LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert

[Rob Williams]

Where in the world did this motherboard come from? I attached a picture that shows the old school Ultra-D beside this Expert board, and the differences are quickly evident.

First off, they removed the 6 large tabs in between the dual PCI-E ports.. which is odd. SLi may be the only option in the motherboard now. What's strange though, is that apparently you don't need the SLi bridge at ALL, because there is no way that it could stretch between those two ports now.

Some other minor differences I can see is that the Expert has "True stereo line inputs", whereas the Ultra-D and SLi-DR do not. That's like a small difference that not many will notice. But then we see the Expert has EIGHT S-ATA ports! That would allow someone to have a huge RAID setup or JBOD's. One of my favorite additions, is the extra PCI slot. Not that PCI is that common anymore, two just may not cut it for those who have three cards.

The largest difference on this board though would have to be the new Genie BIOS, which has even more options for the more hardcore overclocker. And look at the DIMM slots! Man, that would make it so easy to cool your memory. Just clip a 120mm to your PSU and you are good to go.

Hmm.. I really want to get a hold of one of these..

 

[Greg King]

Where are all of the power sockets? No 4-pin, no 4-pin molex and no floppy power connector. Whats up with that?

 

[Rob Williams]

I see the four-pin floppy connector on the board, but not the other ones. That is a good question..

 

[Jakal]

There's a black 8 pin plug right beside the 24 pin. Hard to see at first glance. Do you have any performance specs on that board yet? I'd love to see how the new revision implemented the SLi with that much distance between it. The new bios will really be able to push the limits on performance. Cool~

 

[Rob Williams]

Oh yeah, that 8-Pin must replace those two.

The only performance reports to be found are here.

 

[madmat]

It's no further apart than the ASUS SLI mobo and they have the SLI widget that connects the cards for it.

As to the SLI bridge on the board itself it's quite possible it's done in the bios now since there was talk about implementing mobo's without a physical bridge.

 

[Rob Williams]

Yes, true.

I want this damn board. Looks like I need to beg DFI.

/e gets out fake tears.

 

[Bobbythecat]

Yeah somewhere in the forum I ranted about how sucky my current board is, and that I will switch to this one, once it's out and once I'm back from Tokyo! Of course, if there's anything more interesting selling downtown, I just might pick that one up instead, although hardcore enthusiast boards start out costing around or *WAY* over $300. I remember an ASUS board going for about $450 once..

 

[Buck-O]

It's no further apart than the ASUS SLI mobo and they have the SLI widget that connects the cards for it.

As to the SLI bridge on the board itself it's quite possible it's done in the bios now since there was talk about implementing mobo's without a physical bridge.

From here...

http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_details_r_us.jsp?PAGE_TYPE=US&PRODUCT_ID=3872&SITE=US


LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert exclusive features

• AMD socket939 Athlon FX55+ & Athlon X2 CPU supported
  
• Software control SLI switch
  
• Karajan Audio(Theater like7.1/8ch Audio)
  
• Dual Gigabit LAN
  
• Magnetic-levitate fan on chipset heatsink
  
• 4 x Serial ATA-2(3Gb/s)
  
• 100% Japanese Capacitors/ 4 phase PWM
  
• UV sensitive slots
  
• EZ-on / EZ-touch onboard switch button
  
• Silicon image3114~RAID5 ready
  
• nVIDIA nTune(embedded overclocking solution)
  
• nVIDIA ActiveArmor
  (Embedded hardware firewall & network solution)
  
• CMOS reloaded®
  
• All New Genie BIOS for extreme overclocking!

As for the SLI bridge. I imagine they will just ship a custom one with the motherboard. Other companies have done so, why not DFI?

I also think they switched the boards layout around in direct responce to some fitment issues that alot of people had in cases. Especially aluminum ones with cross braces that where running a large aftermarket HSF.

Id be curious to see how this board stacks up. Im sure the performance will be great...provided it doesnt have "issues".

I really like DFI, and they have come along way in a short time. But they still cant come close to holding a candle to the quality and realiability of Asus or Abit. And i HOPE they can turn that around with this board.

 

[Rob Williams]

Well since I've killed two Ultra-D's, I can back up your statement there about reliability. However, those were really my fault.

 

[madmat]

Yeah, coming after 'em with a butcher's knife usually ain't considered good for 'em.

 

[Jakal]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136165

See if you can round up one of those for testing Rob! No SATA 2 which is a shame. You might be able to wrangle 2 Crossfire enabled cards to test with as well.

 

[Bobbythecat]

I have this board now. I had a kit of PDP Patriot DDR600 running on it for a week or two, but heh, wouldn't boot beyond the 250FSB with the divider ratio of 1:1 and relaxed timings. Then the sticks became unresponsive. Now I have my 1GB backup ValueRam from I forgot where running fine at the default speed of 200FSB 3-5-5-8 T1....I am having the feeling that the PDP were actually bad, as they didn't work well on my last eVGA mobo as well, and on that one no matter what FSB, didn't go too high without errors with that MemTest. So sad, but soon a pair of Corsair DDR400 CMX512-3200XL as replacements...and perhaps they will do better. And this might be the last upgrade before the AM2 socket CPUs and mobos and DDR2 are available for AMD.......provided that they are any good!