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Thanx to DFI for a KILLER Birthday Present!

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Lonely Raven

If you traded with me please leave me Heatware Sen
Joined
Feb 2, 2002
Location
Wheaton, IL
I'm a die hard AMD fan, but I'm tellin' ya, the latest P4C series
are just monsters! Mated up with a good motherboard and
some decent, hell even midline DDR and this stuff just RIPS!!

Dig it!

P4C26.JPG


Thanx to DFI for sending me a motherboard for my birthday!!
This new board seems to address 98% of the voltage issues
that I griped at them about, feels more stable, and has all
the PAT Enchancement tweaked to the point that it *wants*
to run all the time!!

More testing to ensue! Damn I need some better memory,
this board just outdoes everything I own right now!

(what little that is left that is)
 
It's the new 875Pro II or B or whatever they are calling it this
week. Yeah, the LAN Party.

The last one was nice, this one stomps it!

I just wish they put firewire on it, that would make it the perfect
motherboard for me!
 
hehe, some cheap Cooler Master heatsink that I picked up at
CompUSA for $10 because I thought it looked nice. Granted, I
did upgrade the cooler with a TMD fan.

It runs a bit hot, mid 40s Celcius, but I was planning on water
cooling, more for show then overclock since these P4 really don't
seem to need it.

I'm just flabbergasted as how solid this is running.

Before I could barely hit 275FSB and get into windows (old 875Pro)
Now I'm playing games while running super-PI in the background!

I'm talking with OCZ right now about some new memory!
 
I have been waiting to see something like this for a long time.

What memory are you using currently?
 
Lonely Raven said:
Thanx to DFI for sending me a motherboard for my birthday!!

How did you get them to send you a motherboard for you birthday. My birthday is comming up, and I sure could use a new MB. :D
 
For this test I only used some Corsair PC-3200 and dropped
the ratio to 3:2. I'm trying to find some OCZ or Kingston or
something that will do 233FSB at CAS 2.0

I got the motherboard from DFI because I'm a DFI motherboard
tester. I got this job by sending them a nasty letter about the
first LAN Party because the BIOS was so screwed up, and
the voltages were low. After a while of talking with them, pointing
out errors, they just started sending me motherboards and
asking me to write reports on how they perform.

So I totally lucked into it I guess you can say.

So right now, I can honestly say, that the DFI NFII is my favorite
nForce 2 board, and this DFI 875Pro would be my favorite P4
board, if only it had Firewire. Everything else on it is awesome!

Though, honestly, I'm still afraid to upgrade the BIOS on my
old one. LOL
 
I'm still tweaking it out. I managed to crash it once last night
after playing the new Dungeon Siege Expansion for 4 hours
with SuperPi running in the background. The crash looks to be
heatrelated, and I can't back the voltage off the CPU any
without losing stability.

So I need to track down a better cooler or get off my *** and
install my watercooling setup. I have all brand new Tygon tubing,
new Ehiem water pump, and danger den stuff that I've been
sitting on for over a year now!! I've just not had the desire to
water cool. Too much work for minimal improvement in OC with
todays killer chips.

As for 3d performance specifically, well I won't know what the
BEST of the BEST is till I get some better memory from OCZ.
Right now I'm running Corsair PC-3200 at 5-2-2 CAS 2.0 with
the ratio down to 3:2 which gives me 180something. I need to
find some KILLER memory that can do 233+ FSB with CAS 2.0
so I can run at 5:4 ratio.

So for right now, with my memory so low FSB wise, I get
20,454 3dMarks with an ATI Radion 9800 Pro with stock speed!!
I'm hoping to add another 500 points with overclocking the ATI,
and another 1000 points once I get some good memory.

I've not tested it with any actual games, as I find 3dMark 2001
has plenty of granularity and sensitivity to help me gauge what
my tweaks are doing to the system. I also follow this up with
Sandra memory benchmarks, which currently aren't looking too
good with the DDR as such a low Mhz.
 
I should probalby mention, stock, non-overclocked P4 2.6c with
my ATI 9800 Pro gets me about 17,280 3dMarks. While I don't
trust their 3dmark 2003, I really think that 2001 is sensitive to
whole system improvements. So you have to figure this OC
is getting over 3000 3dMarks, it's got to be really speeding the
system up! LOL
 
That is some nice work Lonely Raven. Any problems with sound or anything at that speed?
 
Nah, I'm pretty sure the fixed PCI/AGP is actually working on
this motherboard, unlike some others.

And one nice thing they did with this board, is there are actually
seperate output jacks for the surround sound. I mean, most
force you to use the microphone for rear channel or something.
This one has center/sub, mains, and rears, plus seperate
microphone!

That's a life saver for someone that uses the microphone for
gaming and still wants surround sound.
 
Sounds pretty sweet. I think I will have to put it on my x-mas list. Any particular reason you went with the 2.6 p4?
 
Yeah, I felt that the 2.4c ran out of steam before the 2.6c
did.

In my experience with the P4 800Mhz FSB series, I've found
that the higher the overall overclock, the better the system
performance. Quite the opposite from what I was used to with
the AMD side where Highest FSB was more important then highst
total Mhz.

So, where I could get 275FSB on a P4 2.4c and really couldn't
get much higher...I honestly wasn't sure if it was the motherboard
or the processor holding me up. So IMHO I found that running
a P4 2.6c at 275 was overall more beneficial then a P4 2.4c at
the same. That extra 1X sure means a lot in performance,
especially considering on average a P4 2.6c is only about $20
more then the 2.4c
 
To further expound on my theory a bit.

If you had a weak system, or memory or something was holding
you back, my recommendation would be to shoot for 250FSB
and get the highest rated processor you could afford. IE a 2.8c
at 250FSB would be more beneficial to you then a 2.4c and
breaking the piggy bank for mad memory or a new system board
just for a few extra Mhz.
 
Are you getting this stuff for free??? If so, where and how can I get some.... and can I have your leftovers???? :D

<slightly off topic>
Do you have any experience with the DFI PS83-BL's??? I'll be oc'ing my 2.6c on that board prolly next week. Do you have any insight on how it performs as an overclocker???
</slightly off topic>
 
Last edited:
No, not free. I have to write reports on them and try fixes
when available. Each new motherboard I get, I put about 30
hours of actual hands on time. And I'm not talking gaming for
30 hours, I'm talking about trying out each and every feature
from something as simple as the Floppy drive to Networking
with the Firewire to RAID with IDE vs RAID with SATA. As well
as your typical overclocking with 3 different processors and
about a half dozen different pairs of memory.

So no, I don't think I get them for free. I work really hard to
get them, but I don't pay for them with Cash.
 
Lonely Raven said:
No, not free. I have to write reports on them and try fixes
when available. Each new motherboard I get, I put about 30
hours of actual hands on time. And I'm not talking gaming for
30 hours, I'm talking about trying out each and every feature
from something as simple as the Floppy drive to Networking
with the Firewire to RAID with IDE vs RAID with SATA. As well
as your typical overclocking with 3 different processors and
about a half dozen different pairs of memory.

So no, I don't think I get them for free. I work really hard to
get them, but I don't pay for them with Cash.

Not a bad gig at all!! ;)
 
Yeah, so I thought when I started. But try putting in 10-12
hours a day fixing other peoples computers, then coming home
and having to muck with DFI's flaky BIOS and having to reinstall
Windows 3 times a night. It's not always fun.

The end result is a free motherboard, but man, I sure pay for it! LOL
 
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