DFI Lan Party Ultra D or Asus A8n32 SLI

[leecho7]

Well, I'm torn between to mobo's at the moment.

I'm looking into the DFI Lan Party Ultra D because of the reviews I read not only here, but all over the place. However, I also read that it's not a 'plug and forget' type of board. There is a lot of tinkering and patience involved to have it function properly. I'm not that 'advance' yet when it comes to tinkering with stuffs.

I'm also looking into the Asus A8N32 SLI because it offers true SLI support. However, I'm afraid that it might still have the memory problems I'm facing with the board I have now, Asus A8n5x, where it won't read more than 220 at 1t.

 

[madmat]

Trust me on this, I've used (and have but awaiting a GPU and CPU) the ASUS A8N32 SLI and it's a great board. I seriously doubt that you'll have the same issues. That board and the board you have now are like comparing a Geo Metro to a Corvette. Yes they're both made by GM but one is the low end beginer version and the other is the uber high end performance model.

Look at the ram you have as a high performance exhaust system, a set of Flowmaster high flow mufflers that you grafted onto your Metro. Hmmm...the Metro is still a slow little POS car with this high flow exhaust. You buy a 'Vette and pop the Flowmasters on it and it picks up some horsepower. Stands to reason since the parts are geared to a high performance car and not a Metro.

Same goes for the ram. That board you have now is built based on the budget nForce 4 chipset and isn't really designed for tweaking. Yes it has the bios options but without the highend chipset those options are more to sell boards than actually do anything. The A8N32 SLI is based on the uber nForce chipset the X16 and it's very capable of OC'ing like a mofo. I've read some very good reviews of that board and how well it OC's.

 

[werty316]

Be confident that theAsus A8N32-SLi does not have any problems like your A8N5X; that board is Asus's flagship for S939 so they wouldn't want it to have bugs. Just google some results and you will see.

As for which board you want both the Ultra-D and A8N32 are great boards but the A8N32 is much more than the Ultra-D. If you want SLi get the A8N32 but if you don't want SLi get the DFI Ultra-D.

 

[sbrehm72255]

The Ultra D OC like crazy, but you do need to know what you're doing with all the memory timimgs for best performance. With everything set to auto in the memory mine boots with no problems but manually setting everything really improves overall performance a bunch.
But if you're looking at SLi, ASUS or the new Abit will be a better choice.........

 

[Greg King]

I have the Ultra-D. Prior to this board, I have owned Soyo, Asus and Abit boards and this DFI is hands down the bast board I have ever used...for the exact reasons that sbrehm touched upon. This is not a board, or should I say BIOS, for novices. It can be a touchy board but it is stable and strong. If you ever want to go SLI, PM me and I can walk you through the mod, which took my all of 5 minutes to do and it is working well for me now. It honestly took longer to remove the thermal paste than it did to do the mod.

As for Asus, my previous mobo was a A8V Deluxe and while it did not OC worth a shit, it was one of the most stable motherboards I have ever used.

I dont think you can go wrong with any of the choices you talked about. I personally love my Ultra but you wont regret getting the Asus 32.

 

[madmat]

The reason your A8V oc'ed like crap was the chipset. The VIA chipset sucks for overclocking and every board built around it has been an absolute failure at overclocking.

 

[Greg King]

Not news to me bro.

 

[leecho7]

Ok, I'm pretty much sold on the A8N32 SLI. I would experiment with DFI boards, but I'm afraid, especially with my schedule, that it would frustrate me more than please me.

Quick question with SLI, if I have two of the same cards in SLI, would that mean it would literally double the power than just having one card?
For example, I get about 20 frames per second in Oblivion in outside areas. Having two cards in SLI, would it help increase it to say 30 or 40 fps?
Or am I just totally out of the ballpark when it comes to SLI?

 

[madmat]

You'll get about a 70% increase not a 100% increase but it's still worth it.

 

[werty316]

Generally SLi is suppose to double the bandwidth if that means anything. Heres a good rundown benching Oblivion:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/oblivion_high-end_performance/default.asp

Single card

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/oblivion_high-end_performance/page5.asp

SLi

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/oblivion_high-end_performance/page11.asp

 

[leecho7]

At least my system performs better than the 6800 UT so far... sweet.

 

[leecho7]

Ok, I'm gonna go for the DFI, after doing some more research, it turns out the Asus' A8N mobos (including the a8n32) has a problem with my particular brand of memory.
Since I am not going SLI (gonna get me an Ati x1900xtx), I decided to finally experiment with DFI and see if I'm able to tinker with bios hardcore style.
If I can run everything at stock speeds starting off, I'll be happy. And it turns out DFI has great tech support at DFI-street and so on.

It's official, I finally stepped into the realm of true computer geekdom. It is truly an honor.