New DFI nF4 Ultra-D build...so perty!

Sorry? WHY?!? Ask away. It's a heck of alot smarter than making an uninformed decision that you'll regret later.

That's the stuff! If you're a gambling man you can possibly cut some cost by trying for similar(same?) chips with twinmos Speed Premium. If you were to order 2x512Mb TMSP and got sticks that said AA4T on them then you'd have just saved $100 for virtually the same memory. The downside to this rosey picture is that Twinmos uses two suppliers, one is infineon(good) and PSC(BAD BAD) so if you get AADT modules...then cry, becasue they suxxor. I got unlucky once and lucky once. Sold the poor PSC modules for what I paid though so it turned out great. Another problem is the TMSP 512Mb modules are difficult to find, cuz the secret's out. I'd recommend the OCZ VX for most, since it has a rock solid warranty up to 3.5v and OCZ is a fantastic company.

My Albatron(s) are the Trinity PC6600GT models. They're NOT VIVO. They have HDTV output capabilities as well as s-video, but no input. There's a PC6600GTV I believe that has VIVO capability but don't quote me on that. I have an ATI AIW to handle video input for me so I wasn't concerned with VIVO on this rig. So far I've been overjoyed with my $155 Albatrons. They're slightly this side of loud, but not unbearable. They come with a solid cooling solution(for stock) and respectable copper ramsinks. We'll see how they do in SLI lite, hopefully later today, but thus far I'm delighted with my decision.

Sure i have not to delay it if i wanna a modable one.

I had a concern about what the meaning of the revisions on new DFIs boards.
After posting a lot of questions on dfi-street i didnt get any answer that convinced me to buy the board.
Someone (AG, moderator) post few days ago that he is got and gonna build a rig with his new Ultra rev 021 . He never explained to anyone if there is a new revision of Ultra!! The only thing he said is that revisions are only bios updates (which is wronge cause SLI came with A01 rev and same bios 1/25/05!!!!). Another guy said is mistype (!!!), and this is the rev of Karajan module. Can u verify that? Can u see the rev of your Karajan module?

The only reason that i dont have the board yet is that i dont kno if the problems many users have is on hardware or bios...


thanks again and again

PS. Maxtor has a seek time at 9.0 and i heard is not native SATA.
Seagate is native SATA and seek at 8.0. I was adviced by a frind to go to seagate...have any reviews, opinios?

Lookit what the nice UPS dude bringed unto moi?

Now you should able to run the system without a hitch. Bring more intriguing results and pics. Everyone is watching.

spyrosDFI said:

Sure i have not to delay it if i wanna a modable one.

I had a concern about what the meaning of the revisions on new DFIs boards.
After posting a lot of questions on dfi-street i didnt get any answer that convinced me to buy the board.
Someone (AG, moderator) post few days ago that he is got and gonna build a rig with his new Ultra rev 021 . He never explained to anyone if there is a new revision of Ultra!! The only thing he said is that revisions are only bios updates (which is wronge cause SLI came with A01 rev and same bios 1/25/05!!!!). Another guy said is mistype (!!!), and this is the rev of Karajan module. Can u verify that? Can u see the rev of your Karajan module?

The only reason that i dont have the board yet is that i dont kno if the problems many users have is on hardware or bios...


thanks again and again

PS. Maxtor has a seek time at 9.0 and i heard is not native SATA.
Seagate is native SATA and seek at 8.0. I was adviced by a frind to go to seagate...have any reviews, opinios?

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Interesting. I too read some posts over at dfi where they refer to different revisions and then quickly note that the hardware is the same, but the boards are "later". That doesn't really make alot of sense to me. Later serial numbers yeah, but later revision codes? I'll have a peak at the Karajan module, I've quite frankly totally ignored it. It has the blah blah ACL850 on it rather than a high resolution chip and I needed SPDIF Optical output so I bypassed it and tapped digital out from the nF4 chip with a homebrew(GHETTO) optical bracket.

I know the Maxtor has a slightly higher rated seek but those numbers are pretty close to meaningless. I'd rather have a 16Mb cache than a 1.0s rated seek advantage. There's a review floating around that pits the DM10 or MaxlineIII(same thing) against the (KING)raptors in both single & RAID0. I believe the Maxtors more than held their own. I'll try to dig it up for you.

Gongrats TimoneX
Keep up the good work

FSBxtreme said:

Now you should able to run the system without a hitch. Bring more intriguing results and pics. Everyone is watching.

Click to expand...

RIGHT after the UPS dude man left the Fedex brotha showed up with my 2nd 6600GT! My initial enthusiasm wore of in about .5 seconds though when I opened the box. WOW newegg saw to it that this refurbed card would be completely destroyed in shipping. They stuck it in the anti-stat bag...no tape. Then they put the accessories in there WITHOUT the cardboard spacers or peanuts. Basically it was flopping around in there the whole trip.

CRUNCH SMASH SHAZAAM!!!

Well now when I opened the box I quite litterally POURED Albatron parts from the bag into the box.

Nice packing newegg guys! No computer enthusiast on earth would be so ignorant. HAEL when I send broken equipment back for replacement I do 10x better at packing than that!!! I'll post up some pix of the carnage.

CRUNCH SMASH SHAZAAM!!!

Sorry to hear about your dilemma dewd but that did make me chuckle.

My DFI ultra d should be here in a few hours but I dont have anything to go with it so it will be awhile before I know if it is still moddable. Ordered on 2/14

Note the snapped off cap just laying on the board. The heatsink is quite heavy copper and as a result both heatsink retainers were broken. There's a broken regulator on there too, but the damage there appears superficial. I'd be tempted to just solder the cap back on and sub some different HS retainers were I not so concerned about core damage with that heavy heatsink smacking it for a few thousand miles worth.

I could just choke those guys. Lucky for them I'm a non-violent sort of chap.

TimoneX said:

RIGHT after the UPS dude man left the Fedex brotha showed up with my 2nd 6600GT! My initial enthusiasm wore of in about .5 seconds though when I opened the box. WOW newegg saw to it that this refurbed card would be completely destroyed in shipping. They stuck it in the anti-stat bag...no tape. Then they put the accessories in there WITHOUT the cardboard spacers or peanuts. Basically it was flopping around in there the whole trip.

CRUNCH SMASH SHAZAAM!!!

Well now when I opened the box I quite litterally POURED Albatron parts from the bag into the box.

Nice packing newegg guys! No computer enthusiast on earth would be so ignorant. HAEL when I send broken equipment back for replacement I do 10x better at packing than that!!! I'll post up some pix of the carnage.

Click to expand...

I m very sorry hear that. i hope they gonna replace that ASAP.

YEEAP. Closer inspection reveals a resistor broken off on the GPU packaging. RMA!!!!

IDIOTS!!!

Edit: I sent them this:

"The card is completely destroyed due solely to ridiculously incompetent packaging. Just tossed in a box with no packing peanuts or the original cardboard spacer. I'm not impressed and would like a replacement(obviously) and reimbursement for return shipping. I'll provide pix of the carnage as required."

I feel betta.

Egad, My DFI board just showed up. Newegg did a beautiful job of packing it. Peanuts galore, nice big box (unscathed) but when I opened it the mobo box had the corners crushed and upon further inspection it had such a hard ride over from Taiwan or wherever it came from there was a hole in the anti static bag around the area where the keyboard and mouse plugged in and several other places (especially the mosfet sinks) that you could tell it had one heck of a ride. Problem is it will be at least a month or more before I can test it and dunno if the egg will make it good if it isn't .

i'll test it for you

hi_its_ryan said:

i'll test it for you

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LOL yah thanks. Hey just send me your processor and vid card and I will check it out for myself.

Hey Timonex

Did u take a peek at karajan's revision?

Timonex,

which mobo/chipset drivers did you use: version? Did you use the Nforce stand alone from the Nvidia website or the ones from the CD? I have this board and plan to do the mod, but was wondering if chipset driver could impact on ability to go SLI.

spyrosDFI said:

Hey Timonex

Did u take a peek at karajan's revision?

Click to expand...

I did. It says R.02 on it.

bryschm said:

Timonex,

which mobo/chipset drivers did you use: version? Did you use the Nforce stand alone from the Nvidia website or the ones from the CD? I have this board and plan to do the mod, but was wondering if chipset driver could impact on ability to go SLI.

Click to expand...

I'm using the stand alone nF4 drivers. 6.39 I believe. The chipset driver won't prevent you from running SLI without a bridge, but the forceware drivers will. I've been experimenting with 71.81 and with 2 vid cards and no bridge it just hands me a blank screen in 3dMark01se. It's detecting the absence of the bridge and disabling SLI rendering.

nVidia is funny people, this stuff will stop NOONE. I was just examining two companies that are now packaging confirmed moddable Ultra-D boards with SLI bridges. Check it out:

http://www.mittoni.com.au/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/1882

http://www.pccasegear.com/prod1847.htm

These bridges are going to be everywhere very soon.

a modded ultra-d with a bridge will give 90% of the performance of true sli, or will it indeed give the exact same performance?

Exact same. There's no difference between a modded Ultra-D and an SLI-D.