Legit Reviews

After changing to the DFI Lanparty Ultra D mobo and a little better cooling I am able to easily overclock the CPU from 2.2ghz to 2.4+ghz. With increased HTT and a modest voltage increase to the CPU, it is very stable at this speed. No other modifications were made (to memory etc). I don't have the need to really push things as far as they can go, I'm pretty happy with this speed for now. My CPU temps are ~36 with the HSF @ 50% max speed. I'm lovin' the SI-120.

I ran it up to 2475ghz with 1.5v and it seemd to be pretty stable as well but I didn't run it through the gamit of tests. I did play FEAR for about 15 min without any issues. Again, no changes were made to any other voltages or timings. The CPU temp has still yet to reach 40 degrees and the NB has gotten to 47 but that's it.

With my Abit board, 2.4 was reachable but not very stable.

could be because abit SUUUUUUUUUCKS!

NICE ONE!!!

Just 1 thing.... it looks like you have your HTT multi set to 5x (this may have caused your instability!)

Change it to 4x if you plan to go higher!

No, it's set on 11 which is the default.

Vstrom wrote:No, it's set on 11 which is the default.

Not the cpu multi ---> your HTT multi!

200mhz x 5 = 1000 HTT - in your case - 220 x5 = 1100 HTT

If you go higher then your HTT link will go too far over 1000 and cause instability... if youset that multi to x4 then you can goto ~250Mhz without going over the magic 1000!

You HTT should always stay on or under 1000!

Oh, yeah sorry I'm not awake yet. I actually had it set to 3 at first when I was cranking it up and then to 2.5. I actually got just over 2.5ghz when I couldn't boot to windows. If I played with it enough and got the memory timings right etc I think I could be pushing 2.5 with stability but right now I don't have the 2 weeks to spend fussing with it and 2.4 is pretty good for me - I've basically moved up to the 3800+ processor for free

OK...starting to dial it in now at higher speeds. Here are some benchmarks:


My 3D Mark 05 score was 7370 but I closed it before I could get the screen shot.

Temps aren't bad either...

Ran OCCT torture test last night - passed. Ran Prime 95 torture test for 8 hours 11 minutes (until I got up this morning). No errors! Stable!

Oh, I also ran Mem86 (it's included in the DFI BIOS - nice!) and no errors there ither. I'm a little surprised it's running @ 2-3-3-5 @ 227.8Mhz as Corsair claims (per Anantech) the typical stable timings at this speed are 2.5-3-3-7.

OK, I'm having a problem now...

As previously stated, I have OC'd and the system appears to be completely stable. Prime95, memtest86 etc all good plau 8+ hours of FEAR playing, no issues.

Rebooting the system - no problems.

HOWEVER, when I completely power down and turn back on, it "loses" my hard drives. The splash screen comes up and then on the RAID screen I get "detecting array..." but it never does. After it sits, for a few minutes I get to the BIOS screen and the primary startup drive is now "bootable drive" and I cannot see the hard drives listed under IDE etc. In order to clear this, I need to reset all of the BIOS settings to "stock" and clear CMOS. Then all is well again. I can go back and reset my settings for the OC and reboot and I am back in the OC business, stable as hell.

Any ideas? I'm checking on the DFI boards and someone suggested delaying the HDD start to give more time for the boot drive to be accessed. (I haven't tried that yet)

Are you disabling the un-used SATA ports? DFI boards have an option in the Genie Bios section @ the end of the page.... I disabled unused ports and found 1/2 of the time either windows could not find the drive or it would boot-up verrry slow!
Make sure you DO NOT disable un-used SATA ports on your board...disabling the Silicon Image controller (if you have it) is fine

There is also a known issue with new Maxtor drives... I read this somewhere over on DFI-Street forums....

Have you tried a Bios update? A bios update for this board is not just updating the main bios... there is updates for Nvidia's chipset (sata controller) - and other stuff....

I will never tell anyone to use a Beta bios (viods your DFI warranty)... but I use This Bios
Are you using the latest Official Bios?

Also Did you install Nvidia's IDE driver? -> update to the latest Nvidia drivers

Vstrom wrote:HOWEVER, when I completely power down and turn back on, it "loses" my hard drives. The splash screen comes up and then on the RAID screen I get "detecting array..." but it never does. After it sits, for a few minutes I get to the BIOS screen and the primary startup drive is now "bootable drive" and I cannot see the hard drives listed under IDE etc. In order to clear this, I need to reset all of the BIOS settings to "stock" and clear CMOS. Then all is well again. I can go back and reset my settings for the OC and reboot and I am back in the OC business, stable as hell.

Any ideas? I'm checking on the DFI boards and someone suggested delaying the HDD start to give more time for the boot drive to be accessed. (I haven't tried that yet)

Do you have Maxtor HDD's?
Try reading through this thread on DFI-Street, it appears as though you just need a firmware update. You'll probably have to talk directly to Maxtor and they will give you specifically what you need...
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthr ... axtor+16MB

kenc51 wrote:Also Did you install Nvidia's IDE driver? -> update to the latest Nvidia drivers

I dunno, it appears as though the IDE driver is not something you want to be installing:
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpos ... ostcount=6

DFI-Street.com wrote:NOTE: NF2/NF3/NF4 OWNERS - DO NOT INSTALL THE SW-IDE DRIVER IN THE NF2/NF3/NF4 CHIPSET PACKAGE UNLESS USING RAID!!! PLEASE UNINSTALL THE CHIPSET DRIVERS AND RE-INSTALL AND TELL THE SW-IDE DRIVER PROMPT TO "NO" AND DO NOT INSTALL THEM!!! SW-IDE DRIVER IS WELL KNOWN FOR HOSING/LOCKING/FREEZING/NO-BOOTING ETC AFTER INSTALLING!!! (it is also well known to make CD-RW/DVD-RW drives not function correctly!)

There is a TON of good info on that DFI-street website, just spend an hour or so browsing through all the sticky's and see what you turn up. I did that and ended up printing out over 30 pages of stuff! Looks like I've got some homework do to!

You DO USE the nvidia IDE driver if using RAID.... Never install if NOT using RAID!!!!

DFI-Street wrote:NOTE: NF2/NF3/NF4 OWNERS - DO NOT INSTALL THE SW-IDE DRIVER IN THE NF2/NF3/NF4 CHIPSET PACKAGE UNLESS USING RAID!!! PLEASE UNINSTALL THE CHIPSET DRIVERS AND RE-INSTALL AND TELL THE SW-IDE DRIVER PROMPT TO "NO" AND DO NOT INSTALL THEM!!! SW-IDE DRIVER IS WELL KNOWN FOR HOSING/LOCKING/FREEZING/NO-BOOTING ETC AFTER INSTALLING!!! (it is also well known to make CD-RW/DVD-RW drives not function correctly!)

Yeah, I know. Is Vstrom using RAID or something?
I didn't see his system specs listed anywhere

gvblake22 wrote:Yeah, I know. Is Vstrom using RAID or something?
I didn't see his system specs listed anywhere

Vstrom wrote:HOWEVER, when I completely power down and turn back on, it "loses" my hard drives. The splash screen comes up and then on the RAID screen I get "detecting array..." but it never does. After it sits, for a few minutes I get to the BIOS screen and the primary startup drive is now "bootable drive" and I cannot see the hard drives listed under IDE etc. In order to clear this, I need to reset all of the BIOS settings to "stock" and clear CMOS. Then all is well again. I can go back and reset my settings for the OC and reboot and I am back in the OC business, stable as hell.

He says it doesn't detect his RAID array?

--> Vstrom = can you post system specs and are you using RAID????

Yes, I am using RAID 0. If we had the little LR graphic sig thingy I'd have my system specs up

Vstrom wrote:Yes, I am using RAID 0. If we had the little LR graphic sig thingy I'd have my system specs up

Did you update to the latest drivers???? New drivers came out a few days ago... see earlier post

kenc51 wrote:Are you disabling the un-used SATA ports? DFI boards have an option in the Genie Bios section @ the end of the page.... I disabled unused ports and found 1/2 of the time either windows could not find the drive or it would boot-up verrry slow!
Make sure you DO NOT disable un-used SATA ports on your board...disabling the Silicon Image controller (if you have it) is fine

Yes, I disabled the unused ones. Maybe that's it but this only happens when OC'd so I would think it would be a prob all the time if this is it.

There is also a known issue with new Maxtor drives... I read this somewhere over on DFI-Street forums....

Yeah, read that already. Doesn't sound like the same issue but you never know.

Have you tried a Bios update? A bios update for this board is not just updating the main bios... there is updates for Nvidia's chipset (sata controller) - and other stuff....

I have the latest BIOS and RAID drivers. I am 100% up to date on all drivers.

I thought I posted this on here somewhere but maybe not..

CoolerMaster Centurion 532 Case
Athlon 64 3500+ (Winchester)
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra D
Thermalright SI-120 w/Panaflo M1A
Antec Neopower 480W
Corsair DDR400 XMS3200XLPRO (2x512) 2-2-2-5
NEC ND-3500A DVD/CD RW (16MB Buffer)
eVGA 7800 GT OC (470mhz) PCI-E (256MB)
Maxtor Diamond Max 10 200GB 16MB buffer (x2 - RAID 0)
SB Audigy Z2S Platinum
ATI TV Wonder Elite

You should NOT disabled any un-used SATA on the Nforce4 chipset, at least with DFI.... All ports are locked so no need... It's was only the older Nforce3, Nforce2 and some Nforce4 chips where the lower SATA ports were unlocked.....

Vstrom wrote:I thought I posted this on here somewhere but maybe not..

You did sorry, over on your PSU post... I'm too busy here in work to go searching, sorry mate