boot.ini file and add one line to show which drive and partition the extra OS's are located on. For most computer users, extra boot options do not help since they have one OS and one hard drive. Also we all know you can boot to any device you want already by listing the boot device order in current BIOS and just have the bootable media ready. If there is no bootable media, it goes to the next drive.

In looking at the diagram in the link above they still have a BIOS available after EFI.

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by AHLnut

Cool!! Congrats!!!

Thanks man, somehow I'm not too happy. I will be putting work into installing it but will not have dual video cards or a 955EE just yet to show any real improvement. Also there is a dilemma in video cards. It looks like all ATI's new cards are expensive and hot XT's that are 2-slot cards. I was hoping for a single card slot version that was cheaper. Now NVidia will come out with a new product soon and I should take a look at that. What about the D975XBX getting SLI support? If that were to happen all I would need to buy is one more card like the 7800GTX I have now. I would really like to show off the D975XBX with 2 video cards. Not for the fact of the most FPS but that is can run two cards. It will be a while yet before I can say my game machine is finished but getting this board puts me over the hard stuff. I have half a dozen minor fixes I need to accomplish during changing out the board plus I will give it a good cleaning. After the board it will just be a new CPU, video card(s), and Corsair 2x1GB DDR2. Almost forgot, if I get 2 video cards (Crossfire) I may need a new power supply with dual 6pin SLI connectors, hopefully not.

[AHLnut]

Originally Posted by Sandog

Thanks man, somehow I'm not too happy. I will be putting work into installing it but will not have dual video cards or a 955EE just yet to show any real improvement. Also there is a dilemma in video cards. It looks like all ATI's new cards are expensive and hot XT's that are 2-slot cards. I was hoping for a single card slot version that was cheaper. Now NVidia will come out with a new product soon and I should take a look at that. What about the D975XBX getting SLI support? If that were to happen all I would need to buy is one more card like the 7800GTX I have now. I would really like to show off the D975XBX with 2 video cards. Not for the fact of the most FPS but that is can run two cards. It will be a while yet before I can say my game machine is finished but getting this board puts me over the hard stuff. I have half a dozen minor fixes I need to accomplish during changing out the board plus I will give it a good cleaning. After the board it will just be a new CPU, video card(s), and Corsair 2x1GB DDR2. Almost forgot, if I get 2 video cards (Crossfire) I may need a new power supply with dual 6pin SLI connectors, hopefully not.

Wasn't it posted in here that Nvidia SLI would work with this board, it just needs a license from Nvidia and a driver update? If this is true, I'm sure it SLI will happen on the 975 borads, either officially or from some driver whiz to create a driver that works with SLI. My bet is that it will happen officially.

[Intellectual]

Originally Posted by AHLnut

Wasn't it posted in here that Nvidia SLI would work with this board, it just needs a license from Nvidia and a driver update? If this is true, I'm sure it SLI will happen on the 975 borads, either officially or from some driver whiz to create a driver that works with SLI. My bet is that it will happen officially.

Yep thats what I talked about originally in this thread. Apparently all that is needed is for NVidia to give the go ahead which they seem to be lagging to do. I think that was the last question I asked Intel and he said they were working on it. Truth is of all the thousands of mobo's sold probably less than 10% are SLI and of those only 5% or less even buy two video cards so it's not like it will really hurt NVidia. I think NVidia needs all the business it can get especially with ATI's 580 chipset coming out soon. I think all mobo's should be able to play Crossfire or SLI just like they can all play a single ATI or NVidia card. If you have to buy an NVidia NForce4 board to get SLI then they lost a customer in me. They could have had me buying 2x7800GTX cards for my Intel board but instead that cash will have to go to ATI.

[babbler]

For those of you planning to swap out your D955XBX with the D975XBX, the layout is slightly different. This may or may not affect your install; however, if you are using water cooling, you may have to redo your plumbing. This is what I am doing now. Everything is shifted down on the board by one slot, including the CPU bracket and Northbridge. The top expansion slot on your case cannot be used, so the video card is one slot lower. I'm bleeding the air out of my system now. I'll update on any other differences so that others who may need to change their cooling or other things can order those parts necessary at the same time as the board.

[bingo13]

Originally Posted by AHLnut

Wasn't it posted in here that Nvidia SLI would work with this board, it just needs a license from Nvidia and a driver update? If this is true, I'm sure it SLI will happen on the 975 borads, either officially or from some driver whiz to create a driver that works with SLI. My bet is that it will happen officially.

It will not happen at this time.

[Sandog]

Here's a nice read on Presler's.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/print_content.asp?id=pd900

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by babbler

For those of you planning to swap out your D955XBX with the D975XBX, the layout is slightly different. This may or may not affect your install; however, if you are using water cooling, you may have to redo your plumbing. This is what I am doing now. Everything is shifted down on the board by one slot, including the CPU bracket and Northbridge. The top expansion slot on your case cannot be used, so the video card is one slot lower. I'm bleeding the air out of my system now. I'll update on any other differences so that others who may need to change their cooling or other things can order those parts necessary at the same time as the board.

Good catch. I will not have to redo plumbing but it is something worse. It looks like it will be impossible to put my SB X-Fi card in the last PCI slot now. My Koolance Radiator hangs over the board. If you look at the location of the last PCI slot on the two boards you will see what I am talking about. This means one of three things. Get rid of the SB, get rid of the Koolance case, or forget about Crossfire on the D975XBX.

[Snake Pliskin]

Originally Posted by Sandog

Good catch. I will not have to redo plumbing but it is something worse. It looks like it will be impossible to put my SB X-Fi card in the last PCI slot now. My Koolance Radiator hangs over the board. If you look at the location of the last PCI slot on the two boards you will see what I am talking about. This means one of three things. Get rid of the SB, get rid of the Koolance case, or forget about Crossfire on the D975XBX.

Does koolance allow you to keep the cooling solution without the case? If so, ditch the case for a bigger one. It looks like you will need one eventually.

Dan

[drayon]

When Intel puts the 'bolted on' Silicon Image Chip, (which is stated NOWHERE on Intel's Desktop Board Features page or in their Product Brief.pdf i might add) they have been putting this on the PCI bus. Now, id like to know why they are NOT putting SATA on the PCI-e bus. Both are Serial in nature, makes no sense to put it on the legacy Parallel PCI bus !!. I just seem to think manufacturers have no ability to THINK about certain aspects of technologies at times. The PCI bus extremely incapable of providing enough bandwidth for 4x SATA Hard drives, considering that practically the only SATA devices in the market are Hard Drives. So why even waste our time putting add on chips to PCI??? These things completely starve the bus so nothing else can perform optimally. SATA optical drives are quite rare and NONE of them are native anywayz since the manufacturers are fitting SATA bridge chips to their existing PATA drives. When Blu-Ray drives come, probably SATA, we will be back to square one again, since putting these on the bolted on SATA controllers will also be on the PCI bus and kill bandwidth for other devices. Firewire on Intel boards are bolted on 3rd party chips, Firewire is also a serial protocol and again they continue to put it on the PCI bus thus sucking more bandwidth. Why not put this on the PCIe bus. The Ethernet controller is on PCIe!!

Maybe Intel ought to think about expanding their I/O controller chips and add another 4 SATA controllers to negate the need for 3rd party SATA chips. This would probably save them money in board manufacture.

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by drayon

When Intel puts the 'bolted on' Silicon Image Chip, (which is stated NOWHERE on Intel's Desktop Board Features page or in their Product Brief.pdf i might add) they have been putting this on the PCI bus. Now, id like to know why they are NOT putting SATA on the PCI-e bus. Both are Serial in nature, makes no sense to put it on the legacy Parallel PCI bus !!. I just seem to think manufacturers have no ability to THINK about certain aspects of technologies at times. The PCI bus extremely incapable of providing enough bandwidth for 4x SATA Hard drives, considering that practically the only SATA devices in the market are Hard Drives. So why even waste our time putting add on chips to PCI??? These things completely starve the bus so nothing else can perform optimally. SATA optical drives are quite rare and NONE of them are native anywayz since the manufacturers are fitting SATA bridge chips to their existing PATA drives. When Blu-Ray drives come, probably SATA, we will be back to square one again, since putting these on the bolted on SATA controllers will also be on the PCI bus and kill bandwidth for other devices. Firewire on Intel boards are bolted on 3rd party chips, Firewire is also a serial protocol and again they continue to put it on the PCI bus thus sucking more bandwidth. Why not put this on the PCIe bus. The Ethernet controller is on PCIe!!

Maybe Intel ought to think about expanding their I/O controller chips and add another 4 SATA controllers to negate the need for 3rd party SATA chips. This would probably save them money in board manufacture.

I see what you mean, it does not show up here either that I can see. My only idea is Intel sees people wanting to use their Matrix RAID which can take up all four of Intels 4 SATAII ports so they added the extra controller to handle other SATA devices like CD drives and put it on the PCI bus. I guess Intel is not ready yet to have more than 4 devices on a controller or a second group of SATA ports on the ICH. It has always been 4 devices per controller when it comes to IDE or SATA as long as I can remember. Thing is when I first had the D955XBK, I had the impression that the SI controller was some hot RAID only controller chip. That is because you always read the word RAID whenever you see Silicon Image and when I tried to run my Plextor on it or load the drivers in Windows it never found the hardware. I take this to mean their probably was not the proper hard drive setup connected. The SI controller ports have been a PITA for me and I disabled it in BIOS and gave up. I can not even connect to the ports because of the Koolance interference. I can but I then have to remove the mobo to disconnect the locking SATA connector.