What on earth is it you guys like about DFI?

[black_dought]

I believe DRDNA summed it up for you there. From my experience here, it seems people have this vision of plug and start with DFI. There are a lot of extensive forums here designed to decrease or eliminate problems you may be experiencing by searching. I feel you are asking us to do your homework in all honesty. Simply coming here and starting a post with a negative cogitation about a product calling it crap may not be the best solution for you, moreover, being a so called "reviewer" I believe you should already have some sensible knowledge of this. Look around and search here and I believe it will be most useful to you. Best of luck cvt the reviewer.

[PL4YD34D]

the onlu decent thing about it is the 'almost there, but still not quite yet' bios.

 

I have intensively tested this CPU, using different gfx cards, PSU's, RAM, HDD's, SC's, the lot... and the result is identical.

 

this board is a underperformer, I would lay that blame on ATi's chipset, that is not at all the concern, but the first complaint.

 

During installation, the layout of the board was great, something many manufacturers now ignore, Abit were the only one still doing this, and now even they are lacking, DFI seem to be along in good layouts...

 

After powering I was greeted with the very nice BIOS DFI provide, although still 1 step behind Abit, they are definately up there, tackling it another way.

 

All my hardware picked up without a flash, Windows installed with no issues, all drivers on, now for the stress test..

 

Rock stable over the 12hr test I run (standard) in the way on CPU and RAM. no errors at all.. something thats rare to see.. so that was nice.

 

3DMark06 successfully passed the 6hr test loop, nice.

 

HDD tests shown the first anomoly.. slave HDD to maser CD = 16bit adressing and no DMA..

swap it, the same, remove cd rom, its fine and works as it should.. new drivers, no help, latest flash, doesn;t help.. theres a bit of an odd issue here, and only seems to happen the the Seagate Barracuda 5 250g, the 120g ide I have is fine with the cdrom, and the 250g sits by itself now... so theres bug #1

 

next one, The onboard sound is rubbish, have either core over 60% and expect it to no longer run smooth, so much for there hd-audio

 

NB cooler is not adequate for overclocking.. this is rarely gotten right, but for a company thats brags about overclocking, this is pathetic, and is completely overlooked.

 

lastly, although tests like to show it as stable, it isn't, I have never gotten better than a 36 hour run out of this bought before a lockup or hardware error.

changed all hardware bare mobo and its still the same, fresh install, different driver versions and bios results in no difference..

 

so... given that you have said you cant use the majority of the settings in BIOS without step-by-step instructions (my 14yr old brother seems fine!), how can you then say that its 'almost but not quite there'? what do you want? more settings that you wont understand or be bothered to learn how to use?

 

then theres the NB cooler that hasnt enough cooling for your liking? well how much are you intending to overclock it mate? you never heard of on-die-memory-controller? you are a seasoned reviewer after all (sarcasm).

 

oh, and if you're going to complain about DFI and then start your complaint with the ATI chipset, you're not going to hold anyone's attention for long are you. perhaps ATI give different chipsets to ABIT or Gigabyte? oh no; they dont do they. there all the same. so what you're saying is you dont like any board with an ATI chipset because they under perform. well, no Crossfire review from you is going to be worth a damn then.

 

 

so overall, you actually found how many 'faults' that were a 'problem' caused by this being a DFI board? well, if we discount the NB cooling and ATI chipset, i think were down to just two.( i'm not including your crazy comment about onboard sound. mine never pushes my CPU usage beyond 8% and i record and playback soundtracks in 5.1)

 

so now lets compare your TWO problems to the multitude of EXCELLENT comments you make about the boards features from your initial build, through configuration and into testing. 'Rock stable', 12hr test no problem, 6hr 3D mark 06 loop, hardware picked up without a flash, Windows installed with no issues. sounds to me like this board is fantastic!

 

Basically mate, you DID just review this board - and said it was great.

so the other 18,361 members on this forum salute you my friend. thankyou - for pointing out the good AND the bad of your one test sample board. i hope other companies also benefit from your sparkling journalistic repartee. just remember to make sure you USE the board first. not just bad mouth it from the moment your lame power supply hits the wall socket.

 

FIN

[Guest thespin]

What do I like about DFI ?? The challenge !! It makes me a much better person ... Stick with it ... you will get better too ...

[Angry_Games]

Indeed, all these people with their overclocked machines that are completely stable just refuse to admit the company is rubbish. And all the 'pro' overclockers going for world records using DFI boards are just as blind.

 

hehe

[Hawk454]

HDD tests shown the first anomoly.. slave HDD to maser CD = 16bit adressing and no DMA..

swap it, the same, remove cd rom, its fine and works as it should.. new drivers, no help, latest flash, doesn;t help.. theres a bit of an odd issue here, and only seems to happen the the Seagate Barracuda 5 250g, the 120g ide I have is fine with the cdrom, and the 250g sits by itself now... so theres bug #1

 

next one, The onboard sound is rubbish, have either core over 60% and expect it to no longer run smooth, so much for there hd-audio

 

NB cooler is not adequate for overclocking.. this is rarely gotten right, but for a company thats brags about overclocking, this is pathetic, and is completely overlooked.

 

lastly, although tests like to show it as stable, it isn't, I have never gotten better than a 36 hour run out of this bought before a lockup or hardware error.

changed all hardware bare mobo and its still the same, fresh install, different driver versions and bios results in no difference..

 

Addressing the harddrive issue: If one harddrive works with the CD-Rom and another harddrive does not, to me as a electronics troubleshooter the problem would lie with the offended harddrive. The offending harddrive works alone which verifies the mother board works and one harddrive/CD-Rom works which again verifies the mother board. So at the hardware level there is not an issue. Drivers can always mess up the best hardware so I would investigate this path.

 

Addressing the onboard sound: Onboard sound has an obvious disadvantage from the beginning since all the traces within the motherboard lie next to very high timing clock signals and various DC power traces from the CPU and mosfets. Many onboard processors experience sound imperfections from this problem because circuits are difficult to isolate without being detached from the motherboard. In addition, drivers can always mess up the best hardware so again investigate this path.

 

Addressing the Chipset temps: Most posts I read have temps in the 50` celsius range at stock timings with minimum case cooling or video card coolers routing hot air towards chipset. I myself had both of these issues and created an external solution.

 

Addressing stability: Your rather good review of the stability with specific programs confuses me about which programs did not pass a 36 hour test. My first question would be "Were all components were individually verified with an independant system?". If all components pass separately and then this test system is repeated with the motherboard in question than we could move on to the next troubleshooting phase involving the motherboard.

 

My opinions:

 

I have had imcompatibilties between two harddrive mancrapturers when using a single IDE cable before which baffled me somewhat but in the case of a CD-Rom sharing an IDE path with a harddrive I would simple split them up between the two available IDE controllers which would help performance wise anyhow.

 

The onboard sound is never as good as a top-of-the-line stand alone sound solution with specific hardware acceleration and independant processors so this is a mute point for gamers. Although I must admit I use the onboard sound because as long as I can get good 3d sound accuracy using headphones I am happy.

 

Chipset cooler was the biggest complaint I had with my DFI board not because it caused problems but because I wanted to be meticulous about reducing all temperatures above 45` Celsius. I tapped a custom fitting heatsink with no fan on the chipset and directed ambient air toward the chipset and routed the video card exhaust out the card slots in the rear of the case. The motherboard was not at fault for the high temperatures from my video card exhaust other than the location of the chipset.

 

Whoah, sorry that turned into a long ramble...

[p0tter]

As said before, the world 3Dmark and overclock records dont lie. The DFI NF4 is an awesome board. But aways

 

Tinker with it more and set some time aside to get to know the board.

 

Honestly I love this forum, the members and admin are very helpful and is run well.

 

THX AG

[Smoken Joe]

Alright might read this thread later anyone else note how it is the experts that have the worst trouble and the noobs that read the stickies sail though things with ease. I would recomend some people grab some cheese and read through the stickies and such and approch the level of knowledge that you clam to have.

[Kirbs]

My, my, my aren't we a bunch of DFI fanboys.

 

This board, as you all well know, in a pain in the arse to get running but that's part of the reason it is liked because we all like to tinker for hours on end. I bet most of you like to watch the on-screen display when your hard drives are being defragmented, I know I do.

 

That having been said for the price we all had to pay, it damn well should work straight out of the box and the only people to blame if it doesn't is the manufacturer for releasing a product that was not ready for the market until the 23 Dec 05 bios was released.

 

Anyway stop bitchin' and get tweakin'.

[cvt]

ok, Most of you are just arrogent, do you really think I would test with all these drives, its in MY machine, I said I ran it on the bench, which is caseless, 1 hdd, or 2 hdd in raid, gfx card,you know, just the basics.

 

theres also some misunderstanding, and since most of you instead of actually bothering to comment about this particular board are standing up for it like its your .ing baby, and don't even have this model it proves that regardless of the problem your just going to blame the user, which is typical, theres some of you here with some clue, and thats nice to see, but its sad there so many people willing to blame stupid things like, as force of habit as said, I was referring to the HT as NB, you know this, being a smartarse doesn;t help.

 

I said the sound jumps WHEN the cpu is @ or > ~66% on both cores, not it makes that.

 

Do you really think I would have left anything on auto before complaining, ffs, go home dickhead.

 

when I review this board, and I think its a great board apart from the long term stability and the temp of the HT is NOT acceptible, especially for a OC board, I worded it badly, youclaim its BS, or hot air on it, I havea intel 865 here that ran 20C hotter than usual from day 1, 6 month later it smoked, it was no problem other than an issue with something during manufacture, is it impossible for dfi/ati to also screw up? I take it so, and it must be another pesky auto setting.

There is that issue thats greatly against it is the long term stability.

yes, stability is tested with prime95 in blend mode.

You think I'd blame the board because the ATi chipset sucks.. regardless of how good the board is, is the chipset is badly featured the baord is badly featured.. therefor, yes, it is a overpriced board imo, but it does have its place, in the first AMD xfire ones, why else would I have one for myself?

 

I've done everything thats mentioned, I tried to say that I had without making a post 10x bigger than I did.. some of you posted valid stuff, the rest are just jumping on to backup a board you most likely have no experience with... I mean.. where is it in ur profiles? if you really care about ur DFI, STFU, I don;t care, I care about each particular board regardless of manufacturer..

 

 

 

and yes.. I DO epect every board to work out of the box in Auto.

they SHOULD, there is no excuse like 'oh, its for tinkering'

its simply, they could not be bothered finished the job, and left it to the tinkering...

and that is plain pathetic, not a good feature, you are fooling urself on yet another blatently obvious shortcut made by DFI.

I never leave my systems on auto, I always set things exactly the way they should be/I want, but many people don't, and they shouldn;t have to.

 

and thanks for telling me about how good the NF4 is... DID I NOT SAY RDX200.. thanks idiot.

 

 

please people.. thats is NOT a review, not even close, its just aquick rundown of my experiences.. stop making such a big thing about it

 

Hawk, I don;t know if its drivers or bios, all I stated was that there is an issue with it, the exact same combo worked in the AV8, so its not the drives themselves incompatible.

I know about the sound, but I expected a larger buffer.. thats all.. it actally turned out to skip and lag more than the old ac'97 ones.

 

The stability test is 12hr then 6hr. I do this to make sure my PSU is right, ram is right, cpu is right, gfx is right, so on..

 

I am using it as a general computer, left sit idle, or just playing music, or typing on it, trasnferring across the network, loading a game, its appears completely random.. its not ever linked by anything I'm doing, or any apps I'm running, or any hardware I have plugged in, its just garenteed to crash at a random time.

[cvt]

BTW, thanbkyou the few people that bothered to help/comment, Hawk, Quad, maybe techno worth mentioning...

 

to all those just backup up DFI, you shoulda saved ur time, on monday I will ahve another of these boards and I'll be able to say what its like, I may aswell, but all of ur back it up and blame me . kind of tells me I'm wasting my time and it will be the same and you know it will be, so the only thing you have left is to abuse me...

 

 

yes, I did come in here half for a classy lady, but mainly because I did not want to review this board as bad if it was a dud.. NOTHING ELSE... I wanted to say this board was good... it has everything youcan want from the ATi chipset, but its long term is not stable. it seemed out of place, as does the hot HT.

[Guest thespin]

The challenge!! It builds C-H-A-R-A-C-T-E-R !!

[Angry_Games]

I bet most of you like to watch the on-screen display when your hard drives are being defragmented, I know I do.

 

wahahahahahaha

 

i totally dig watching Diskeeper or Defrag do it's thing!

 

That having been said for the price we all had to pay, it damn well should work straight out of the box and the only people to blame if it doesn't is the manufacturer for releasing a product that was not ready for the market until the 23 Dec 05 bios was released.

 

incorrect

 

it works right out of the box

 

it always has