dfi motherboard

southbound

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Jan 5, 2006
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Trying to decide on a motherboard for a new build. I am building a new pc strictly for gaming,but am a complete noob. the building doesn't bother me but configuration does. I am wondering i f the lan party series boards by dfi work well on default settings . i would like to maybe try overclocking in the future but much has to be learned before even considering this. I am planning on an AMD 64 4000 and 2 raptor 74 in raid 0 or maybe 0+ 1 with a 250 backup.I have never really been into a bios except for the limited one of a pen 4 dell.I have been reading alot and the more I read the more confused i get.Thanks.
 

mpjesse

Splendid
The DFI Lanparty boards are very popular with gamers. I haven't seen a whole lot of bad things about them either. DFI boards have very customizable BIOS's, which is important to people like me.

I am wondering i f the lan party series boards by dfi work well on default settings.

That's sort of a hard question to answer. What do you mean by "work well" on default settings? If you mean "will everything run correctly and be setup correctly w/o having to do anything" the answer is yes- mostly.

Most BIOS's are good at detecting stuff the first time. However, you will almost always have to go in and change something. When I built my latest system (which was recently w/ an Asus A8N-SLI) everything worked fine on the first POST. However I did have to go in and change my memory timings. My memory is CAS2 DDR400 but the motherboard wanted to run it at DDR333 at CAS 2.5. It's a flaw in the BIOS, but thankfully I can manually specify timings and speeds. It works fine now.

The point is your almost certainly going to have to go in a change some setting. It may or may not be a major one. This website recently posted a BIOS FAQ article... you should read it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/04/bios_from_a_to_z/

BIOS's aren't incredibly complicated. Just like anything else in a computer they have a logical design. It would behove of you to learn your BIOS. And remember, you can't really break a BIOS. If you screw something up so bad and ur system won't boot, you can always clear the BIOS settings by using a jumper on ur motherboard. That will reset everything back to the original settings. The only way to break a BIOS is to screw up a flashing- which you won't do.

-mpjesse
 

CPUZ

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Jan 3, 2006
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The motherboard I have is a good one and it has some good options if you want to OC later...

There are two versions a Platinum and a normal one but the chip sets are the same so it really depends on what things you want on the board MSI K8N Neo4-F nForce 4
 

jvanark

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Jan 5, 2006
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DFI motherboards are great. I really like mine and have had no problems with it what so ever.

Having said that: I STRONGLY recommend going here:

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/index.php

and reading this site very thoroughly. It's moderated by DFI engineers and gets contributions from engineers from other componenet manufacturers (OCZ to name one). There is a ton of information here and adivice on building, components to consider, pit-falls, etc.

Personally, I spent quite a bit of time reading, printing, etc. before I ordered and then even more before I began putting my machine toghether and I really think the time investment has paid off in a lack of issues.

Good Luck!
 

southbound

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Jan 5, 2006
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Thanks alot for the help. You hit the nail on the head : will it work without having to do to much. I just want to slap it together and not tweak the thing and still have it perform well.But like i said would like to perhaps overclock and have a real screamer later. I am kind of going for the all american computer that was featured on this sight . I know i can plug components together but will just take alot of reading and studying to get it up to par with that machine and maybe water cooling which seems like gasoline and a match . Anyway thanks and any other advice would be killer.
 

SilverDragon

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Dec 30, 2005
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dfi boards in fact run great at stock speeds. I've setup many a DFI board without having to configure anything and they ran great. Just pop in the processor, psu, ram and other components and it's good to go. But if you do decide to overclock in the future, that's when those boards really shine.
 

shata

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Dec 10, 2005
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Ya DFI boards are super i love mine, i just got my DFI Lanpart UT Ultra-D yesterday and it runs SUPER. I did post the 1st time and ran super only problem like mpjesse said is the memory timings were not corrrect it was doing 2-5-5-7 @2.5V Which is bad it should be 2-2-2-5@2.8v (or more voltage)
Anyways the BIOS on this board is AMAZING! so much to change...Some of which i dont even know what it means and i know what im doing.
There are like 10 different Clock settings for Ram and you can ratio Ram to FSB which is neat cause you can run a 256mhz fsb and have the ram running at 166mhz so 56+166=222mhz on ram while my cpu is at 2.3ghz stable so far, gona see if i can push it more.

and im getting 6600mb/s on sandrasoft for my ram so i cant complain.
Id say buy it but if you dont know what stuff means in the bios it might not be a great board for you.
 

linux_0

Splendid
Yes DFI boards are great! ASUS boards are great too but do not always overclock very well.

I personally prefer and usually recommend ASUS - that is just a personal preference.

Look into getting an AMD Opteron 1xx socket 939 they are known to be very fast, stable and overclock well.