Overclocking w/ DFI boards... (is it really that hard?)

maxinflixion

maxinflixion

Gawd
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Apr 2, 2007
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Ok, I I just built an E2160 system on a Biostar motherboard, and it OC'd very easily.

I am about to hand that system over to the wife and give myself the gift of a new gaming rig.

My current motheboard is a DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D, and I never really OC'd, because I didn't know where to start. After OC'ing the e2160, I am startign to believe that it was less the DFI board and more the lower quality RAM/AMD x2 that kept me from OC'ing very far.

So I guess my question is if I go with a Blood Iron or a DFI LANPARTY DK P35-T2RS , can I still do mere FSB adjustments w/o tweaking a million things, or are DFI boards just a little out of my league OC-wise?

I mean, on this low cost board (BIOSTAR GF7050V-M7), I got a fairly solid 44% overclock w/o knowing my ass from an elbow).
 
The last two boards I've owned were DFI. First I had an NF4 Ultra-D (Opty [email protected]) and in my current build I have the Infinity P965-S (C2D [email protected]).

The Ultra-D was a little tricky to get the max OC--due to the plethora of BIOS options. However, after some reading and tweaking (the old DFI NF4 boards had an amazing following and the users wrote some great OC guides) I was able to get a very nice and stable OC.

The Infinity P965-S was much more simple to OC--mainly because the Infinity line has a scaled back BIOS compared to the LanParty series. I basically set the memory timings, played with the FSB, and adjusted voltages. I'm not sure if it has more BIOS options than a standard Biostar board--but they aren't overwhelming.

Both boards have been stellar. Completely stable for well over a year with very good OC's. If you're wondering what it takes to OC either of the boards you mentioned I would check out the following link:

DFI Club Forums

That link is to the officially supported DFI forums. It's a great place to start reading about the BIOS options on their boards and how difficult it might be to OC them. You should also be able to find out what RAM would work best with with either of the boards you mentioned.
 
DFIs are famous for having tons of tweaking options, but for day to day overclocking it might just be overkill. The simpler controls on the other P35 based boards might be better for you - they still allow tremendous overclocking and I'd bet that the performance delta is small enough to not really matter.
 
DFI boards = Difficult oveclocking? Urban myth I say... I had an easy time using a 939 LanParty series board by adhering to the following rule:

If I don't know what this is, don't change it.

That has netted me good overclocks on 3 DFI boards so far... I'm going to try to take things higher now that I have a 775 LanParty board.
 
Thanks for all of the input.

After much deliberation, I opted for the board below. Mainly out of price consideration and due to the ease w/ which I OC'd the other Biostar board I just built on (this one is a P35 vs. the other one being an Nvidia 7050).

I figured, with this price, I can afford to change my mind later and still buy the Lanparty Dark (it's a damn sexy board!) when I upgrade to Quad Core at end of summer.

BIOSTAR TForce TP35D2-A7 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138075
 
actually it's not that hard. the variety of options allows you to squeeze a few more mhz.
 
They are no harder to OC than any other board honestly. I think the amount of options in the BIOS are what get people confused. There are some very good guides at Xtremesystems and DFI club that go through the BIOS and explain what most all the setting do.
Instead of calling them hard I think I would say more in depth and with all the options can take longer but yeild a better OC in the end.
 
Went with DFI after i had my expert board, which is still being used as fileserver. Not hard per say just more fun tweaking as computers is a hobby for me.
 
Doing the burn in right now on a DK P35/Q6600 which I oc'ed in a heartbeat up to 3 Ghz...no big deal at all...actually easier than my Abit IP35-Pro
 
Overclocking on a DFI motherboard is no harder than any other motherboard really, all the same options are there. If you dont want to mess with the more advanced options you do not have to, and can leave them on auto.
 
Overclocking or not, DFI boards have some of the best features available of any mfg. I'd buy one just for the stability, good audio/NIC chipsets, layout, digital PWM, etc. Beats any other brand IMO.

Robert
 
I went from the abit ip35 pro to the dfi dark p35 t2rs and had that exact same worry...

but, don't worry at all. It was a breeze. The same basic steps were taken imo for me to go to even higher speeds.. Sure the DFI has way more tweaks and options you could do to squeeze every last mhz out, but its not required to still push your core to high speeds ;)

The same steps like disabling C1E/EIST when first starting, adjusting FSB, changing volts, are all there and defined really easy. One thing that i wanted to note though was the FSB strap. The ip35 pro just called it a divider iirc.. and asked whether i wanted to run at 1:1, 1:1.2, etc. whereas you gotta remember to adjust the memory fsb strap when you push your memory to 350+ fsb if not you're gonna try to run your memory at 1000mhz or more haha.. which i did, and my cpu didn't post many times and I had to reset CMOS a couple times till I realized what I was doing wrong. Besides that though, OC'ing this board has been a dream.

i'm a dfi fan!
 
From my early taste of DFI boards (NF4 ones), I will stay away from DFI. DFI boards are made for Hardcore OCer Experts, not newbie like some of us. You have to know exactly what to change and to what value, or your board just wouldn't be stable. I had an SLI-DR back in its prime and I sold it within a month after I was never ablet to make it work stable. I prefer Asus because their boards work really well in either OCing mode (all or most settings change) or if most settings (if not everything) are in Auto.
 
My opinion is that the DFI boards are easy enough to work with if you stick with the standard options for overclocking like straps, voltages, FSB, memory speeds and so on. The BIOS does become overwhelming if you are going to start playing with the other options to try and get that last bit of performance out of your system.

The DFI DK P35-T2RS board I just purchased easily pumped my E3110 Xeon 3.0Ghz Wolfdale processor to 3.6Ghz with nothing more then a FSB change. I hope to be able to reach 4.0Ghz and that is where some tweaking and DFI forum reading will be necessary.

With all that said I am definately a growing fan of DFI. My first DFI board was a NF4X-X Infinity (AMD socket 754 with PCI-E video). It easily pumped a 1.8Ghz Sempron up to 2.7Ghz. My friend has it now and still runs beautifully. Since about '92 when I abandoned my Amiga and went PC I have owned motherboards from just about every major motherboard manufacturer. All things considered and DFI continues to put out good products, they will be a top contender for my motherboard choice.
 
my DK P35 has never crashed / blue screened / hung up on me since the day i bought it when it first came out.

set a e2180 to 3ghz and fired it right up on stock volts.

the bios does look confusing if you have no idea what you're looking at, but if you're use to overclocking on other boards you'll recognise the regular stuff easily and all the other crap you can just leave if you dont understand it.
 
I just jumped from an Ultra-D to the DK P35 board. While there are many more BIOS options, you have to keep in mind that they are "optional".

To achieve a basic OC all you really need to do is change around 5-10 bios settings at most, nothing any more challenging than the NF4 line of DFI boards. While there are more options, especially when it comes to memory settings most guides on the DFI forums say don't touch them and in my experience unless you are chasing benchmarks or have a great aptitude for acquiring knowledge on every bios setting then leave them alone!

Bottom line the DK series is very similar to the NF4 and you can probably jump right into the BIOS on first boot and be fine. Worst case you have to read the forums for an hour or two to figure out some of the voltage settings. No biggie.
 
dfi boards are the best enthusiast boards. by far. asus makes a show of this, but pretty much releases half-assed boards with a bunch of features/jive that you will never use. msi seems to have the end user in mind also. if you dont feel like tweaking, these bios options can be left on auto. these boards make overclocking easier, imho.
 
I ended up going with less of an enthusiast boarrd and dropped my 939 DFI LanParry in the FS forum.
 
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