Performance
One of the most important aspects of a board such as this is the
fact that people want to know right off the bat, "How well does it
overclock?" This is always something to consider in the past but
with the DFI its an almost must to run this board well beyond what
you may consider to be a good overclock. The DFI NF-4 series has
been nothing but outstanding when it comes to getting the most out
of your memory and processor. One quick look around and you'll
notice overclocks well into the 300FSB range with simple
air-cooling. I have good news and bad news for those of you that
want such performance. The bad news is that you absolutely must
flash your BIOS to the latest version. It took us four windows
installs and a countless amount of time before stumbling onto 'DFI
Street' forums and finding information to help stabilize our system.
One would think that a board such as this wouldn't be plagued with
problems but ours sure was until we flashed it. After flashing we
ran into more problems, but not with our board, more with our memory
and just about everything else. The Ultra-D demands of it very good
memory and supporting hardware to get the most out of it. Its almost
like its never happy, which in some ways may cause some to rejoice
since once the board is sorted out the rest of the system can be as
well.
As usual we probably stepped outside our boundaries by using phase
change, but one of the aspects of this DFI, since we've been playing
with it for well over a month, is that you can pretty much get every
last bit of performance out of your componentry. So what better
platform to get acquainted with the best phase change setup money
can buy, and the fastest memory. Both of these products will soon be
reviewed so the good thing is the you, the reader, get to catch a
glimpse of what they have to offer when the overclocking commences.
Our Default Test Settings
Sisoft Sandra 2005 Pro
and Everest Home Edition
The DFI takes to
aggressive memory latencies at low CPU speeds rather well. Everest
is about normal for this CPU, but the Sandra showing is very
aggressive.
A good showing considering that we're
using a x800XL at default clocks.
The 2003 and 2005 score are hardly
shabby.
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