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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rjm55 - Thursday, September 9, 2004 - link
Saw the DFI at www.gameve.com for $130. ZZF had them for a bit at a similar price. It looks like it will be affordable.deathwalker - Thursday, September 9, 2004 - link
Sweet Mobo...sounds inviting for my planned system upgrade from my Abit NF7-S with my O/C 2500 mobility proc...only concern...will I have to mortgage my home to be able to afford this board...afterall..these goodies do come with a price tag.rjm55 - Thursday, September 9, 2004 - link
Which is the better overclocker - the 2.0 1024k 3400+ or the 2.2 512k 3400+? Has anyone tested both?Wesley Fink - Thursday, September 9, 2004 - link
#40 - Both versions of the 3200+ are now mentioned at the bottom of page 9 - 2.0GHz with 1024k cache and 2.2GHz with 512k cache. Our test 3200+ was a 2.0GHz 1024k version.Jedi2155 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
did anyone else noticed the error about the 3200+ @ the bottom of page 9 :-).rjm55 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I'm releived to know 1GB dimms work fine. It didn't make sense that other 754 had no problems with 1GB dimms and this one did. I'm glad DFI cleared up the confusion.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I just spoke with Oskar Wu, the board's designer. Oskar says they have 1GB dimms from Samsung that work fine on the LANParty UT, and that the Samsung 1GB dimms use 512MB chips in their construction. He said the only reason for the caution on 512MB chips (not dimms) was because they have not verified operation with dimms made with 1GB chips. All of the 1GB dimms I have here for testing use 512MB chips in their construction.Oskar also stated that 2 dimms work best in dimm slots 1 and 2, and not 1 and 3. He said try 1 and 2 and you will get better performance with 2 dimms.
Bozo Galora - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I just went there to check it out - #33 was wrong.It supports 512 MegaBIT DEVICES - DRAMS, not sticks.
cnq - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Yeah, I saw that too. I didn't know that any 754 motherboards forbade using a 1GB DIMM. Who knows, maybe it's a misprint on DFI's part...we can always hope.laxxy - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
where does it say it supports only 512M?here:
http://www.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_deta...
it states that it
> Supports up to 3GB memory when using DDR333
> Supports up to 2GB memory when using DDR400
???