DFI AMD 64 SLI board in stock!

I think this bord is beautiful!!!! Ohhhh How i wish i could find one to buy!!!! :(
 
Just to put this out there. The UT versions have uv reactive slots, and the regular lanboy mobos dont
 
lt_wentoncha said:
Bastiches, I'm going to wait. I think it's $10 more then yesterday.
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I wouldn't. If it keeps selling out, the price will probably keep rising, I would think.
 
dIsRuPtIvE said:
I wouldn't. If it keeps selling out, the price will probably keep rising, I would think.
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Well, I'm in Cali, so after taxes this thing will be $180 or $190. At that price I might as well get an SLI board. Even so, if the rest of the market wants to gobble them up that's fine by me; next week stock should improve dramatically across most vendors anyways.
 
lt_wentoncha said:
Well, I'm in Cali, so after taxes this thing will be $180 or $190. At that price I might as well get an SLI board. Even so, if the rest of the market wants to gobble them up that's fine by me; next week stock should improve dramatically across most vendors anyways.
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Ya I'm in CA as well. It came to 176.96, whereas the SLI would be well over 250 after taxes. but ya if you can hold out, more power to ya. Good luck! ;)

Personally, I think I'll wait for SLI to mature. Perhaps I'll go for it with next years tax return. :D
 
dIsRuPtIvE said:
Ya I'm in CA as well. It came to 176.96, whereas the SLI would be well over 250 after taxes. but ya if you can hold out, more power to ya. Good luck! ;)

Personally, I think I'll wait for SLI to mature. Perhaps I'll go for it with next years tax return. :D
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Well I'm just glad they left motherboards out of that dam recycling fee legislation. What prop was this? I would have surely voted it down had I known about it!
 
Got my Ultra-D!
Sweet. Guess I have to figure out what else I'm going to get for it :p . I'm so impulsive sometimes.
 
burningrave101 said:
The MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum has 8 SATA ports with 4 of them through the Silicon Image controller.
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*looks up board on MSI's USA site*

OOPS, your right. Err...okay, GENERALLY the Ultra chipset boards don't have the Silicon Image ports. Err...so far. Not counting the Neo 4 Platinum. :eek: :)
 
I want this board in the worst way... I am sooo ready to give up my $330 A8N-SLI you wouldn't believe it (yes I paid that much, yes I'm an idiot). :p :D
 
Just check Monarchcomputers.com. I just ordered my new SLI-DR and it's $20 cheaper than newegg and zzf
 
flick212 said:
Just check Monarchcomputers.com. I just ordered my new SLI-DR and it's $20 cheaper than newegg and zzf
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That's odd; why is there a non-UT version for $30 more?
 
$30 more than what? The Ultra-D people were talking about buying? Ultra-D is not SLI and does not have the 4 SI SATA ports.

Anywho... just bought my SLI-DR from Monarch. Also picked up some TCCD RAM... can't wait. :D
 
I dont know why ppl are complaining about the Asus's price.. i picked mine up for 180 shipped.

Might be swapping out for the DFI SLI board though if the bios doesnt mature. Dont want to mess with that Ultra to SLI mod, as I actually have SLI and its not worth $50 to me to get the no nonsense board.

Otherwise, I'm sitting pretty good with a great system that is stable, for now. I can afford to wait till the rush is off these DFI boards and get one later :)
 
canislupy said:
$30 more than what? The Ultra-D people were talking about buying? Ultra-D is not SLI and does not have the 4 SI SATA ports.

Anywho... just bought my SLI-DR from Monarch. Also picked up some TCCD RAM... can't wait. :D
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http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=110222

NM, it's the DR I was confused with - the one you bought - with the D version of the SLI board.
 
EDIT:

Nevermind, I should really start paying attention to the amount of pages on these threads. . . now how do I delete my post?
 
Gun_Strife said:
So whats difference between Ultra-D an SLI-DR
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Err...one is the NForce 4 Ultra chipset, other is the NForce 4 SLI chipset. :)

Officially, the Ultra-D can't support SLI, the SLI...well, can.

Unofficially, one can do a "pencil mod" to the Ultra's chipset and get it to run like an SLI board, albeit with one card a x16 and the other at (I think) x2 or x1, not each slot at x8. Having said that, it's been pretty much said that future drivers won't support a modded Ultra to run as if it's an SLI. Still, is a neat trick in a way. Anandtech had an article fairly recently where they did just what I'm describing.
 
OOOOOOOOOO very interesting I was woundering why 2 pci-e on ultra for sure neat but sucks about no future support
 
Gun_Strife said:
OOOOOOOOOO very interesting I was woundering why 2 pci-e on ultra for sure neat but sucks about no future support
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Yeah, I think even though it only has 1 x16 slot, the MSI Ultra worked with this trick, or at least an engineering sample did. One card went into the real x16 slot, the other into the MSI's x2 slot, since it was open in front and thus the card would still slide in. I don't think the boards actually in production have the open slot though, but I could be wrong...I have a MSI SLI board anyway, so didn't research it much. ;)
 
Gun_Strife said:
how is the msi sli board, I lime msi and its only $199 at newegg
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I like it. Had one very minor incompatability issue with my USB Based 7-1 card reader, it connected to an internal USB header. Caused Windows to lock up literally on every other load right before the splash screen. Once I pulled that off, it's fine. Much more stable then the A8N-SLI Deluxe. Haven't played around with OCing it much, but seen some very good results, only complaint is the voltage for the CPU, depends on if you feel 1.65 volts (I think 1.7 with one beta BIOS) isn't enough for a decent OC...guess it depends on what you're cooling with to need over 1.65 volts to the CPU.

Seen people on MSI's board complain about Maxtor NCQ based SATA drives not working well with this board, same as the ASUS A8N-SLI, it had that problem. Although one apparently has to e-mail Maxtor for them to send it, one can get a firmware update for their Diamond Max 10 SATA drives with NCQ though...got a PM from someone who did get it from them, albeit took him four e-mails before they replied and sent it to him.

But yes, nice and stable...that in and of itself is great compared to my experience with the ASUS.
 
Arvig said:
Yeah, I think even though it only has 1 x16 slot, the MSI Ultra worked with this trick, or at least an engineering sample did. One card went into the real x16 slot, the other into the MSI's x2 slot, since it was open in front and thus the card would still slide in. I don't think the boards actually in production have the open slot though, but I could be wrong...I have a MSI SLI board anyway, so didn't research it much. ;)
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The MSI Neo4 Platinum has a x16 and x4 PCI-E slot. The x4 PCI-E slot is used for the seconed video card if you choose to try and mod the nForce 4 chipset to enable SLI.
 
Arvig said:
Err...one is the NForce 4 Ultra chipset, other is the NForce 4 SLI chipset. :)

Officially, the Ultra-D can't support SLI, the SLI...well, can.

Unofficially, one can do a "pencil mod" to the Ultra's chipset and get it to run like an SLI board, albeit with one card a x16 and the other at (I think) x2 or x1, not each slot at x8. Having said that, it's been pretty much said that future drivers won't support a modded Ultra to run as if it's an SLI. Still, is a neat trick in a way. Anandtech had an article fairly recently where they did just what I'm describing.
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I'm not sure if you all read the article, but with the pencil mod, its the EXACT same chipset as the ultra. The 16x/2x trick was a driver trick that DFI had worked out, but Nvidia had pretty much wiped that out with new drivers, that is correct.

From the article:
"We set the jumpers to SLI, attached the top bridge from an SLI board, since the Ultra boards do not ship with an SLI bridge, and fired up the system. The system was immediately recognized as an SLI chipset on boot and in Windows XP by our latest 71.40 Forceware drivers. Our little bit of very easy modification had "turned" the Ultra chipset into SLI. We no longer had driver limitations and performance was now exactly the same as the performance that we achieved with a normal SLI chipset."

edit: Also from the article:

"All tests were run on a DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D and a DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR. We first confirmed that test results were the same on the LANParty UT modified to SLI and the LANParty nF4 SLI, which is a native SLI chipset board. There was no difference in performance after the SLI modification to the Ultra chipset, so results are reported as SLI and relevant to either SLI or Ultra modified to SLI."

Not doing this just to prove anyone wrong however, as I just ordered my Ultra-D last night and plan on enjoying an SLI board (yes i know w/o the 4 extra SATA slots) for $80 cheaper. :D
 
Arvig said:
Err...one is the NForce 4 Ultra chipset, other is the NForce 4 SLI chipset. :)

Officially, the Ultra-D can't support SLI, the SLI...well, can.

Unofficially, one can do a "pencil mod" to the Ultra's chipset and get it to run like an SLI board, albeit with one card a x16 and the other at (I think) x2 or x1, not each slot at x8. Having said that, it's been pretty much said that future drivers won't support a modded Ultra to run as if it's an SLI. Still, is a neat trick in a way. Anandtech had an article fairly recently where they did just what I'm describing.
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Since all the DFI's share the same PCB and BIOS, the pencil trick can activate x8/x8 as well.
 
koomba said:
I'm not sure if you all read the article, but with the pencil mod, its the EXACT same chipset as the ultra. The 16x/2x trick was a driver trick that DFI had worked out, but Nvidia had pretty much wiped that out with new drivers, that is correct.

From the article:
"We set the jumpers to SLI, attached the top bridge from an SLI board, since the Ultra boards do not ship with an SLI bridge, and fired up the system. The system was immediately recognized as an SLI chipset on boot and in Windows XP by our latest 71.40 Forceware drivers. Our little bit of very easy modification had "turned" the Ultra chipset into SLI. We no longer had driver limitations and performance was now exactly the same as the performance that we achieved with a normal SLI chipset."

edit: Also from the article:

"All tests were run on a DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D and a DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR. We first confirmed that test results were the same on the LANParty UT modified to SLI and the LANParty nF4 SLI, which is a native SLI chipset board. There was no difference in performance after the SLI modification to the Ultra chipset, so results are reported as SLI and relevant to either SLI or Ultra modified to SLI."

Not doing this just to prove anyone wrong however, as I just ordered my Ultra-D last night and plan on enjoying an SLI board (yes i know w/o the 4 extra SATA slots) for $80 cheaper. :D
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I thought of posting this explanation as well, but the thought of checking my ultra-d on the fed-ex tracker pulled me away. :D
 
There has been an important update to the Anandtech review of the DFI board:


UPDATE 2/05/2005: nVidia has acted to prevent, or at least make it more difficult, to mod the Ultra board to SLI. First, DFI has advised us, and posted on their website, that they will NOT sell the SLI bridge to buyers of the Ultra board. Second, nVidia has advised us that future shipments of the Ultra chipset have been modified so that the mod to SLI will no longer be possible. An additional side effect of this second action is that the "Dual Video" mode, which performs at about 90% of SLI performance levels, will only work with early nVidia drivers 66.75 or earlier. If you do a quick check of web driver postings you will see it is now very difficult to find 66.75 drivers. With a chipset modded to SLI the "Dual Video" mode worked through 70.xx versions of the nVidia driver. nVidia also made it clear they will continue to make driver changes to prevent functioning of any "non-standard" (8X/8X) operation of their SLI driver. This also throws into question whether the VIA "dual graphics" mode on the 894 Pro chipset will ever work with nVidia graphics cards. If you are interested in the current UT Ultra-D we suggest you buy one now if you can find it. Future versions of the UT Ultra-D will not have the same capabilities as a result of these actions.
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If you want to do the pencil mod, get one quick!
 
This thread is false advertising!!!! :mad: I cant find the DFI SLI-DR anywhere in stock!!!!!!!!!! :( :p
 
In stock... out of stock, in stock... out, repeat. Got to be quick man! I think I did more refreshing of this forum and searches of websites last week than actual work. :D
 
canislupy said:
In stock... out of stock, in stock... out, repeat. Got to be quick man! I think I did more refreshing of this forum and searches of websites last week than actual work. :D
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Well, one of two things is happening IMO.

a) The board is really popular, and it sells out almost as soon as the store can list it on their website or...

b) Each store only got literally one board. They sell it as part of a time share agreement. They let someone use it for a week, then they are forced to RMA it back so that they can sell it to someone else for a week. This time next year, if you bought into the time share you get to use the board again for a week.


I'll let someone else figure out which one is my serious answer, and which one is my sarcastic one. :D
 
dylman said:
There has been an important update to the Anandtech review of the DFI board:

If you want to do the pencil mod, get one quick!
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I said this was going to happen as soon as that pencil mod article came out. I said nVidia would never support something like this and they would find a way to make it so it would no longer work. It was already didn't work with the newer drivers when Anandtech did the article to begin with. I wish MSI and DFI wouldn't of wasted our time with ideas of modding the chipset and includeing two higher speed PCI-E slots.

DFI already has two SLI boards besides the Ultra-D so i dont know why they ever wanted to do this in the first place because it would of just cut into their sales big time if it actually worked.

A company will never support the modding of their product to where it is capable of performing as well as one of their more expensive products for less money.

I would like to see DFI correct this and release and Ultra board with 8 SATA ports and more PCI-E/PCI slots but its probably not going to happen.
 
burningrave101 said:
I said this was going to happen as soon as that pencil mod article came out. I said nVidia would never support something like this and they would find a way to make it so it would no longer work. It was already didn't work with the newer drivers when Anandtech did the article to begin with.
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Reread the article. It says that if you do the pencil mod on the chipset it becomes an nF4 SLI. The drivers cand tell the difference. the only thing that didn't work with newer drivers was the pseudo-SLI 16x/2x. 8x/8x SLI worked with all drivers tested after the mod.
I wish MSI and DFI wouldn't of wasted our time with ideas of modding the chipset and includeing two higher speed PCI-E slots.
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DFI did not waste our time, the manual plainly states that the 2nd 16x slot may be used as a 2x slot and is not reserved for a video card.
DFI already has two SLI boards besides the Ultra-D so i dont know why they ever wanted to do this in the first place because it would of just cut into their sales big time if it actually worked.
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Economy. It is easier to build and design one board rather than several. Here DFI took a lesson from the auto industry. Build one high end model and defeature it for your low end models. It's still the same chassis, frame, mechanicals, just the trim is different. Same here.
A company will never support the modding of their product to where it is capable of performing as well as one of their more expensive products for less money.
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DFI does not support this mod and you will void the warranty if you perform it,
I would like to see DFI correct this and release and Ultra board with 8 SATA ports and more PCI-E/PCI slots but its probably not going to happen.
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You are probably correct here, DFI will most likely not rework the board. If you look at the blurb added Feb 5th to the Anandtech article it hints that nVidia will make other changes to the Ultra chipset so the mod cannot be so easily done. It's not DFI's fault, nvidia tried to get away cheap by building only one chipset and defeaturing it. They just got caught, and now the spin control begins.
 
WheresWaldo said:
Reread the article. It says that if you do the pencil mod on the chipset it becomes an nF4 SLI. The drivers cand tell the difference. the only thing that didn't work with newer drivers was the pseudo-SLI 16x/2x. 8x/8x SLI worked with all drivers tested after the mod.
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It was 16x/2x that worked with modded Ultra chipset. x8/x8 is the nVidia specified mode for SLI chipsets.

Anandtech said:
The other surprise is how very close the x16/x2 dual video mode is in performance to the nVidia specified x8/x8. Performance ranged from a worst case of 88.8% of "true" SLI in Half life 2 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF to slightly better than "true" SLI performance in Far Cry. These numbers are good enough that you can understand why MSI, DFI, and Epox were all planning to release dual-video boards based on the nForce4 Ultra chipset. With nVidia doing everything that they can in Forceware drivers to disable support for Ultra SLI, we can also well understand the reluctance of many manufacturers to try to bring Ultra SLI boards to market.
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WheresWaldo said:
DFI does not support this mod and you will void the warranty if you perform it,
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I was talking about nVidia anyways but its funny how DFI doesn't support this mod even though they made sure it was well known that the board would support a SLI config with a modded chipset in order to make it a prime selling point for the board. It wasn't until nVidia put the clamps on DFI that this all changed.

I would imagine that DFI will do away with the x16 slot and add some more PCI-E x1 slots or something. I dont think it would make sense to have a x16 slot on a motherboard that had no use for it.
 
burningrave101 said:
I would imagine that DFI will do away with the x16 slot and add some more PCI-E x1 slots or something. I dont think it would make sense to have a x16 slot on a motherboard that had no use for it.
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The x16 slot CAN be used, as I have previously stated, just like a x1 slot. You can put a PCI-E card from x1-x16 into one of these x16 slots. Additionally, while it is not likely that anything other than video cards will use all that bandwidth, it is certainly possible that future expansion cards could use the x16 slots. There is absolutely nothing wrong with including two x16 slots on a PCI-E board.
 
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