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Having been a long ASUS/Intel fan, the thought has crossed my mind more than once to (Gasp) jump to AMD. With all the new features and other vendors coming onboard to support the AMD chipset, it's come a long way in 5 years.

DFI's LANParty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert motherboard
Got overclock?
by Geoff Gasior � March 6, 2006

DESPITE THE FACT that NVIDIA released its nForce4 SLI X16 chipset months ago, the original nForce4 SLI is still alive and well. In fact, some motherboard manufacturers have passed over the X16 in favor of new designs that use the plain old nForce4 SLI. That's an understandable strategy given the nForce4 SLI's rough feature parity with its successor, whose extra PCI Express lanes convey few real-world performance benefits.

One of the latest motherboards to revisit the nForce4 SLI is DFI's LANParty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert. Don't let the unnecessarily awkward name put you off, though. DFI has built the Expert with serious overclocking in mind, and endowed it with everything you'd expect from a high-end enthusiast board, including dual PCI Express x16 slots, auxiliary Gigabit Ethernet and Serial ATA RAID chips, six board layers and four-phase power, and a BIOS brimming with tweaking and overclocking options.

Of course, enthusiasts desire more than checkbox features. Performance is what we really crave, and the NF4 SLI-DR Expert delivers that in spades. Not only is it the fastest Athlon 64 motherboard we've ever tested, it's also the most overclockable, by a long shot. Keep reading for more on DFI's Expert respin of NVIDIA's classic nForce4 SLI chipset.

To read the whole article: Click HERE!

Shadow, If you're a gamer you already know that intel is behind AMD and their is no desputing the facts.. The deal that DFI is designed to run higher voltages is custom taylored for higher bus ram and is made to maximise the best high volt stuff without buying volt mod to give the ram the additional . 8 extra volts that ASUS does not offer ( I bought the A8V delux rev 2 )

AMD64 chips are flexible where the multiplier settings are a dream to run where you can match the native bus speed by buying less expensive bus ram or: lower the multiplier and gain tighter timings and increase overall "bus" Speed with the AMD64.. .. This means you gain the higher processor frequency. tighter your timings in the Ram and maintain stability in one shot..

I run an AMD 64 bit 3500.. Winchestor and made the mistake by purchasing the Crucial Ballistic 3200 2x512 chips where I should have bought the higher bus 4000-4200 and clocked it lower timings 2.5-2-3-7 and ran my native multiplier up to 250 and would have ran smoooth as silk without any problems..

An AMD 64 3500 runs at 2.2 mhz , But I can only run it up to 2.6mhz prime with this PC 3200 before she gets too hot and messes with the memory controller at the 5:4 multiplier .. Whereas If I bought the pc 4000 I could have pushed my processor up to 2.8 mhz and ran smooth as silk with a special heatsink and would have been happy as hell because it would have ran prime stable for 24 hours and given me no problems.. And I would have cam close in benchmaking with an FX 55 !..


Asus loves the micron chipset.. Which all manufactures produce But the ASUS is inherently designed for stability and stock settings.. Lan party is a pure gamers board whereas the good HYNEX Chips BH 5 or Samsung chips (My favorite are the OCZ brand ) They will run at insane high frequencies have a lifetime warrantee even when O/C'ing

DFI have a phenominal bios which gives you oodles of options and insane frequencies to fool around with which is a hughe advantage if you know what you are getting yourself into..

This board is not for the inexperienced, many who have ran into trouble because the bios is difficult and it is hard to find a sweet spot..

Anyway.. Intel wins at clockspeed comparos, but looses its ass when it it is measured in gaming performance.. I am not a fanboii of either chipset but I know Intel is a better platform for overall computing but bhen it is time to spool up for a game .. There is no comparison..

Anyway for flexibility sake here are a few stock pictures of CPUZ at the different clock speeds.

Stock cooler and heatsink without the silly stuff...




STOCK RAM:

img.photobucket.com/al.../Stock.jpg

OVERCLOCKED RAM:

img.photobucket.com/al...notbad.jpg

www.com-central.net/in...pic&t=3792

I agree ASP, it's no secret AMD has taken over the OC market for quite some time and while I've always been an advocate for stability and ease of set up 'straight out of the box' machines, AMD has closed that long time gap between 'fiddling' with the mainboard chipsets to find stability. I believe Nvidia had a lot to do with AMD getting to where they are now, not excluding AMD's own great initiative.

I've found out over the years that when building PC's, I like the components that work well together and while that market has broadened to include more choices, Intel had the edge until a few years ago. I believe all that has changed in today's market place.

AMD, together with better mainboard chipset makers such as Nvidia has listened to the pubic more than Intel has and has catered to the OC market thereby building a solid following. Intel has realized this but almost 'dropped the ball' in response time.

Still, the bottom line is AMD has made some great strides in stability and work with almost any hardware tossed at them and I know a lot of avid Intel fans that have taken another serious look at AMD and plans on 'trying them out'. With the release of Mainboards such as DFI, it's a temptation not to try AMD...

BTW, thanks for the info you posted up about OC'ing the AMD...

Buy a cheap ASROCK (ASUS) 939 chipset Hybrid board for less than $ 70 bucks and drop in a Gig of great ram and throw in in a $130 AMD 64 3200 and select either a PCI or AGP graphics card and see how she works..
You will simply be amazed when you can take that little 3200 AMD 64 from the native 1.8 mhz to 2.6 and run stable with a decent heat sink..
You will wonder how in the world does a 1.8 ghz processor beat out a 3.2 Pentium 4 in all gaming titles.

Then when prices and the technology simmers down a bit decide what suits you . Personally I know my last Pentium was a 2.53 and it ran through web pages like butter.. (great for looking at scantly clad nurses ;)) but It obtained the same FPS in gaming applications as my old XP 2700 .. It ran 2.2 Mhz with PC2700/ DDR 333

The AMD 3500 runs over 35% faster and runs 40% cooler and uses less power.. .. And that is in STOCK settings!.. This ALSO has 2.2 Ghz frequency!

On a different note:

Technology is fun .. I had the rare opportunity when the first Intel E.E. 3.43 came out and it was like lightning quick with Soft Sandra . Super Pi and typical office applications but but it did not do anything my AMD 3500 could do while gaming..
But AMD was new and I learned many guys were obtaining FX speeds with much less priced processors on stock coolers.. So I was going to chose the Pentium EE but get a killer NVidia 6800Ultra to make up for the price difference But I went with AMD ..

But I saved $75 (US) than buying the Intel. But I should have bought the AMD 3200 for $120 less and used the money in buying a better MB and The Ultra 68oo and better Ram.. better and would have made a better system than this one in all honesty..

Anyway if you have any generic PC 3200 around and have a spare video card. Buy a cheap $200 MB/ CPU ASROCK939 / AMD 64 3200 deal and and see how she does..

Jerry never thought I'd hear the day lol

You know I have been a big AMD user for years (prices are great here in the UK)

Couple of things to bear in mind AMD is just in the process of changing over to AM2 socket from 939... 2 ways of looking at it the last builds are most stable or the latest thing.

The reason for change is AM2 runs on DDR2 but in tests...

www.anandtech.com/cpuc...spx?i=2741


normal DDR @ 400 is faster than DDR2 at 600+


Don't know what Intel's new Core CPU is gonna do yet

www.anandtech.com/cpuc...spx?i=2748


Either way 2 gig RAM is the way to go now..


Have fun

SLY

- 401RCAF_Sly

Jerry never thought I'd hear the day lol

You know I have been a big AMD user for years (prices are great here in the UK)

Couple of things to bear in mind AMD is just in the process of changing over to AM2 socket from 939... 2 ways of looking at it the last builds are most stable or the latest thing.

The reason for change is AM2 runs on DDR2 but in tests...

www.anandtech.com/cpuc...spx?i=2741


normal DDR @ 400 is faster than DDR2 at 600+


Don't know what Intel's new Core CPU is gonna do yet

www.anandtech.com/cpuc...spx?i=2748


Either way 2 gig RAM is the way to go now..


Have fun

SLY

DDR2 is slower because of the ECC process but never-the less is fast and stable- which is good..
Peppy ram is nice (non ECC) , but for practical purposes, slower timed ram does not mean if a machine with its OC ability being "souped up" the effects would be negligible if any. Especially when the over-all system and program load times load times would free-up the ability to run a modern video card at low PCI settings and enable a higher aperture size .. For example the effects would be hard to notice if you had: 2 Gigs ECC 3-4-4-8/ 2T vs. 1 Gig Non-ECC 2-2-2-5 /1T

Frame rates would be negligible if any due to the current breed of high end cards.

But it will be interesting when Intel drops the Duel core and see how she runs. I honestly believe Intel is at awe with the Advanced Micro Designs and their rapidly changing process whereas the fat cats at Intel could and might be too Bureaucratic and unable to launch newer programs at a whim due to their dominating size and its size and sensitivity to their customer base (Motherboard manufacturers) Nobody wants to keep changing MB every year for a newer, better, mouse trap.

This is an economic no-no because the company already corners 3/4 of the market share. Not many business would appreciate you selling their corporation 1-30k units of machines because of a processor, just to keep competitive with the pesky AMD boys!

I have no real loyalty to either Intel or AMD or Nvidia or ATI.. But I admit I am spoiled with the ATI due to better QUALITY picture not necessarily frame rates where Nvidia is faster with the OGL applications which are darn pretty.. But then again DIRX 10 is on its way and I know ATI is better in that arena I love high levels of AA- AF Zig zags are better seen on televisions ..

But for certain;
I am a huge fanatic of OCZ -Woot!

I made the jump to AMD on my last build (Nov 2005). I went with an Athalon 4000+. I had been running a P4 2.8gig processor before that. The only difference I noticed was slower page loading because I didn't get the dual core chip. Being a novice about AMD chips I didn't think to ask about it while purchasing it and the salesboy at Fry's didn't bother to mention it. Bad research on my part. I also didn't notice any big money savings on buying an Athalon processor that has always been touted by the AMD heads.

- Trans_23

I made the jump to AMD on my last build (Nov 2005). I went with an Athalon 4000+. I had been running a P4 2.8gig processor before that. The only difference I noticed was slower page loading because I didn't get the dual core chip. Being a novice about AMD chips I didn't think to ask about it while purchasing it and the salesboy at Fry's didn't bother to mention it. Bad research on my part. I also didn't notice any big money savings on buying an Athalon processor that has always been touted by the AMD heads.

Run the 5:3 multiplyer in your RAM (333 bus) and then boost your processor from 200 to 210-215 and then you will see the pages rip like the Pentiums.
AMD use less power because they use less frequency to run. But how can your little 2.4 mhz chip beat out the native 2.8 mhz Pentium, not to mention blow it out of the water while gaming where you will see a HUGE difference?
AMD is different, and more efficient. But it is not better when choosing office applications and encoding where raw frequency is the king.. keep both rigs and use one for your business and tha AMD for gaming.. ....Simple?