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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
54 Comments
View All Comments
ciwell - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
"Overclocking for Dummies"I like the sound of that! :D
punko - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Impressive Article !Can't wait for the first edition of Anantech's "Overclocking for Dummies"
as the whole concept of FSB and memory tweaking both interests and scares me.
Now if only I could justify to the wife retiring my current rig . . .
gimper48 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
So when is the next overclockers guide? Can we expect to see this board in it?Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
#1 - The Asus K8N-E will be included in a roundup of new 754 boards in the next week.#2,#4 - Corrections made
#7 - The final correct name of the series is LANParty UT, as you point out. The name has been corrected in the article. DFI considered many last minute changes - from full LANParty to bargain board. Final decisions were quite recent.
#9 - We received this production board by Express shipment direct from Taiwan on September 1, after several delays. We are told by DFI that this is the production board. DFI, like other manufacturers, will likely make further improvements during the production run.
mikedustin - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I've been waiting for this board for a long time, only one problem I have with it, why did they pick yellow? I was wanting UV green. :(Oh well, I hope it will match my green case anyway.
DFI is on the right track as a mobo maker, this board is just another big win for them.
tomati - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I have read in other forum that DFI have postpose the 2 september to the 9 because of last change in the design board , so can I expect the same result as yours ?(you told about the pre version , right?)
tomati - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
geoff2k - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Any reason that the review calls the board the "Lanparty UL NF3 250GB" and DFI's own site calls it the "Lanparty UT NF3 250GB"?Ecmaster76 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Talking about weak SATA connectors...I just built a Shuttle XPC for a friend and it had custom SATA connectors on the board and (slightly) custom cables that make things a lot better. The board connector is a lot like a USB socket, it has an outer support ring with the original SATA data pins in the center (its backward compatible). The cable has added bits on it that make it snap into the board connector. No more accidentally pulle cable. I wish the SATA mechanical specs would be revised to such a system or something similar. The electrical aspects of SATA are awesome but they didn't put much though into the connectors.
kmmatney - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
"We were also able to complete stress testing at 300x8 with 2.5-3-4-10 memory timings. At that speed of 2.4Ghz at DDR600, we achieved the following results:Quake 3 - 474.0
Return to Castle Wolfenstein-Enemy Territory-Radar - 104.3 "
So...with overclocking the you saw the following increases?
Quake 3: 411 up to 474
Wolf-ET: 70 up to 104.3
Wow....