DFI vs Asus, et. al.

[MikeSp]

I have regained the status of NOOB 1st class since I have not built a computer for four years and during those four years my trusty Asus P4C800ED has performed flawlessly and I have not kept up with most advances in computers, but it is time to move it on to my daughter and build another.

From reading what seems like zillions of postings regarding the seemingly infinite issues with various motherboards on forums as well as on NewEgg, it does seem that all mobos have their quirks. I am interested in a top notch mobo running 1066 FSB with an E8400 and Corsair Dominator DDR2. While I have zero interest in OC'ing right away, I would like to tinker around with that eventually as time permits.

Again, from reading zillions of postings here and on other forums, it seems like DFI boards are held in higher esteem than those from Asus and Gigabyte. I want the latest and greatest STABLE X38 board and am curious IF the DFI boards really are better out of the box in their stability and how they get along with various brands of memory sticks. ALSO, I noticed that many of the DFI boards are labeled "Lanparty" which has me wondering if they are more specialized toward that type of computer use instead of a office setting where an ATX board's stability at full rated speed is the essential goal for video and photoshop work?

Thoughts/opinions re: DFI as an out of the box stable board running at full rated speed (not OC'd) and stable? (I realize that they are an OC'ers delight -- that is not my primary goal, although if I were younger...)

Thanks

MikeSp

 

[BUFF]

I am interested in a top notch mobo running 1066 FSB with an E8400 and Corsair Dominator DDR2.

E8400 runs at 1333fsb (really a quad pumped 333) ...

DFIs have probably more options than any other mobo brand but it's a 2 edged sword.
yes, you can tweak them to get that last 0.001% performance but doing so can take a long time & being right on the limit they can be edgy.
With modern mobos being so highly integrated there is rarely a significant performance difference between any mobos based on the same chipsets anyway.

Me, I prefer a stable mobo that gets you 98% of the same performance in 2% of the tweaking time & I find that abits do that for me - I try all the brands but I keep coming back to them.

 

[MikeSp]

E8400 runs at 1333fsb (really a quad pumped 333) ...

DFIs have probably more options than any other mobo brand but it's a 2 edged sword.
yes, you can tweak them to get that last 0.001% performance but doing so can take a long time & being right on the limit they can be edgy.
With modern mobos being so highly integrated there is rarely a significant performance difference between any mobos based on the same chipsets anyway.

Me, I prefer a stable mobo that gets you 98% of the same performance in 2% of the tweaking time & I find that abits do that for me - I try all the brands but I keep coming back to them.

Now THAT is what I am after -- 98% of the performance in 2% of the tweaking time. I cannot fault anyone for trying to squeeze that last 0.001% of speed and I even tried that with my old Asus P4C800ED four years ago and after spending dozens of hours tweaking what was the state of the art at that time BUT I think I added perhaps a modest 8-10% to the overall benchmark scores, and that is no longer for me at my tender age, I want that same 98% as do you and thank you for the recommendation for the Abit brand -- will add that to my short list.

MikeSp

 

[Jcdenton69]

i had an Asus Maximus Formula and i had to tweak for hours to get a stable overclock on my E8400, i ended up RMAing it for a refund and buying a DFI BloodIron, was able to overclock my E8400 to 3.6GHz with only a couple of minutes in the BIOS, going to push it to 4GHz in a couple days after i reseat the heatsink.

 

[vanilla_guerilla]

with the dfi you can tweak for hours, but you dont have to. you can leave most settings on auto. i went from an abit ip35 pro to the dfi lp ut p35, and with all else the same picked up about 300mhz in clock speed. i did this by bumping up the voltages and fsb. i didnt tweak ram timings, or gtl ref, or any of that crap.
re your other question - lanparty is just the name they give to their top of the line boards. this is further broken down by;
lanparty - absolute top board with most accessories and most comprehensive bios
lanparty ut (in engrish ut means something like "uv on, tweakers go!!") next level down , smaller bundle, but usually same features/bios. lately the lp ut is the top of the line board.
lanparty lt - lanparty lite. still smaler bundle, less features and no heatpipe cooling.
lanparty dk - lanparty dark, newest level, usually much leaner board, different colors, pwm not as good, less raid features, etc.

and after the lanparty series comes the infinity boards, which are usually bare bone boards that overclock extremely well.

if you are interested in a di p35 lanparty board, let me know as i am going sli in a couple days.

 

[Flexion]

DFI has a reputation for overclocking, but the Lanparty series is only part of their product line. They do make alot of server boards, which are sold to system integrators, and rarely show up in retail channels. So the boards are stable. I've gotten lazy with my OC'ing in the past few years. I can say that I only spent about 15 mins to OC on the DFI. Compared to a Gigabyte that I had for a while it wasn't much harder.

 

[kirbyrj]

Personally, I'd just go with another Asus board. I used a P4P800, then a P5W DH, and now a Maximus and have not had a problem in any of them. Definitely in that 98% performance with 2% of the tweaking category . Usually I get little problems here and there with all other brands (Gigabyte, Abit specifically).

The Abit IP35-E was very good for me and haven't had any issues, the AB9 and IB9, not so much.

Gigabyte DS3 and DS2R were both decent, but just had random issues.

 

[huddy]

The DFI boards have a million settings in their BIOS. My basic rule of thumb is to not touch the settings that I don't understand. This procedure has served me well on my two DFI boards (1 LanParty, 1 Infinity) and rewarded me with easy, excellent overclocking results. This board is currently out of stock but is my personal recommendation for anyone interested in a C2D and single GPU. The voltage control will be superior to my DFI Infinity board in my sig (which is quite good for a cheap board with a quad OC) among other things.