When
it comes to purchasing a motherboard for overclocking there is
probably no name that is as synonymous with “extreme levels”
as DFI. They
not only have a cult following, they have nearly every enthusiast’s
ear when it comes to overclocking discussions and hardware comparison.
I must ask myself then, why is it just now, almost 4 years into
reviewing (and many more of tweaking) that I am getting to tweak
my first DFI motherboard. That is an interesting question...
Lucky
for me, I finally received my first DFI motherboard, and oh what
a doozy it is as well. The LANParty has been a long standing (in
computer terms) tradition at DFI. Their latest nF4 iteration comes
as a stock LANParty
or the new UT edition, which is equipped with either SLI or
DFI's own DXG (Dual eXpress Graphics). I will get into the details
further into the review.
The
DFI Ultra LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D (say that 3 times fast) is a
socket 939 full ATX motherboard utilizing the newer 24 pin Main
power connector. You can read into this that you should have a
high quality power supply to bring this motherboard to life. There
are 2 x16 PCIe slots for DFI's DXG solution and a nice Karajan
Audio module for 7.1ch Theater sound. Let’s look over all
of the specifications.
DFI
brings to the table a few things that I have not seen; especially
in the BIOS with additional features such as CMOS reload. This
basically allows you to save configurations within the BIOS so
that you can boot to them if something becomes unstable. Say you
get a solid overclock at 250 HT with the DRAM set to 3-3-3-6 and
S.M.A.R.T turned off. You then save that BIOS configuration and
continue to manipulate the BIOS to find the premium setting, knowing
that you can always load back a previously saved, known working
overclock, not just the “Default” BIOS configuration
with the push of a single button. A nice touch that I was able
to play with and from a reviewers/tweakers point of view, a feature
that is very useful during testing.
I
must admit, when I opened up the shipping box, I was less then
impressed. The graphics and art work are definitely aimed at a
younger, more ‘1337’ crowd then myself. This same
art work and packaging flows through to the manual; well, what
there is of one.
Included with the DFI Ultra-D motherboard is a nice set of high
performance IDE / Floppy / SATA cabling, colored yellow to match
their PCI / PCIe slots on the motherboard. They have included
almost enough cables to fully connect every device this motherboard
is capable of, however they only sent 2 SATA cables; the standard
number of SATA cables included with most SATA equipped boards
these days. Also included is a bag of jumpers and block pins
and something I have not seen in years; a Pin / Block puller.
The set of block pins are however useless for anything but the
SLI version and my guess is they have a prepackage for all of
their LANParty NF4 types; everyone gets the extra pins regardless.
There is of course a Driver CD and a SATA RAID Floppy to assist
you with getting all of the peripherals to work. DFI have stuck
with the NVIDIA nTune software to allow manipulation of your
overclock from within Windows, either automatically or manually.
Going
over the included manual you find that this is a basic “Quick
Install” version and not much detail has gone into it. There
is enough information to get you going, but that is about it.
If you want detailed information on BIOS settings and what different
selections within the BIOS means, well, you need to either download
the full manual from the website or pull it off of the driver
CD. The trick here is, you have to have printing setup prior to
making any BIOS modifications as your machine can't be running
reading a PDF file while your manipulate the BIOS. This is of
course unless you are lucky enough to have multiple machines so
that you can read from one whilst you modify settings within the
Ultra-D's BIOS. Luckily I had downloaded the online manual and
perused it for some tips prior to lighting the system up; lucky
because the memory performs better in Memory slots 2 and 4 vs.
1 and 3.
The
motherboard is brown with the aforementioned yellow highlights,
with the only exception being the 2nd set of memory slots, which
are orange. Black would have been my color of choice here for
the PCB itself, as with the yellow (and even orange) it would
have been a nice contrast behind the Plexiglas.
The
socket used on the DFI Ultra LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D is of course
of the 939 format and is quite clear from obstructions, mainly
due to the differing layout design DFI have used here. The socket
itself sits middle top under the horizontal ram slots and DFI
have also covered the MOSFETs with aluminum heatsinks. As you
can see in the pictures, even the largest heatsink can be installed
thanks to the unique layout design of the motherboard. As is
usual for the LANParty editions of DFI’s motherboard lineup,
all the plastic is UV reactive and this includes the socket
retention bracket and the ram slots themselves.
Under
the socket is a 4 pin 5v/12v floppy connector which should be
used along with the standard 24pin power, 4 pin ‘P4’
power and a Molex connector sitting to the mid right of the
board. All of these power connections are there to aid in stability,
especially when using two PCIe graphics cards. The 4pin P4 and
the 24pin ATX connector both sit top left of the motherboard
which really moves them out of the way; there really isn’t
a much better space for them. Although the Molex connection
also sits on the left of the board, the position of the 4pin
floppy is practically in the middle of the board which does
mean, if used, a little routing of wiring from the PSU will
be needed.
Below
the power connectors and sitting left of the CPU socket are
2 IDE ports with a further floppy port (mounted to face towards
the front of your case rather than the side panel) lower still.
Behind the floppy we can see the 4 SATA headers and the actively
cooled MCP. Installing the Main graphics card you can see the
active cooling fan for the chipset is basically in the way and
with large graphics cards is covered a little by them. There
is no room for error here and it’s a little too tight
for my liking. I would think this interferes with the cooling
of that chipset to some degree although I didn’t have
any problems personally.
At
the bottom of the board, near to the case connection pins are
two buttons for power and reset, allowing you to control these
aspects without plugging the board into a case.
The
PCI/PCIe area has 2 PCI slots at the bottom, 2 PCIe Graphics
slots, 1 PCIe 1x slot and a 4x PCIe slot. The 2 graphics slots
are separated by the smaller of the 2 1xPCIe slots and large
black block normally found on SLI motherboards, which despite
this motherboard having 2 16x PCIe graphics slots, is not a
feature on this board. I’ll expand more on the Dual Graphics
nature of this board in a little bit but suffice to say, if
you want this board to POST, don’t move the SLI jumper
configuration from it’s normal settings.
The
I/O Panel for the motherboard features (from left to right) 2
PS/2 ports for your mouse and keyboard, S/PDIF for sound, 6 USB
slots, 1 Firewire and 2 RJ45’s. The obvious glaring difference
from most boards here is the large gap and absence of 3.5mm jacks
for sound. That’s were the supplied Karajan audio module
comes in to play.
Installing
the DFI Ultra, like many motherboards, is rarely an event especially
if you happen to have a removable motherboard tray in the case
you use. The slight variation to this with the DFI Ultra LANParty
UT nF4 Ultra-D is the add-on Karajan Audio Module for the rear
audio out. My headphones are 5.1 surround so they have 3 connectors
plus the microphone. In order to use these I had to install
the Karajan module as the only audio ports that are on the motherboard
itself is the front panel riser (simple R/L audio) and the S/PDIF
risers for audio in and audio out. The rear I/O plate has a
knock out if you choose to use the Karajan, the only issue I
see here is if you ever decide to remove the Karajan module
(I know, who would but if you can, someone will), you will have
a hole in your rear I/O plate.
My
first install I used a Western Digital ATA100 120GB Hard Drive
and the included yellow high performance cable. Curiously, only
the floppy connector is situated at the end of the motherboard,
the ATA connectors are both on top. Once I ran a few tests with
the ATA drive I rebuilt the system using a Hitachi 80GB SATA
Drive. There are 4 SATA connectors on this motherboard; you
can see solder points for 4 more, which is available on the
“DR” models only. For my purposes, as I am sure
most of yours, 4 SATA and 4 ATA devices should be ample. I know
there are a few out there that are going to want the 8 devices;
my guess is DFI heard you and therefore they made the DR motherboards.
That actually bodes well for DFI and their customer service.
Expanding
on the Dual Graphics I installed a 2nd video card which was a
little cumbersome, mainly because my main graphics card is a HIS
X850XT which encompasses two slots. The 2nd video, or DXG slot,
is only 2 slots away making the fit snug. To challenge myself
and the DFI solution, I installed an NVIDIA based ASUS N5900 Extreme
to pair to my Radeon based X850XT. Surprisingly the physical installation
was the hardest piece of it. The X850XT's fan was rubbing on the
N5900 and causing it to halt, which, I am sure, would cause an
overheat condition in time. I placed a thick elastic between the
cards ensuring not to get it close to rub the fan or anything
important. Another note about the DXG solution, with the cards
so close together, only a card designed such as the HIS solution
(kind of a catch 22 isn't it :P) could work properly as airflow
would be drastically reduced between the cards, giving your high
end card (in slot 1) the least amount of airflow. The HIS solution
brings air in from the rear back of the card and flows it across
the HS out the back of the case, almost as if designed to be in
a tight space.
The
software and drivers for both NVIDIA and ATI ran fine (albeit
not overclocked) in this system. The solution appears to work
seamlessly, nicely dispersing the load between the cards (manual
selection of course) and allowing up to 4 monitors, unfortunately
I only have 2.
Nothing
truly glares out about the installation of Windows XP Pro with
the possible exception to the NVIDIA IDE drivers as it relates
to the SATA drive. The ones shipped with the DFI Ultra-D appeared
flaky so I downloaded new ones from the DFI site, which seemed
to correct a few blue screens etc. There were no such issues with
the ATA drive installation. I used the NVIDIA nF4 drivers for
both installs, I did not bother to check how the XP embedded MS
IDE drivers would fare since these usually prove to work flawlessly
if slower compared to their NVIDIA nF4 counterparts.
NEXT
