Official DFI NF4Ultra-D/SLi owners thread.

Hesky82 · 24 Mar 2006 at 02:01

overclockable 1gb sets still sell well, I sold my ocz rev2 which overclocked about the same as yours for 130 bux about a month or 2 ago and bought the ram in my sig for 140. saw a great boost in performance from games to encoding even though they clocked a tad less, 10 quid well spent

tomos · 24 Mar 2006 at 23:56

another quick Q lads

i remember reading about probs with these mobos working with maxtor drives. thing is i've found a 500GB matrox sata 2 drive for £170 and really want to go for this. was there a firmware update for the maxtor to make it work?

if so, how would i be able to do this on a DFI mobo since both PCs i have have DFI mobos (ultra-d and an sli-dr)? could you do it in an external enclosure? i have a sata2firewire case handy.

any info appreciated

smids · 25 Mar 2006 at 00:10

tomos said:
another quick Q lads

i remember reading about probs with these mobos working with maxtor drives. thing is i've found a 500GB matrox sata 2 drive for £170 and really want to go for this. was there a firmware update for the maxtor to make it work?

if so, how would i be able to do this on a DFI mobo since both PCs i have have DFI mobos (ultra-d and an sli-dr)? could you do it in an external enclosure? i have a sata2firewire case handy.

any info appreciated

It wasn't just DFI - it was anyone with an nForce chipset.
Apparently the firmware fixes it but I still question Maxtor over it. They released a HDU which was incompatible with one of the most popular AMD chipsets? Hmm... couple that with their poor build quality recently. Having said that, isn't that the DiamondMax 11 and not 10 which suffered the problems? Not sure how to flash - I'm sure you could install windows and flash from there but then again, it might allow a DOS flash, I don't know I'm afraid.

tomos · 25 Mar 2006 at 00:24

cool, will give it a go anyway. if it does go ape then i'll try in an external enclosure - that way there cant be any issues with the sata controller itself on the mobo. if that goes weird as well then its RMA time for the drive i would imagine.

hopefully it will be ok. good price for a drive of that size

StevenG · 25 Mar 2006 at 10:33

what is an average chipset temp??? (stock everything)

smids · 25 Mar 2006 at 10:36

StevenG said:
what is an average chipset temp??? (stock everything)

About 40C.

StevenG · 25 Mar 2006 at 10:39

im at 39 cpu 45 pwmic and 49 nf4

n30_mkii · 25 Mar 2006 at 12:11

Hey all, using MBM5 and the ini file for it.

My 12v rail is reading sometimes as low as 11.54.

Does that sound too low?

I have an enermax 600w psu, whats the best method for powering the mainboard? I currently have all 3 connector on the mainboard fed with power, but should i put them on different rails from the psu?
I have never had any issues? And all my oc's are 100% stable....Just thought i would ask as im tidying my rig today.....

So i can re wire if needs be

Replies asap thanks!

Wingz · 25 Mar 2006 at 12:26

n30_mkii said:
Hey all, using MBM5 and the ini file for it.

My 12v rail is reading sometimes as low as 11.54.

Does that sound too low?

I have an enermax 600w psu, whats the best method for powering the mainboard? I currently have all 3 connector on the mainboard fed with power, but should i put them on different rails from the psu?
I have never had any issues? And all my oc's are 100% stable....Just thought i would ask as im tidying my rig today.....

So i can re wire if needs be

Replies asap thanks!

readings from mbm5 is unreliable, use a multimeter to find the true readings, but if your system is stable theres nothing to worry about

tomos · 30 Mar 2006 at 14:27

tomos said:
cool, will give it a go anyway. if it does go ape then i'll try in an external enclosure - that way there cant be any issues with the sata controller itself on the mobo. if that goes weird as well then its RMA time for the drive i would imagine.

hopefully it will be ok. good price for a drive of that size

plugged in this morning and it works fine

just copying 500 gig of files onto it to test it at the mo. need to redo my raid-0 now as well.

which would be better for that - the SIl ports or the NF4 ports? the drives are 2x250gig hitachi.

a 500 gig drive should give good transfer speeds as well shouldnt it? comparable to a raptor?

MG42Maniac · 30 Mar 2006 at 18:49

Hi,

I'm planning to get a DFI Ultra-D and 2GB Corsair XMS3200 ram ( 'this week only' hence the swap from G.Skill ZX) tomorrow are there any compatibility issues between the two of them? Also is this RAM any good for overclocking?

tomos · 30 Mar 2006 at 18:59

MG42Maniac said:
Hi,

I'm planning to get a DFI Ultra-D and 2GB Corsair XMS3200 ram ( 'this week only' hence the swap from G.Skill ZX) tomorrow are there any compatibility issues between the two of them? Also is this RAM any good for overclocking?

afaik it is, although some compat probs were posted earlier on i think. seems to have gone nowadays tho. less postings about it on dfi-street

smids · 30 Mar 2006 at 19:15

However the XMS is binned lower @ 2-3-3-6 instead of 2-3-2-5 as all other PC3200 2GB sticks. Will probably clock less as a result as well as being slightly slower at stock. If there is only a few pounds in it, I'd get the OCZ or G.skill ZX or something.

MG42Maniac · 30 Mar 2006 at 19:25

I orginally had the ZX @ £142 in my basket but its now gone up to £152 and the XMS is this week only @ £130 so its a £22 saving. I might fork out for the ZX it just depends on my pay check tomorrow

Is there much noticable difference between the two at stock? I've moving up from 1GB of CAS3 value RAM.

smids · 30 Mar 2006 at 19:36

MG42Maniac said:
I orginally had the ZX @ £142 in my basket but its now gone up to £152 and the XMS is this week only @ £130 so its a £22 saving. I might fork out for the ZX it just depends on my pay check tomorrow Is there much noticable difference between the two at stock? I've moving up from 1GB of CAS3 value RAM.

Gah, didn't see the difference - might as well get the cheaper of the two.

MG42Maniac · 30 Mar 2006 at 19:41

Ah ok cool, I'm not looking to get a monster overclock out of my 3700+ , just too 2.4GHz and I will be happy. As I was going to get the 4000+ but realised £80 for 200Mhz was not really worth it as I was getting a DFI mobo, 3700+ chip and an Artic Cooler so 2.4GHz should be attainable.

Edit: The XMS 4000 is only £4 more, would this make much better overclocking RAM?

w3bbo · 31 Mar 2006 at 10:21

MG42Maniac said:
Ah ok cool, I'm not looking to get a monster overclock out of my 3700+ , just too 2.4GHz and I will be happy. As I was going to get the 4000+ but realised £80 for 200Mhz was not really worth it as I was getting a DFI mobo, 3700+ chip and an Artic Cooler so 2.4GHz should be attainable.

Edit: The XMS 4000 is only £4 more, would this make much better overclocking RAM?

Yes, it will give you more overclocking headroom without having to run the memory on a divider.

Hesky82 · 31 Mar 2006 at 10:49

either sets will work well, the XMS3200's has nice tight latencies and can keep them pretty tight when upping the fsb. running dividers really doesn’t hurt performance with these a64 systems. just get the most out of you ram and cpu, if to do that means running on a divider so be it.
hey, you might end up with a monster overclocking 3700+ if yours is from the kab3e batch.

TheOtherOption · 31 Mar 2006 at 14:30

Am looking at getting this board, or the next one down, is it ok to use with an ati x850xt - gunna upgrade the graphics later on once dx10 stuff is out, just need a simple pci-e setup to move over to so as i can pass my current mobo/cpu/gfx on to someone else in the family to use

as long as its stable, not complex to setup and easily o/c if i wanted too then thats fine - oh and i'd prolly be getting a 3700 with it

smids · 31 Mar 2006 at 14:36

TheOtherOption said:
Am looking at getting this board, or the next one down, is it ok to use with an ati x850xt - gunna upgrade the graphics later on once dx10 stuff is out, just need a simple pci-e setup to move over to so as i can pass my current mobo/cpu/gfx on to someone else in the family to use

as long as its stable, not complex to setup and easily o/c if i wanted too then thats fine - oh and i'd prolly be getting a 3700 with it

Hmm, these boards are a bit fiddly. If you follow some simple rules when using this board, it can be easily set to run extremely well and they overclock VERY well. I had another board with my 3700+SD which would only get 2.6ghz stable. I then bought this board and hit 2.75ghz stable, just by changing boards (the other board wasn't even topped out in terms of overclocking as a previous chip ran fine in it).