DFI nForce4: SLI and Ultra for Mad Overclockers
by Wesley Fink on February 5, 2005 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
General Performance & Encoding
The DFI nForce4 is competitive with other Athlon 64 boards in Business and Multi-Media Winstones, but it is hardly a standout performer as it is in gaming benchmarks. The DFI does, however, perform exceptionally well compared to the nForce4 Reference and other Athlon 64 boards in PCMark 2004 and the 2-pass Auto GK Media Encoding benchmark. It is clear that DFI is continuing to tweak stock performance as the stock scores in these benchmarks are much improved over results that we have seen from DFI in the past.
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flachschippe - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Why is the A8N missing from the comparison?Zebo - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
WHAT BIAS??? Please spell it out for me as I don't see it. This a bad arse mobo... I wager best Wes ever seen and used in years of comp building time... I'm suprised he's not even more animated... and even to dwell on insignifigant "short comings" later in article shows me he was giving a fair shake...leaving "best" PCIe 939 title open even though he knows in back of mind DFI already won...:)byvis - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
#55 I agree that this board is very good in overclocking and etc... But I'm telling what I thoughts came to me reading this article. Until now I haven't read such biased and praying article. Everything has drawbacks, even ultra extreme mbs... Professional shouldn't express their opinion like this. I can, you can, but not professionals... This is ofcours IMHO :) So don't flame me :)erios666 - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
#60 - Ha! Excellent point Zebo and I'd have to agree. As an enthusiast I'll take care of the sound myself thank you. Just as I would the video.Zebo - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Cheeezzzusss...some people....LOL get em flexy.
Also those people complianing about sound are kinda weird. even if they put 880 or SB live on there it's still crap if you're at all interested in hifi. Plus it adds $20 to mobo cost... for "just ok" sound. NO THANKS. I'd prefer they drop sound all together (save $8+) as this is an enthusiast board.. not an all in one..notice thiers no on-board graphics?
Shinei - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
The message is clear: DDR2 has failed! DDR636 at EXTREMELY reasonable latencies--color me impressed.I'd like to see how this board handles Crucial's Ballistix RAM, since Ballistix is pretty cheap on the Egg (~$220 for the pair of 512MB sticks) and performs like TCCD; would be interesting to see what the DFI can take the Micron chips to, considering the legs it gives to TCCD chips...
Gerbil333 - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
#54: Considering Abit's best engineer, Oscar Wu, has been working for DFI for a while, I doubt Abit will change much. Abit's last good board was the NF7-S. Since then, they seem to have gone downhill. DFI has only been improving.flexy - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
my bad..nevermind...i confused the MSI board with the dfi....the dfi is NOT the one with the onboard sb live :)flexy - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
#42, you can have the SB live onboard sound with the SLI-DR...well....and the Ultra ius cheaper and comes with the crappy sound. WHO CARES ????I got a Audigy 2 Value for $42.
If you NEED the good onboard sound..then get the SLI-DR board....if not get a pci soundcard.
flexy - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
>>>The board is nice, but not outstanding, incredible, top performing, etc... Jesus AnandTech I have never seen you so biased. I hope that the benchmarks don't lie. Poor preview, poor...
>>>
ehrm...its the best and fastest enthusiast's NF4 board right now with the best overclocking capabilities AND a way to "mod" it to a SLI...what do you want more ? Cheeezzzusss...some people....