DFI Infinity NF4 Ultra
Nov 28th, 2005 | By Archive
DFI Infinity NF4 Ultra
Date
: 11/28/05 – 02:39:09 AM
Author
:
Category
: Motherboard
Page 1 : Index
Manufacturer:
DFI Inc.
Price:
$96USD Newegg.com
It really isn't a secret anymore and has become a well known fact that DFI is responsible for some of the best overclocking motherboards that money can buy. The BIOS features and quality in components that goes into the famed LanParty line of motherboards has rocketed it to the top of the list for those looking for best overclockability. DFI is based in Taiwan and has regional offices in the USA, Europe, China, and Japan. DFI has been around since 1981 and have always dedicated themselves to quality in not only their manufacturing process, but also in the quality of their suppliers manufacturing as well. DFI is cutting edge offering solutions with all the latest technologies including being one of the first to retail the new ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset as well as the nForce 4 chipset when it was released.

The nForce 4 chipset is the leader in the enthusiast market for the AMD CPU because of its performance and DFI has recognized that by offering the full line of the nForce4 chipset which includes the base nForce 4, nForce 4 Ultra, and nForce 4 SLI in the LanParty series with a couple variations of each. DFI has also recognized that not everyone can afford the somewhat high price tag of the LanParty series and for this reason have produced the Infinity series.

With the Infinity series we still have our choice of nForce 4, nForce 4 Ultra, or nForce 4 SLI chipsets for the 939 socket as well as a socket 754 version but without all the glitz and glamour of the LanParty series. Some of the features have also been stripped from this series, but the renowned DFI quality is still there in a much more affordable price range. This series uses all the same power and performance of the nForce 4 chipsets in the LanParty series and I'm going to see if the Infinity series is as quality of an overclocker as the much talked about LanParty boards.
Page 2 : Package & Contents
Seeing as the Infinity series from DFI is not their top of the line retail offering, I wasn't sure what to expect as far as the package was concerned. Would it be as elaborate as the LanParty series with bright colors and graphics geared towards the enthusiast? Or would it be more of a Foxconn style?

As you can see, it is a little bit of both. The matrixish background and the exuberant Infinity logo means that DFI is not going just settle with marketing this motherboard as a basic or low end offering. The over all feel of the package is more grown up than the LanParty series package but there is plenty of glamour there to catch the eye.

DFI does a good job of getting the vitals of this motherboard across to potential buyers viewing the package. On the front we saw the same logos as we do on the back here. There is a brief description of what the capabilities of the motherboard are and DFI made sure all the key selling points are illustrated.

Again, the side has all the logos that outline the feature set of the Infinity nF4 Ultra and the DFI logo can be seen on all sides of the package. The font DFI uses for its logo is recognizable so why not have it visible from every viewing angle.

If the stickers on the front, back, and side were not enough, the UPC label also has the key features listed on it. This is mainly for retailers but as a consumer you can use this for a little bit of information as well. If you notice to the left, there is a handle for the box too, a nice touch.

I really never thought that a motherboard box would require a handle, but you pretty much see this style of handle on every package these days. Cases, power supplies, and even video card boxes are starting to come with this plastic embedded handle, so why not a motherboard box? It sure came in handy when carrying my box from the couch to the desk before I opened the package. I also decided that I would become the ultimate geek by using the box as my briefcase for a week traveling back and forth from home to work. I am happy to report that, after a 5 day week, the handle and box are in excellent shape. So those looking to stretch their dollars as far as they can have a free briefcase with an Infinity nF4 Ultra motherboard purchase.

Upon lifting the lid I was presented with a miniscule amount of accessories. After receiving the large amount of cables and other goodies with my LanParty nF4 Ultra-D, I guess I was just assuming I would get a similar package with this one. I can understand why not though. You pay a premium for a premium package and the Infinity series is all about value so that means less accessories.

The motherboard box is split up into two sections with a sturdy cardboard shelf. With that shelf removed we now have access to the lower compartment where the motherboard is safely laying inside of its protective anti-static bag.

Here are the contents of the upper shelf spread out. Really, we receive everything that one would need to get up and running. Included is a pair of SATA cables and a 4-pin molex -> double SATA power connection, along with one IDE ribbon and one floppy ribbon cable. We are also supplied with the rear I/O panel, driver CD, manual, and the RAID drivers disk. Asking for rounded cables or four SATA cables may be a bit much but it still would have been a nice extra.

Here is a quick look at the motherboard itself. Obviously DFI wants to keep it separate from the LanParty series by using a yellow PCB, but the layout is very similar to my LanParty nF4 Ultra-D with a few notable changes. I will go over those in the layout section when we take a closer look at the motherboard. For now, we will have a look at the specifications laid out by DFI.
Page 3 : Specifications & Features
With any motherboard, there is a long list of specifications. DFI's web site is nice because it provides you with every single thing you can think of right down to the accessories the motherboard comes with. Most of their models even have a few detailed pictures of the package and contents, as well as a large photo of the motherboard itself. Here now is that long list of specs from DFI:
- AMD® Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 / Sempron
- Socket 939
Chipset
- NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra
Front Side Bus
- 2000MT/s HyperTransport interface
Memory
- Four 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM sockets
- Supports dual channel (128-bit wide) memory interface
- Supports up to 4GB system memory
- Supports PC2100 (DDR266), PC2700 (DDR333) and PC3200 (DDR400) DDR SDRAM DIMM
BIOS
- Award BIOS
- 4Mbit flash memory
Power Management
- Supports ACPI STR (Suspend to RAM) function
- Wake-On-Events include:
– Wake-On-PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse
– Wake-On-USB Keyboard/Mouse
– Wake-On-LAN
– Wake-On-Ring
– RTC timer to power-on the system - AC power failure recoveryAC power failure recovery
Hardware Monitor
- Monitors CPU/system temperature
- Monitors VCC3/12V/3.3V/5VSB/Vbat voltages
- Monitors the speed of the cooling fans
- CPU Overheat Protection function monitors CPU temperature during system boot-up
Audio
- 6-channel audio CODEC
- S/PDIF-in/out interface
LAN
- Vitesse VSC8201 Gigabit Phy
- Fully compliant to IEEE 802.3 (10BASE-T), 802.3u (100BASE-TX) and
802.3ab (1000BASE-T) standardsIDE
- Supports two IDE connectors that allows connecting up to four UltraDMA 133Mbps hard drives
- NVIDIA RAID allows RAID arrays spanning across Serial ATA and Parallel ATA
- RAID 0 and RAID 1
Serial ATA with RAID
- Supports four Serial ATA ports
- SATA speed up to 3Gb/s
- NVIDIA RAID allows RAID arrays spanning across Serial ATA and Parallel ATA
- RAID 0 and RAID 1
IEEE 1394
- VIA VT6307
- Supports two 100/200/400 Mb/sec ports
Rear Panel I/O Ports
- 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 mouse port
- 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port
- 2 S/PDIF RCA jacks (S/PDIF-out and S/PDIF-in)
- 1 parallel port
- 1 serial port
- 1 IEEE 1394 port
- 1 RJ45 LAN port
- 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- Line-in, line-out and mic-in jacks
I/O Connectors
- 3 connectors for 6 additional external USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 1 connector for 1 external IEEE 1394 port
- 1 front audio connector for external line-out and mic-in jacks
- 1 CD-in internal audio connector
- 1 S/PDIF connector for optical cable connection
- 1 IrDA connector
- 4 Serial ATA connectors
- 2 IDE connectors
- 1 floppy connector
- 1 24-pin ATX power connector
- 1 4-pin ATX 12V power connector
- 1 front panel connector
- 3 fan connectors
Expansion Slots
- 1 PCI Express x16 slot
- 2 PCI Express x1 slots
- 3 PCI slots
PCB
- ATX form factor
- 22cm (8.66") x 30.5cm (12")

I really won't be going into too much depth on the features of the NVIDIA nForce4 chipset because I have done so already in my review of the Foxconn NF4SK8AA-8EKRS which can be found here. I outline the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI chipset there but aside from the SLI support, the two are identical. Here are a few highlights:
PCI Express Support: Yes
SATA Support: 3 Gb/s
NVIDIA RAID: Yes
ActiveArmor Firewall: Yes
ActiveArmor Secure Networking Engine: Yes
NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet: Yes

PCI Express for the latest graphics and expansion cards
Designed to run with the next-generation PCI Express graphics cards and other devices…
NVIDIA nTune – Optimized PC Performance
Enables one of the safest and easiest ways to optimize PC performance. Faster than tuning by hand, get optimal settings for bus speeds, HyperTransport, memory timings, CPU registers, fans, and voltages in a safe…
SATA 3Gb/s
Take advantage of the latest SATA 3Gb/s hard disk drives, with double bus bandwidth and provide blazingly high disk performance. SATA 3Gb/s drives include full support for native and tagged command queuing, and for hot plug. Native command queuing provides higher disk performance in a multi-threaded environment by performing out-of-order disk accesses.
For a complete list of features, specifications and plenty more information, please visit the NVIDIA web site.
Page 4 : Layout

I will start at the CPU socket and work my way around the board in a clockwise motion explaining each area along the way.

The CPU socket is pretty much wide open for any CPU cooler you can throw at it. The only potential obstacle I can see is at the top where the memory DIMMs are located. They seem awfully close and any large cooler could possibly interfere. I will test the Titan Vanessa L-Type with it during installation as the L-Type has one of the largest footprints of all CPU coolers.

In between the left side of the socket and the rear I/O is where the three phase power center is located. There is obviously a lack of heatsinks on the MOSFETs, but being so close to the side of the CPU socket means that air escaping out the sides of the stock HS/F would be blown directly over top of this area. The 4-pin CPU power connection is located here as well, close to the first DIMM near the top of the board.


The four DIMM slots are pretty tight and, like I said earlier, a little bit closer to the CPU socket then I would like to see but the location and proximity to each other shouldn't prove to be an issue. I do like how DFI has the slots orientated front to back to allow front to back airflow of a case to wash heat away from the modules instead of having front to back airflow get stopped by the first module and a hot pocket develop on the other side.

This is the only fan header on the board aside from the one for the CPU fan and the one for the chipset fan. I understand that this motherboard is not for the enthusiast like the LanParty series which has five headers in total but, in my opinion, at least four fan headers should be the minimum.

The IDE, floppy, and 24-pin ATX power connection are were I want to see them, along the backside of the motherboard to ease in cable management.

As we move down that backside edge from the IDE connections, we are greeted with the onboard speaker which is absent of a jumper that can be used to silence this pesky little guy. This is another small difference from the LanParty series that some may take for granted, but I certainly don't. The ability to turn the speaker off is very useful in my situation.

Just below the speaker is where the four NVIDIA SATAII ports are located and in the bottom front right corner are the front panel connections. If you look closely, you can see that it is labeled but from the silkscreen on the PCB it is hard to make out which pins are for what function. Having this clearly labeled would save me the hassle of digging out the manual during installation. This corner, like almost all nF4 boards, is where the northbridge is located. DFI uses the standard heatsink and fan and not the "Magnetic-levitate fan" as found on the LanParty motherboards.


Working along the bottom edge to the rear of the motherboard, we find three headers for an additional six USB ports. This brings the total of the of the potential USB ports on this motherboard up to ten with the four ports located on the rear input/output panel. Right above these headers is where we can find the CMOS reset jumper and battery. Being located here and, no where near the PCI-E slot, should allow for easy access but being so tight with the PCI slots, a large expansion card may cause some problems.

The layout of the expansion slots is very nicely done. Having both PCI-E X1 slots at the top allows for them both to be used without interference from the PCI-E X16 slot. With even the largest video card heatsink, such as the one on the HIS X800GTO that I will be using for testing, only a single PCI slot will be rendered useless leaving two others which is better than most situations. Trust me, in the future those PCI-E X1 slots will be used. The first useful cards to utilize that expansion slot are making their way to market right now with PowerColors release of a nice looking TV tuner card in the PCI-E X1 variety.

To the left of the expansion slots is where our onboard chips reside. The BIOS chip is at the bottom followed by the ITE monitoring chip just above it. The IT8712F-A is a handy little chip that provides all kinds of data to be transmitted from the motherboard about the system and is seen on a lot of motherboards, including the Foxconn motherboard I just reviewed. The VIA VT6307 is the chip responsible for the IEEE1394 Firewire interface at both the rear I/O panel and the onboard header. These firewire connections can run at 100/200/400.

Speaking of the onboard firewire header, here it is located just above the VIA chip on the left hand side of this photo. To its immediate right is the central audio station. Being only six channel onboard audio, the ALC655 chip is used. This does not have the eight channel audio of the LanParty series so there is no connections for even a 5.1 speaker system. It simply has the standard In/Out/Mic ports. Full details from Realtek about the audio chip can be found here.

The last of the onboard devices is handled by the Vitesse VSC8201 Gigabit Phy LAN connection. This again is located on the rear I/O panel. Also notice the Rev . B to the right in this image. This is honestly the only markings on the PCB other than the FCC logo seen below it and diagram markings. DFI does not even have the Infinity name anywhere on this motherboard which I found a little bit odd.

The last of the layout photos we will look at is of the aforementioned rear I/O panel. The mouse and keyboard PS/2 ports are at the top in the standard location. Next to them are the parallel, serial, and S/PDIF IN/OUT RCA jacks. Followed by the Firewire and LAN connections that rest on top of the four USB connections and finally the three 5.1 audio connections.
I am not sure if you noticed but the first thing I saw missing from this board was any additional power connections on the motherboard aside from the 24-pin ATX and 4-pin CPU connection. The LanParty Ultra-D has not only a 4-pin molex connection but a 4-pin floppy as well. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in overclocking.
Page 5 : Installation
What I did not realize until I went to actually install the board was that it is narrower than the standard full size ATX.

When lined up with theFoxconn NF4SK8AA-8EKRS, you can see that it is considerably thinner. It is almost a full inch thinner in fact, measuring just over eight and a half inches at 8.66". The majority of ATX motherboards will be around 9.5" wide.

Obviously when mounted to the motherboard tray you can see just how much narrower the DFI NF4 Ultra Infinity is with the two outside standoffs not being used. Instead, there are four mounting holes toward the rear edge of the board. Either way, it secures nicely to the tray and should give a little extra breathing room in the Antec Take 4 once installed.

As I promised earlier, I would check to see how the Titan Vanessa L-Type fits in relation to the memory DIMMs. The inset photo shows that when mounted front to back, the first memory slot is not useable. However, when mounted top to bottom, all four slots would be easily accessed and can be used.

With the Asetek VapoChill micro there is no concern of memory slots being covered or interfered with. There really shouldn't be a problem with most coolers but some of the larger ones might limit your memory slot usage. The other concern I had was that the slots were so close to each other and with the Corsair TwinX 2048-4000 kit I am showing here, the clips were rubbing on the opposite module. Not enough to cause a problem but any thicker of a heatspreader might have caused seating issues.

With the test fitting and photos out of the way, it is time to get some stuff installed in the case and ready for testing. We start with the rear I/O panel which poppedd in to place without incident.

I then dropped the motherboard in place and mounted the video card. Clearly that narrow motherboard will give a lot of extra room for all the cables that are designated to congregate behind the hard drives. There will be extra space for everything with the Infinity nF4 Ultra.

You might have seen it on the previous photo, but just in case you didn't, here is an overhead showing how much of the northbridge is covered by the video card located in the PCI-E X16 slot. Without the massive Artic Cooling fan the NB would be exposed but, as it stands, it is covered almost completely. It really won't be a problem but I thought worth mentioning. We can also see that the motherboard battery is partially covered too but the clear CMOS jumper is exposed which is all that matters.

I touched on it earlier that the layout of the expansion slots will allow for both PCI-E X1 slots to be used and this photo confirms my thoughts. Personally I would rather lose a single PCI slot than a PCI-E X1 slot as down the road more and more cards will be using it instead. There are still two accessible PCI slots for a soundcard and something else, so I think this is the best setup DFI could have gone with.

Here is the final product. After a few minutes hooking up cables, which I did need to pull the manual out for, everything is connected and seems to be ready to go. I would like to have been able to figure out the front panel connections without the manual but I really can't complain. The manual itself is very thin and does contain all the connection info for headers on the motherboard but thats about it. I would prefer to see some more info about the BIOS and other system features in a thicker manual from DFI.
Page 6 : BIOS
We begin this in-depth BIOS coverage with the full screen logo that will be the first thing you see when first booting up the machine.


Upon loading the BIOS we are greeted with the main menu selections much like any other Phoenix BIOS.

Standard CMOS Features
section.


These two photos make up the Advanced BIOS Features. Everything that deals with the boot up sequence is located here from the drive boot sequence to the Full Screen Logo option and the ability to enable or disable SMART for hard drive monitoring.


The
Integrated Peripherals
section is were we have the ability to enable and disable many of the onboard devices and controllers.

IDE Function Setup
accessed from the
Integrated Peripherals
section.

IDE Function Setup
.




The PC Health Status not only provides readings of various temperatures and voltages but also allows us the ability to set the safety shutdown temperature, CPU fan speed, and the chipset fan speed.




We have now arrived at the most important section of the BIOS, the
Genie BIOS Setting
section that DFI has become famous for. Everything we will need to overclock the system will be found here. The Infinity setup is nice and makes it very clear what setting we are changing with the frequency and ratio settings up top with the voltage adjustments below.






The
DRAM Configuration
section is chalk full of options for adjusting the memory timings. At first glance, it doesn't appear that any of the settings are different than the LanParty Ultra-D. DFI gets a big thumbs up for not limiting the memory options and giving us the full control we have come to expect from DFI motherboards.

The memory dividers are slightly less than the LanParty Ultra-D with the 180MHz option missing from the list. This would allow a ratio of 1:0.9. There is more than the standard 100/133/166/200 with the addition of the 150 divider but the 180 divider, I have found, is quite useful an option.

The DDR voltage options are 2.5v to 3.2v which is a very nice surprise. I almost expected the DDR voltage to be limited to 3.0v but DFI didn't hold back.


The CPU voltage shows a maximum of 1.850v and I will be testing to see just how much actual stable voltage the motherboard can sustain. Of course I will only go so far but 1.7v doesn't scare me or my little Venice cores, so let's hope the Infinity nF4 Ultra can keep up. That wraps up the BIOS section so that means it is about that time that I put this feature rich BIOS to work and start overclocking.
Page 7 : Overclocking
I don't think I need to re-iterate that DFI has become the king of the overclocking world with their LanParty series. There are many factors that add up to equal a quality motherboard for overclocking. The ability to run at 300+ system bus speeds, maintaining stable yet high voltages, a feature rich BIOS, and doing it all without melting is what it takes. We know that the LanParty boards can, but does the Infinity do the same? Lets find out.
First up will be to see how high the HTT will travel with this guy. With the memory put on a divider and HT multiplier turned down to 3, I will be upping the HTT and dropping the CPU multiplier to keep the CPU frequency at or around 1800MHz. This way I can just leave the CPU voltage alone and concentrate on the HTT. As instability shows up, I will increase the chipset voltage as needed. Here is a chart of what went down:

Getting up to 307HTT stable is nothing that the Infinity nF4 Ultra has to be ashamed of. I was not too sure what to expect based on the physical setup of the motherboard but I was hoping that it would reach 300HTT. At 310HTT the system not only wasn't stable but it actually corrupt data going to the hard drive and I had to re-install windows because it got trashed. I then lowered the HTT in 1 MHz steps and the system stabled out at 307HTT.
Knowing that the HTT can run up to 307HTT its time to see how far this 0518 3000+ Venice will go. On the DFI LanParty Ultra-D this CPU will run at 298*9 with 1.6v all day long in prime95.

The Infinity nF4 Ultra again surprised me with its ability to overclock this CPU. I required a little more voltage than the LanParty Ultra-D to get over 290, but it came very close to reaching the same CPU overclock, falling just 4MHz short on the HTT. Through all stages of the overclocking I would run about 2 hours of Prime95 at each stage and a 32M run of SuperPi to test stability.

The one thing I noticed with the Infinity is that the CPU voltage does tend to fluctuate a little bit where the LanParty Ultra-D is rock solid. Maybe this is the reason that a higher vcore voltage is needed to stabilize the system above 290HTT. It is still pretty impressive that even without the additional power connections that this motherboard can sustain such high voltages and a high overclock. Speaking of voltages, I went ahead to see just how high a voltage the motherboard could provide to the CPU.

I really wasn't able to completely test the amount of stable voltage this motherboard could give due to heat issues. I guess it is time for a water-cooling setup. The vCore, measured by both CPU-Z and SpeedFan would jump once the processor was put under a 100% from running Stress Prime 04. Once it jumped up .15-.20v it would then just jitter at or around the raised voltage. I was able to get a solid
1.72v
to the CPU for a sustainable two hour run in Stress Prime 04. Any higher than that and the CPU would be running hotter than I wished. In the BIOS though, I did go as high as 1.8v for the setting and that netted 1.77v listed. Of course I can't speak for stability at that voltage but it will actually get there.
The HyperTransport is the last BUS to test for overclockability. The last couple of nF4 chipset powered motherboards I had seemed to overclock the HT quite a bit so I thought I would just try the Infinity nF4 Ultra at 1200MHz on the HT and it proved to be quite stable. As we all know, the HT running over 800MHz really shows no performance increase and seeing as the maximum overclock would be around 300HTT, I decided that there was no real point in overclocking the HT further. I will be leaving the HT on a multiplier of 3 or 4 for all of the benchmarking keeping the HT at or under 1000MHz and above 820MHz.

While I was overclocking the CPU to find its max, I also tested to see if I could get the same overclock out of the Corsair Twin-X 2048-4000 that I did on the LanParty Ultra-D motherboard when I recently reviewed it. The maximum stable 1T overclock I could achieve with that combination was 281MHz 3-4-4-8 with 2.9v. With the Infinity, the memory was only stable up to 271MHz. Again, very close to the LanParty motherboard but slightly less than its maximum.
It is hard to say which will be the best overclock because the 180MHz memory divider is missing from the options in the BIOS. With the highest divider the memory will only be running at 241MHz when the system is overclocked at 294*9. If the 180MHz memory divider was available then the memory would be running at 265MHz and would make for a very nice overclock. As is stands, these will be the two overclocks that I will be keeping my eye on during benchmarking:
A
- CPU – 9*294 = 2646MHz on 1.63v
- RAM – 2646/11 = 241MHz or DDR482 @ 3-3-3-6 1T 2.8v.
- HT – 3*294 = 882MHz
B
- CPU – 9*271 = 2484MHz on 1.63v
- RAM – 2439/9 = 271MHz or DDR552 @ 3-4-4-8 1T 2.9v.
- HT – 3*271 = 813MHz
Page 8 : System BenchmarksThis is the complete list of hardware used for the benchmarking:
Control:Benchmarking will consist of PCMark 04 to test the overall systems ability and performance. I will run the default test on default settings for PCMark 04. Following the PCMark 04 results we will look at the Super Pi results of 1M digit, 2M digit, and 32M digit calculations. Super Pi is an intense number calculation stress test that is not only a good barometer for the CPUs ability within a system but the memories as well. Speaking of memory, Everest Ultimates memory bandwidth and SiSoft Sandras memory bandwidth test will also be run on both machines. This will identify any restrictions or differences between the Infinity and LanParty motherboards. Along with the memory benchmarks of SiSoft Sandra, the CPU Arithmetic and CPU Multi-Media benchmarks will also be included in the results. The last of the programs used for testing the systems ability will be a couple tests from Science Mark v2.0.
AMD64 3000+ Venice core – LBBLE 0518CPAW
Corsair TwinX 2048-4000
Asetek VapoChill Micro ULN
HIS X800GTO IceQ II 570MHz Core / 600MHz Memory
Antec 450W Smart Power v2.0
WD Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA
Windows XP Pro + Latest Updates
Components were mounted in the Antec Take 4 case.Motherboards:
DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-DDFI Infinity nF4 Ultra
In addition to these overall systems tests, I will be utilizing HD Tach to determine if there is a difference between the two motherboards two disk SATA RAID 0, single disk IDE, single disk SATA and single disk SATAII performance. In the past, there has been no real difference between the nForce4s ability in disk performance across different platforms but I thought I would check just to see. All benchmarks in both the system and graphics sections were ran three times with a reboot in-between and an average of the three runs were charted in the graphs. Here are the results of those benchmarks:
PCMark 04 shows the slightest of slight advantages to the LanParty motherboard both at the stock speeds and maximum overclock speeds as well. With PCMark 04 being a good overall system test, it looks like this should be a fairly even battle down the rest of this page.
As with the results above, the Infinity nF4 Ultra is almost identical in performance to the LanParty Ultra-D. The difference of 12 seconds on a 32M digit calculation is really minimal and equals out to about a half a percentage point.
These results from Everest Ultimate are the first of the pure memory bandwidth results. All three tests, Read, Write, and Latency, seem to favor the Infinity at the overclocked end of the spectrum while the stock settings give the advantage to the LanParty. Notice the Read results of the Infinity overclocked 1:1 with the RAM up to 271, obviously this motherboard and memory combination like to run in synch with the processor.
Are you beginning to notice a pattern? Good, because there isn't one other than the fact that the performance is very much the same. If anything, the LanParty Ultra-D seems to slightly outperform the Infinity nF4 Ultra by a sliver at stock speeds and at the maximum overclock the infinity takes that sliver back.
The HD Tach results that I compiled did not surprise me at all. As with every other time I compared drive performance on two or more motherboards with the nForce 4 chipset, there was no difference in performance at all. This wraps up the system testing and there really is no clear cut winner between these two fine offerings from DFI. At this point we will shift our attention to the gaming performance and graphics subsystem on these motherboards.
Page 9 : Graphics BenchmarksNext on our list of benchmarks for these two motherboards will be to test the graphics system on the PCI-E BUS. The HIS IceQ II X800GTO overclocked to 570MHz on the core and the memory to 600MHz will serve as the weapon of choice for both machines using ATI's Catalyst 5.10 driver set. As with the system benchmarks, all tests were run three times with an average of the three used for the data shown below. We start out with the 3DMark series:
The tight battle between the Infinity and LanParty motherboards, both sporting the nF4 Ultra chipset, continues to the graphics page. In 3DMark there doesn't seem to be any large differences between the two. This should again result in similar results throughout the variety of games we look at as well.
Doom III is a very graphics intense game that really leans on the video card performance to keep the frame rate up. We can clearly see that there is no advantage for either board through the entire resolution range. The last three games are more of a strain on the entire system and not solely on the graphics card. You will notice that the 800×600 results show the system acting as the bottleneck and as the resolution increases the video card then does. The slight advantage goes to the LanParty board by a few frames per second.
With the results from Far Cry, we can see that again the system is the bottleneck throughout the resolution range, but on the Infinity board we begin to see what becomes a pattern. As the resolution increases and the video card shifts to being the bottleneck, the Infinity nF4 Ultra starts to fall behind the LanParty Ultra-D.
Again, the two motherboards are very close at the first two resolutions but at 1280×1024 the LanParty Ultra-D maintains its frames per second much better than the Infinity does as it starts to drop off. This pattern that has developed would indicate a slightly under performing PCI-E BUS when compared to the LanParty Ultra-D.
Unreal Tournament 04 is not much of a strain on the graphics system with the overclocked X800GTO and it shows here. With the graphics system not being the main focus of the UT 2004 results, the Infinity takes a small victory in the overclocked performance and a slight loss at the stock speeds. This is pretty much in-line with the system benchmarks.
Page 10 : ConclusionIt is about that time where my final thoughts culminate into what is the conclusion of the review. The DFI Infinity nF4 Ultra is a
very solid motherboard
. The build quality is great and the components that are used are top notch and seem to be almost the same as the LanParty Ultra-D. I have basically compared these two motherboards throughout the review and have come to the conclusion that the Infinity nF4 Ultra is almost the same model but without the options or accessory package. Call it the base model if you will with the LanParty Ultra-D being the GT or Type-R version that has slightly better performance and more buttons.The overclockability is there and is better than any other motherboard in this price range, but just not quite the same as the LanParty counterpart. The only option that I could find that was different in the BIOS is the lack of the 180 memory divider which is disappointing as I find I use that divider a lot. The voltage does not seem to be as stable as the LanParty and that is probably the reason that the overclocking is slightly less. The system performance of the Infinity nF4 Ultra seems to be very much the same with the LanParty Ultra-D as they exchanged blows throughout testing. Once we got to the graphics, however, there was a decided and noticeable difference when it came to performance in games. At higher resolutions or in Doom III where the video card became the focus point of the results, the Infinity nF4 Ultra seemed to stutter just a bit indicating a performance hit on the PCI-E BUS.
Other than that though, the Infinity series seems to be an impressively solid offering from DFI. Without the additional power connections for the motherboard it leads to a cleaner looking case and will not stress the power supply as much as the LanParty series so that may be another advantage for the Infinity motherboard. The other thing that may be a slight advantage is the size. That almost full inch of width it saves from the standard ATX size may come in handy if your case is small so keep that in mind as well. With a price under $100 this motherboard is going to be tough to beat in the overclocking ring as far as ability and options go so for this, I give the DFI Infinity nF4 Ultra an Overclockers Online Budget Award.
Advantages:
- Overclocks very well
- System performance is equal to higher priced boards
- Not quite the full ATX width
- Sub $100 for this quality is a good value
Disadvantages:
- The slight graphics performance issue
- Lack of the 180 memory divider
Overclockers Online would like to thank DFI for supplying this Infinity nF4 Ultra for this review.