DFI NForce4 :D

Looking good. They've taken a great feature set and put it with the next gen stuff.

They've really packed a lot of stuff on that board, I hope the chipset cooler right behind the PCIe16 slots wont interfere too much.
 
This is the board I am looking at, what's the difference between the SLI-D and the SLI-DR? :confused:
 
Bullitt said:
They've really packed a lot of stuff on that board, I hope the chipset cooler right behind the PCIe16 slots wont interfere too much.
Click to expand...

Yup, that's the achilles heal. Otherwise the layout is as good as any board I have seen. Look how much space there is around the CPU! The chipset position really sucks though, that's too bad. Still I just might get it despite that, looks like an excellent board!
 
hopefully these boards wont be as expensive as the asus sli board.
 
Why does the ultra have two x16 slots? It can't do SLI though can it?

Also, x16 and x4 are downwards compatible to x1 right?
 
Frallan said:
RAID 5 if Ive understood correctly... Read at http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3447&perpage=15&pagenumber=22 to find out more...
Click to expand...

If its gonna be raid5, its gonna be uber-crappy soft-raid5. Software raid solutions are cruddy. But hell, I like the 8 sata headers :)

Check out page 23 for the raid info. Looks like 4 headers will be SATA 2, the silicon image headers will be SATA and both of them combined will do RAID5. Not too shabby, but thats all software based eating up the CPU for the parity calculations..

Ouch, rumors on price for their upper-high end is $300?

HFS! Up to 4.0V on the memory.......
 
any guess'es if the ultra will accept the xp120 i mean based on the layout? I really reallly want this the ultra *bumps newegg* lets go....
 
I hope someone will explain the slight differences between each type of board, especially the features missing from one another.

Edit: the SLI-DR has this over the SLI-D

Four Serial ATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil 3114 chip
- SATA speed up to 1.5Gb/s
- RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5

1 diagnostic LED connector for external 4 diagnostic LEDs display

So basically 4 more Sata connectors and that LED connector.

That being said, if those boards are coming out in the next few weeks, I want the Venice to come out too :D

Edit2: Interesting that the only differences between the SLI-D and Ultra-D is the chipset. The Ultra-D even has the second x16 PCIe slot. Wonder if there's an Ultra-DR coming out too...
 
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1677&page=7
nForce 4 chipset variations

The three different versions of the nForce 4 chipset share all the above features, but there are still some considerable differences. Let’s look into them, starting with the low-end nForce 4 socket 754 chipset.

The nForce 4 chipset (Socket 754)

This variant seems set to be the ‘budget’ nForce 4 release, given that it will be Socket 754 only, with support for Athlon 64 and Sempron chips. Aside from the socket, the two main differences between the basic nForce 4 and its higher-end siblings are in the Hypertransport link between the processor and the chipset and in the Serial ATA controllers.

The basic nForce 4 uses an 800 MHz Hypertransport link, as opposed to the 1000MHz connections found on the nForce 4 Ultra and SLI. This might translate to slightly reduced performance in demanding graphical applications, since less bandwidth will be available. The Hypertransport bus will be locked in the nForce 4, preventing users from raising its speed to increase system performance. The basic nForce 4 also uses standard Serial ATA 150 controllers instead of the brand-new Serial ATA 2 controllers found on the higher-end nForce 4 chipsets.

The nVidia firewall will be present, but not the updated ‘ActiveArmour’ version with hardware support that is seen in the nForce 4 Ultra and SLI. The processing load will be applied to the CPU not the chipset, imposing a performance overhead.

The nForce 4 Ultra

The nForce 4 Ultra chipset will probably become the favourite among the three existing variants, and it’s certainly the one that manufacturers have jumped on first. It has a full 1000MHz Hypertransport link incorporated, as well as the new Serial ATA 2 technology, allowing a full 300MB/s of peak data transfer with compatible hard drives.

The Ultra features nVidia’s new ‘ActiveArmour’ hardware firewall technology. This offloads firewall operations onto the network controller built into the chipset, freeing the CPU from the processing load imposed by firewall operations. If it works as advertised, this should be a great benefit to gamers, allowing them to protect their systems while still squeezing out maximum performance. In addition, the firewall now supports the ‘Intelligent Application Manager’ feature, which monitors and controls applications in a similar manner to popular software firewalls like Zonealarm.

The nForce 4 SLI

The nForce 4 SLI (Scaleable Link Interface) is slated to be the high-end ‘gamer’s’ chipset of the family. Its features are identical to those of the nForce 4 Ultra with one huge exception; it has two PCI Express x16 slots, sharing 16 Hypertransport lanes between them.

The chipset is designed to use a pair of SLI compatible nVidia video cards, and employs a switch built into the chipset to split the 16 PCI Express lanes that would normally feed a single PCI Express video slot into two sets of eight.

When equipped with two nVidia SLI compatible cards, this chipset will enable the cards to work in tandem, splitting the rendering of frames between themselves. What effect this will have on performance is not clear, but early benchmarks on the web have shown up to an 85% frame rate increase in some situations. Currently the nVidia 6600GT, 6800GT and 6800 Ultra are the only video cards compatible with nVidia’s SLI mode.

While this setup does mean that each video card only has half the normal bandwidth of an x16 PCI Express slot available to it, the benefits of SLI operation should significantly outweigh this fact. This is especially true considering that modern video cards do not come close to taking full advantage of the bandwidth that a full PCI Express slot can offer.

The nForce 4 SLI chipset can also be used normally with a single PCI-Express card in one of the slots, as the switch allows all 16 PCI-Express lanes to be applied to a single slot. The single card does not have to be SLI compatible.
Click to expand...
 
CrimandEvil, not sure why you posted that.

If it was to reply to my "differences in features" I apologize, I guess I didn't express myself clearly. I was speaking about SLI-DR/SLI-D.

Then again, that was answered earlier, and I didn't pay attention to that either :eek:

Edit: Having drooled over the board for a bit, I wonder if those memory slots aren't a bit too close for a CNPS7700.
 
I was drool alittle too much as well, I realize what you meant after I had posted that, LOL :)
 
DoMeHardR said:
I thought all the new nf4 were going to pci-e
Click to expand...

are you serious, boy that stinks if it you are right :( I just barely got my bfg 6800 gt oc AGP and nv5 silencer I havent even put on yet
 
MaMMa said:
are you serious, boy that stinks if it you are right :( I just barely got my bfg 6800 gt oc AGP and nv5 silencer I havent even put on yet
Click to expand...

Feel sorry for ya, knowing how much these cost (It's insane, really). However it has been known for a while that NF4 was PCI-E only.
 
damn, i didnt want to do research on them because the more i read about em the more i want. and i want things i shouldnt get. I'm so broke. sigh, lose lose situation.
 
Cool...good thing i found a buyer for my 6800gt APG....$375, im incorprating it into a rig im building him....not bad, that shoudl about cover the cost of the PCIx 6800gt...but i dont know when im going to be abel to afford a whole new one.....
 
im waiting for the benchmarks on anand with the Gigabyte, Asus, DFI, and MSI motherboards for nForce 4 cause i plan to upgrade sometime soon...gigabyte one looks interesting right now and NewEgg added it to its inventory (not in stock) but its listed :D
 
synergy321 said:
any guess'es if the ultra will accept the xp120 i mean based on the layout? I really reallly want this the ultra *bumps newegg* lets go....
Click to expand...


Obviously I'm just guessing, but just eyeballing it and looking in my case at my own XP120, I'd say no, I'd suspect one of the sides might bump into the memory, unless it would actually be tall enough to be over it.

As an aside, notice the SLI controller card slots in between the video card slots? Looks like that maybe their controller card will sit upright maybe? On the ASUS the card sits sideways.

Me
 
lessthanjakejohn said:
How long will they take to reach vendors?
Click to expand...
I saw a guy taking preorders and said the mobos will come in the first week of February -- but that's here in SE Asia :)

Arvig said:
As an aside, notice the SLI controller card slots in between the video card slots? Looks like that maybe their controller card will sit upright maybe? On the ASUS the card sits sideways.
Click to expand...
Nope. What we see are a whole lot of jumpers to set between single and SLI mode. Not as elegant as MSI or ASUS's solution but I suppose they're trying to save as much space as possible to put in a lot more features :D
 
I've already pre-ordered the UT version (less SATA ports and UV ammenities) 26th Jan it comes out in Oz supposedly. I was on the verge of buying a Soltek - thank goodness for holiday business closures....
 
Thought this bit was interesting in the press release (http://www.dfi.com.tw/Press/press_h...&TITLE_ID=4839&LINKED_URL=arch343.jsp&SITE=NA) :

"Similarly, the nForce 4 Ultra chipset based LANPartyUT NF4 Ultra-D motherboard supports dual display cards to deliver the ultimate graphics experience. DFI’s proprietary DXG (Dual Xpress Graphics) Technology benefits from the multiple PCI-Express lanes the chipset supports, using the 16x and 2x configurations, to allow for versatile graphics support and utmost future-proof upgrade ability."

So, my guess is that the LANPartyUT NF4 Ultra-D will use that second PCI-E slot as a 2x to do their own "SLI" but just call it DXG, much like how MSI is branding theirs XLI? Except MSI doesn't even bother keeping a second 16x size slot on their board, they just leave an open-ended 2x. Speculation is only a ~2% decrease in performace on the MSI XLI vs SLI, but I'd wait on some reviews to confirm that personally.

Price/performance comparisons between true-SLI on the LANParty SLI board and DXG "SLI" on the LANParty Ultra board will be interesting...Talk about abbreviation hell though.
 
Teg said:
Nope. What we see are a whole lot of jumpers to set between single and SLI mode. Not as elegant as MSI or ASUS's solution but I suppose they're trying to save as much space as possible to put in a lot more features :D
Click to expand...


Maybe not as elegant, but hey...one less part to lose. ;)

Seen ONE place taking pre-orders for one of the DFI NForce 4 boards in the states...but at IMO an absurd price, $299.00. (But I guess no worse then the ASUS board about two or three weeks ago...although you can now get it for retail at one or two shops) And LOL at the customer review at the bottom:

http://www.computerhq.com/hardware/partinfo-id-532379.html

Never shopped with them, and didn't look up on resellerratings.com or anything like that to see if they are a decent store, so if someone does decide that $299.00 is actually worth it, do your research on them first. ;)

Me
 
Almost hit the submit order over on googlegear...zipzoomfly.com.$199 for the Asus SLI. Damn I hate having choices. If that Tyan Dual proc and sli board comes out at under $500 while im waiting on the DFI im going to have to back to the drawing board. Luckly i can get dual DVI pci video cards from work for "FREE", cant afford PCI-E card just yet but need to get this media server up before 200GB's become obselete.
 
Chaotic Master said:
Almost hit the submit order over on googlegear...zipzoomfly.com.$199 for the Asus SLI. Damn I hate having choices. If that Tyan Dual proc and sli board comes out at under $500 while im waiting on the DFI im going to have to back to the drawing board. Luckly i can get dual DVI pci video cards from work for "FREE", cant afford PCI-E card just yet but need to get this media server up before 200GB's become obselete.
Click to expand...


I could be mean, and mention that if you're not a fan of any brand of CPU or actually like Intel more, that I just saw that Gigabyte is coming out with an LGA775 socket SLI board. :p

When it's actually on market, I don't know...just saw that somewhere, might have even been [H]ardOCP's recent articles. Honestly don't remember.

As an aside, I have the ASUS board, MOSTLY people haven't been having problems, some have and I'm one of them. Nothing bad...but annoying. Board won't see my CPU fan for instance. Mind you, it's a 120mm fan, I'm using a Thermalright XP120, but I'm also using a fan rated for 103cfm! You'd think that would spin at maybe 2000 RPM or so...and thus show up. And no, there's no setting to tell it to ignore that one doesn't have a fan, I looked. Also seems to be touchy about PSU's...if you're going SLI from the start, pretty mcuh assume you'll need a 24 pin PSU at least...I'll confirm this today (swapping out one PSU for another), but I get occasional lockups going into Windows due to what I believe to be lack of power, despite using a PC Power & Cooling 510 watt PSU, I suspect it's due to it being a 20 pin model...the model I just got and will be installing today is 24 pin and has two discreet six pin plugs for the video cards.

Otherwise...might as well wait a month or two, let one or two boards come out, and/or the ASUS to mature. Who knows, they may pull the stunt they did with the A8V this summer and come out with a revision 2.0 or some such, making the current boards obsolete.

And yes, I knew this going in, I guess the early adapter bug seems to override my common sense. Hey, it mostly works, and when it does, it's good. :)

Me
 
anyone upgrading to top end cards in AGP should be shot in the face.
 
Wait... does this mean we won't see an AGP 939 board from DFI?

NOOOOooooooooo!!!!!!!!!
 
Decelerate said:
They will have an AGP 939 board.

NF3
Click to expand...

Really? Rad!

Is it coming out soon, like with the nForce 4 boards? I don't want to upgrade my 9800 Pro.
 
orkan said:
anyone upgrading to top end cards in AGP should be shot in the face.
Click to expand...


I do think that's a bit drastic.

A simple wedgie would do.

Mind you, I'd also suggest making the victim wear barbed wire underpants, but I digress.

:D





Okay, to be somewhat on topic, a lot of the top end cards were almost paper released, both for AGP & PCI-E, but it looks like from what I've seen more so for PCI-E. I could see someone who figures they won't upgrade much for two years regardless buying an AGP system if nothing else because it's a bit less obnoxious to get a top end AGP card.

That and no, the top end will all shift to PCI-E, but hey...one can still buy budget PCI cards, so not like AGP will just completly dry up and blow away for a year or two, just will go to the budget end within the next year or two IMO. Kind of like Socket 754, it might be slowly turning into the budget AMD socket, but not like it's a complete dead end...just that it will sooner or later be Sempr0n only...but isn't now. Even if every mobo maker on the planet literally stopped AGP board production this second, and recalled every AGP based board off of the shelves, I'd suspect there would be a market for AGP cards for a year or two as at least middle of the road cards, if not top end.

Just me rambling. Please no barbed wire wedgies for that. ;)
 
Dioretsa said:
Really? Rad!

Is it coming out soon, like with the nForce 4 boards? I don't want to upgrade my 9800 Pro.
Click to expand...


Ugh, sorry to do this in two posts.

Err...I kind of heard a rumor that they dropped the NForce 3 939 line since it was going to come out so close to NForce 4 anyway. No, don't remember where I read that.
 
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