DFI vs. ASUS

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n00btard

Gawd
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Dec 10, 2005
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A8N-SLI Deluxe or DFI LANPARTY SLI-DR? I'm looking for better stock performance, not major overclockability. Maybe will do some minor overclocking once I get my hands on a watercooling loop, after buying a bunch of other sh** I want first... Here's my setup so far, moving up from a crap Foxconn 6150 mATX board:

eVGA 7800GT
OCZ Platinum Rev.2 TCCD 2-2-2-5 2x512MB (getting a second set soon)
Athlon 64 3700 E6 "San Diego"
Samsung SP2004C
Samsung SH-W162C
OCZ Powerstream 520W SLI
 
Stock, the Asus wins by a knockout. The SLI-DR is a better board if you an OCer and know your way around memory setting/timing. Of the Asus', the Premium is by far a much better board (over the Deluxe) if you can spare an additional $15.00.
 
no question about it asus for the stable mild o/clock.dfi are not for stability and stock settings.you better know how to set up memory too.
the asus premium is a later designed board,better layout and well worth the 15.00 difference.dfi is ok if your mission is max o/clocks,if not asus builds the most stable boards out,even for mild to medium o/clocks.they are rock stable.get the premium and you will be thrilled with your choise.layout is better than the deluxe too.
 
As for the layout, I only need a single PCI-E x16 slot with an open adjacent slot (for possible future waterblock) and two PCI slots for a sound card and a wireless card. So in terms of slot layout, I am fine with either board. As for the other half of the motherboard though, there are MOSFET blocks for the A8N mobo, which means I really won't need even a moderate amount of airflow over the MOSFETs once a CPU waterblock is in place, since the memory slot placement kinda FUBARs the line of sight between the forward intake fan and the exhaust fan (gonna make a case soon). The DFI board however, has everything in line with the airflow, which makes the cooling situation marginally better.
As for overclocking, I'm planning on using a Konvekt-o-Matic MAXI rad with a booster kit that will be operating at 5V. If I like the temperatures I'm seeing, I'll try pushing the clock speed more.
As for setting up memory, I've got an issue of PC Modder lying around that tested the overclockability of both boards and showed how to set the stuff up correctly, so I think I'm good to go on that. If all else fails, there's always www.dfi-street.com that I can always go to.
And for you guys saying that the ASUS solution is better than the DFI solution at stock speeds, the DFI board outperformed the ASUS board in lab testings at both stock and overclocked GPU settings (Pg.112, PC Modder v2.1), and it was the only one to break 10000 on 3DMark05. (But that was on SLI). And about the "not designed for stability" thing, does that mean that the board is unstable? Then why the hell do so many people go DFI instead of ASUS?
Not trying to start a flame war here, just trying to clarify a few things.

Thanks in advance
 
Most OCers go for DFI, no questions about it. As far as running stable at stock, Asus is better. As far as which one runs a little faster, DFI may have an edge. But are you into faster or more stable? You can certainly get the DFI to run stable if you know what you are doing and have time to fool around with the BIOS. Asus is more a plug and play board whereas DFI is a plug and tweak board. It just depends how much time you want to spend making your board run. If you just want to plug it in and run, go with Asus. If you want to plug it in, play and tweak, have some headaches along the way, go with DFI. We are just giving you a fair assessment of these boards (as you asked for opinion and we give you some), not pursuading you to buy one or the other. That choice is entirely up to you.
 
the reply by jcniest5 is a perfect response to why have 1 or the other motherboard.kinda says it plain and simple.
If your a patient person and want to spend time tweeking without losing your temper and smashing the board then dfi .if not asus for rock solid stable stock use or mild o/clock.just read the dfi forums and you'll see what kind of headaches your in for.
 
& Abit are in between.:)
In my experience they are better/easier to overclock than Asus whilst being less hassle than DFI - but ymmv.
 
dont. go with Nforce 500 (AM2!!). its here and its wicked sick. the boards and processers are still filtering through newegg but there appearing. it has increadibly nice user friendly windows utility overclocker. plus DDR2 = cheaper and better.

but if im about to get "damnit Mr Wizard your off topic!" then i would say the ASUS board.

as mentioned in the previos post, the bios are limited, and the 12V connector isnt of the highest quality (not a problem at stock speeds, and usually not a problem even if oced a little, becomes a problem when oced up the wazoo).

but at stock speeds its build like a rock. its quiet, and outpreforms most other boards at stock speed.

DFIs stratigy with there boards is usually "so, if were losing in performance oc until were not!"
 
on this page, at this moment, there are 7 threads with people with asus board problems, mostly a8n series, mostly booting/bios. there are zero threads with people with dfi problems. its around the same on the motherboards forum. this is merely a fact, do with it what you will.
 
vanilli, your right, but i must add one more thing. ASUS is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more popular then DFI. and i know several people (many in this forum) with DFI problems, which are far more popular (just because of its massive oc potential). and ever asus board i have had has been rock solid at stock speeds.

BUFF said:
& Abit are in between.:)
In my experience they are better/easier to overclock than Asus whilst being less hassle than DFI - but ymmv.
Click to expand...

i wont mention the --->!!!12!!!<--- Abit Fatal1ty motherboards iv seen for repair, im just not that mean.
 
i think there may be 1 or 2 people around still using dfi. the probs that plagued the earliest version of the dfi lanparty nf4 series are gone. the expert series is a different subject, tho.
 
@MrWizard6600
I don't want to go AM2, because I spent $200 on a GB of RAM a couple weeks back, also bought a $260 processor and a $90 mobo, and it's just cheaper to switch out the mobo instead of buying newfangled RAM, obscenely expensive motherboards and a CPU that offers marginal performance increases over Socket 939.

@vanliia_guerilla
QFT

I think I'll go with the DFI.

Oh yeah, and I heard that you can use two video cards from different manufactures if they're using the same core. Is that with newer NF4 drivers, motherboards, BIOS updates, or newer video caards?
 
JCNiest5 said it best

Most OCers go for DFI, no questions about it. As far as running stable at stock, Asus is better. As far as which one runs a little faster, DFI may have an edge. But are you into faster or more stable? You can certainly get the DFI to run stable if you know what you are doing and have time to fool around with the BIOS. Asus is more a plug and play board whereas DFI is a plug and tweak board. It just depends how much time you want to spend making your board run. If you just want to plug it in and run, go with Asus. If you want to plug it in, play and tweak, have some headaches along the way, go with DFI. We are just giving you a fair assessment of these boards (as you asked for opinion and we give you some), not pursuading you to buy one or the other. That choice is entirely up to you.
Click to expand...

I have a opty 165 on a DFI sli Dr and I had very few problems reaching 2.5 ghz, others have not been so lucky.
This board has worked great for me, but I do have some oc'ing experience.
When I build a pc for a friend or relative I ALWAYS go for ASUS, and I have never had a problem.
MSI and Gigabyte have given me many more problem over the years.
I think that ASUS is the best choice for the average user or someone who wants to do "a little" overclocking, a much more forgiving board, that can oc very high also.
Get the ASUS you will be very happy with it.
You will be happy with the DFI also, just be ready to do a lot of fine tuning...
 
MrWizard6600 said:
i wont mention the --->!!!12!!!<--- Abit Fatal1ty motherboards iv seen for repair, im just not that mean.
Click to expand...
surprised that you've seen any because in most cases they should go back to Abit.

No manufacturer (of anything) has a 100% perfect product & as such it's also partly a nos. game. As the no.1 mobo manufacturer I'm sure that Asus have a lot of returns too.
Also, there is no doubt that the type of customer profile that a certain product may attract has an influence & reading between the lines of things said by 2 former UK DFI customers with DFI they experienced a returns rate of ~25-33% (DFI have since introduced a direct to DFI RMA rather than through retailer) of which I have no doubt that a fair % actually had nothing wrong with them.
I seem to recall that last year the electronics company Philips released figures on their returns & on an overwhelming % they could find no faults.

Similarly as for the comments about there being no DFI problems on the front page here I doubt that HardOCP is in the top forums for DFI users with places like DFI-Street & ExtremeSystems being way up there so that's going to skew things too..
 
what's with all the DFI h8? I have a DFI SLI-DR Expert board and this thing owns my nuts. Overclocked Opteron 170 to 2.75 with only slight raise in voltage (1.4V). works great and use RMClock to idle down to FID 5 and 1 volt. I tried my best to get it to crash but making the voltage go up and down up and down. thing is rock solid with no problems. i did use the bleedingedge forums (aka OCZ forums) to get a starting point for my memory timings and they worked great (I still lowered them a bit) and this baby's been working GREAT. best board i've ever owned. I've had the board for 2 weeks and so far am very happy.

I was looking at the Asus A8N32-SLI board but it apparently has much more heat coming from it and the problems i read about it scared me off. Anyway I'm happy with the DFI board. :) My specs below...

DFI NF4 SLI-DR Expert
Opteron 170 0530 1.4V (idles 1375MHz@1V)
2GB OCZ DDR500 Gold
Enermax Noisetaker 485watt
WD Raptor 74GB
2X WD 320GB
Seagate 300GB
etc
 
DFI all the way. I've used almost every board manufacturer out there and DFI is definitely the best for OCing and is damn stable from my experiences.
 
My vote goes to asus. At stock, there going to perform the same. The DFI has far better overclockability, but its a bit tougher to get going. So, if you only plan for light OCing, the Asus is probably the board for you.
 
BUFF said:
surprised that you've seen any because in most cases they should go back to Abit.

No manufacturer (of anything) has a 100% perfect product & as such it's also partly a nos. game. As the no.1 mobo manufacturer I'm sure that Asus have a lot of returns too.
Also, there is no doubt that the type of customer profile that a certain product may attract has an influence & reading between the lines of things said by 2 former UK DFI customers with DFI they experienced a returns rate of ~25-33% (DFI have since introduced a direct to DFI RMA rather than through retailer) of which I have no doubt that a fair % actually had nothing wrong with them.
I seem to recall that last year the electronics company Philips released figures on their returns & on an overwhelming % they could find no faults.

Similarly as for the comments about there being no DFI problems on the front page here I doubt that HardOCP is in the top forums for DFI users with places like DFI-Street & ExtremeSystems being way up there so that's going to skew things too..
Click to expand...

I dont feel like explaining the full story... all im saying is that Abit used to be a very high quality mobo maker, and since then they've cheaped out on many things. they have signed a cheap contract with a coorperate whore (fatal1ty), and put in cheezy addons to attract customers. all the while the parts of the board are falling off.

I did return most of those motherboards to Abit. many of them could simply be resaudered to be fixed.

so THERE
 
Well normally I would say go Asus! but as Vanilla_Guerilla mentioned there are A LOT of bios/booting issues with the ASUS A8N family. I can tell you first hand as mine is currently on it's way back to NewEgg (I have the A8N-SLi Premium). Go to Asus's site and check out the forum section and see for yourself.

And here is a link to my problem.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1059238

And the Asus forum
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=A8N-SLI+Premium&SLanguage=en-us
 
My votes for DFI, after using both an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe and an Expert. The Expert is much more stable than either ASUS boards I used(went through 2 of them). The BIOS was actually a lot easier to get around than I thought it would be. It had a lot more options, and its worth while to go through it, but its really not as bad as people make it out to be. That said, I suggest going for either the SLI-DR or the Ultra-D if you're not planning on going with SLI. They'll OC just about as well, but won't be plagued by PSU problems and extremely inaccurate temp readings. If you do go with an ASUS, get the Premium or the A8N32, not the Deluxe.
 
rjblanke said:
If you do go with an ASUS, get the Premium or the A8N32, not the Deluxe.
Click to expand...

Well from my experience and quite a few others I wouldn't go with the premium either.
 
daphatgrant said:
Well from my experience and quite a few others I wouldn't go with the premium either.
Click to expand...

I have the Premium and it is a solid board. It's way better than the regulard Deluxe. Did you have a bad experience with it?
 
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