DFI 748-AL: Tech Support and RMA

For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:

The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first, we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We allow the manufacturer up to 72 (business) hours to respond, and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don’t receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.

The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar everyday, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.


DFI’s easily obtainable RMA policy can be found by visiting their U.S. website at www.dfiusa.com and by clicking on the “Support” hyperlink at the menu listed on the left of their home page, which makes for simple, straightforward access. The international DFI site is linked from this site, or can be accessed at www.dfi.com. Further Technical Support and FAQ’s are available at this main site. If you would like to RMA your DFI motherboard, DFI suggests that you should first contact the vendor from where you purchased your motherboard before reaching out to DFI’s tech support and RMA.

For US customers, Technical Support is available by email at techsupport@dfiweb.com. Since the DFI 748-AL is an Engineering Sample, we did not see any realistic way we could ask for technical support on an unreleased board and get response such that an average customer might receive. So, we did not go through our usual procedure of sending an email for tech support. Our past experiences with DFI technical support have been excellent, and we have seen nothing recently to change that opinion. We suspect you will continue to receive fast and helpful responses to your Tech Support questions for DFI products.

DFI offers very clear instructions for motherboard returns as well as any technical support questions — for both US and international customers. Those who cannot find a local resource should send their Tech Support inquiries to the main site in Taiwan. DFI seems to be expanding their on-line resources, and there was more on-line information available than we found in the last look at DFI. There is more good news, however, in that the information and resources are still easy to find – without going through endless links. DFI has done an outstanding job of making customer service a priority, and we think many of you will be pleasantly surprised at the responsiveness you will find in your contacts with DFI.

DFI 748-AL: Stress Testing Performance Test Configuration
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  • Anonymous User - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link

    enough with the athlon xp mobos lets see some athlon 64age that you where talkin about wesley.
  • Jeff7181 - Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - link

    Anonymous User = afraid to show who he really is.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 2, 2003 - link

    Jeff7181 = Simpleton, limited comperhension skills.
  • sprockkets - Monday, September 1, 2003 - link

    The unusual thing is why the 748 has the 963 SB, since the upcoming 741 has the 964. That one has SATA. I would rather get that and use a video card.

    Well, either one can use either southbridge, but value or not, SOMEONE needs to stick SATA on a uATX board for the AMD platform.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, August 31, 2003 - link

    Most Sis motherboards are aimed at the low end market and performance is often worse than in the reviews. For the guy who wants to use this for a htpc I would steer clear of these chipsets. Their performance is very poor when it comes to media encoding and video capture if you're thinking of adding tivo functionality to your htpc.
  • Evan Lieb - Sunday, August 31, 2003 - link

    Anyone reading a review thinking that the boards included in the benchmark graphs are the best you can get haven't read that review in its entirety or other nForce2 reviews on AnandTech (or around the net period). We can't be faulted for what readers assume based on statements we’ve never made.

    Thanks for sharing your feedback with us Jeff.

    Take care,

    Evan
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, August 31, 2003 - link

    Jeff7181, the conclusion that you imagine to have seen does not exist in that article. You seem to look more at the benchmark graphs than the actual text of the article. That's your problem. Reviewers can't expect everyone to make such mistakes. I'm sure that any critisism would be appreciated if it actually had something to do with the targeted article...
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, August 31, 2003 - link

    Read this http://www.ocworkbench.com/2003/dfi/748al/748al-1.... for another opinion. It is compared to other SiS 748 and NForce2 and KT600 boards.
  • Jeff7181 - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link

    Wesley, Evan... Sorry to be so rude in my post, but...

    The point of these reviews is to inform the reader correct? If that was an editorial (opinion) and not a review (informational) I wouldn't have a problem with it.
    But the way the article is written, it leads uninformed users to believe that the best motherboard on that chart is the best motherboard you can get. While that may be true, you don't show any proof.

    The review of the DFI 748-AL was great... but the product comparisons are VERY lacking. At least you could point out somewhere in the article that "the popular offerings from Asus and Epox and Abit perform similarly to the DFI nForce2 Ultra 400, but were omitted due to lack of resources." That would at least give the reader an idea of how beneficial it would be to upgrade from their current motherboard to one of these new "Ultra" ones.
  • Wesley Fink - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link

    #12 - Now corrected.

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