DFI LANParty UT nF3-250Gb: Overclocker's Dream
by Wesley Fink on September 8, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Some of the most famous Abit motherboards from the past were designed by Oskar Wu, who became an engineering legend in the overclocking community with his brilliant overclocking designs. When Oskar moved to DFI last year, it did not surprise industry insiders to see DFI emerge as a new performance and overclocking board maker. DFI already was well known as an OEM manufacturer that built solid and dependable boards for others. But this new emphasis on overclocking and top performance from DFI came as a surprise to those who did not know some of the key people DFI acquired from Abit and Soyo. In the past year, DFI has built a solid reputation with the LANParty series designed for overclockers and gamers. Anyone looking for top performance and the best overclocking capabilities quickly learned to include DFI on their short shopping list.
It is in this climate that the enthusiast community has been eagerly awaiting Oskar Wu's latest design for the Athlon 64. Prototypes and samples have been out for several weeks, and the leaked results from early testing have created huge excitement. Enthusiasts who follow scores at Future Mark noticed that the new performance leader for 3DMark2001SE was suddenly a new DFI nForce3 250Gb board based on socket 754, and not the newest socket 939 Dual-Channel designs. What was this new board, and when would we see shipping boards?
That new board is the DFI LANParty UT nF3 250Gb, and DFI was gracious to provide an exclusive to AnandTech for the first production DFI nF3 250Gb. Boards are expected to begin shipments to the US this week.
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alex1971 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
alex1971 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I think its tested with Raid 3+4 that are the two native Ports directly at NF250GB.The Ports 1+2 are native also, but have to use an external PHY.
This Ports 1+2 are finished when HTT > 240 MHZ !!
Try it.....
Remeber: Main S-ATA Problems only at PORT 1+2 because of the PHY .....
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Glad I didn't buy a MSI K8N Neo Platinum yet... I'll wait for this board before I go A64. =)SLIM - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Great article man, but I almost blew by the part where you mentioned that the Far Cry and UT results were with a 9800pro vs 6800ultras. You might consider putting asterisk on those graphs and bold or highlight the huge difference in graphics cards.It might help those who prefer to only look at the pretty pictures.
SLIM
PS: I second the Iwill board review request.
SUOrangeman - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Review request: http://www.iwillusa.com/products/ProductDetail.asp...Although this is not a 754-pin mobo, the experience should be great nonetheless!
-SUO
at80eighty - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
i second..umm...third...punko's Anantech's "Overclocking for Dummies" idea...i'd LOVE to dig into my rig...but it kinda scares me if i f*ckup : )
Myrandex - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I think the yellow looks cool, but a UV reactive plastic would have been cool along with it. This does seem a bit more of a 'budget' type board when compared to other LanParty series boards. I sure do like it a lot, and I have considered moving from my old MSI K8T Neo board to this one (so I am kinda happy about it being S754). I do wonder about the two SATA cables near the AGP socket, as they are extremely out of the way, and it brings more cable clutter to the center of the board.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
#16 - The test bed had a MaXLine III 250GB SATA hard drive with 16MB of buffer. We first tested with the SATA on Channel 1 between the AGP slot and the CPU -- the plan was to see where SATA failed and then switch to IDE to find the top OC. When we reached DDR600 then DDR616 while running this SATA drive we saw no point in the IDE switch. This board is really stable in OC - even with SATA.rjm55 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
You say on page 6 that you ran the overclocking tests with a SATA hard drive. Can you please confirm that you did DDR616 running a SATA hard drive, because I've read that SATA drives can hold back overclocking.Avalon - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
*drool*