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darn its hard to make decisions init.....
what board would you recommend to pair with an Opteron 146 with 4x256Mb sticks of Corsair TWINX 3200cl2.5
from what i've read the DFI is the better for overclocking and i hear the onboard sound is good too....is this correct?
I think the DFI is highly regarded for o/clocking because it allows insanely high voltages on RAM for silly speeds :)
Although, if you want silly high speeds, I'd rather get two sticks of 512MB than 4 sticks of 256. Generally, boards will overclock better with the least amount of sticks - but you do want two to benefit from dual-channel memory ;)
Soundwise, I'm not too sure. I bought the MSI K8N Platinum SLI for that reason - a decent SB Live 24 onboard chip rather than a "cheapish" Altec 850 codec.
If you want the maximum in terms of quality and performance, you're probably better off with a dedicated PCI sound card because a built-in codec will use (albeit minimal) cpu ressources.
I don't know about the ASUS but the DFI is reputed not to like Corsair RAM .
Nope the DFI isn't best of friends with Corsair. though saying that DFI street have a guide on how to get it going on it.Quote:
Originally Posted by BUFF
DFI do rule though (completely unbiased opinion here: honest ;))
*Whistles*.....
Lets see which 1 Rys liked...
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=1009
:D
SLI-D only have 4 sata port compared to 8 on the Asus. But yeah DFI rulez if u oc it :D. The oc setting on Asus is purely dissapointing lol
superb...thanks for the info and the link Lee
Of course there is always http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=1315 or the regular non-Fatality version ...
i also have the ultiate decision to make what 839 board to go for i have doen hurse of research and what i gatjhered that in short ifyour prepared to fiddle about for a long time on the dfi then good overclockablility will be your reward but the asus being a solid stable product that is still capable of good clocking has to be my choice
I have the Asus A8N-SLI (standard) and its a fantastic board, but when the Opty gets here a DFI SLI-D will be arriving with it (hopefully)
The main reason I am doing this is because the DFI will hopefully enable me to get more out of the Opty than the ASUS, I have 2.6 out of my 3700+ on stock cooling but it wont let me go any higher even with better cooling.
Like I said, the Asus is a top board, and if you go for the standard version is something like £30 cheaper than the DFI, which can go on an XP90 with a decent high flow fan, which might enable you to get more out of it.
With the memory, along with everyone else I think its best to go for 2x512MB sticks instead of 4 256's, will leave you room to add another set later down the line as more games (I assume its going to be for gaming?) are looking for that extra RAM
If I were you, I'd go for the DFI though, its worth the extra £30 in my opinion, which is why I am letting go of my Asus.
I found NO CPU overclock difference between A8N-SLI Premium and DFI NF4 SLI-D
But hell, A8N-SLI is just so HORRIBLE in ram overclocking. I get auto-reboots whenever I get my ram over 250 (even though it worked at 300 on my DFI). Going to try it again probably tomorrow.
DFI's ram setting is really nice (but probably will take a week per GIG of ram to tweak your ram setting)
The Asus board have a better layout IMO, and of course the heatpipe is very nice.
And for the memory, don't go for 256MB and 512MB sticks. You'll regret this. Although its not hard to get 4 sticks of ram running, they do run slower (and if one of the stick is dragging you down, your overclocking going to be crap)
The SIL3114 IMO is just crap, don't bother with the 8 ports since you're unlikely to use more than 4HDDs anyway (7HDD+1DVD if you use the IDE as well)
Took me ages but still can't get the SIL3114 to work with single drive. It also caused numerous BSOD on my server (Tyan S2882). Since then I never EVER use any Silicon Image stuff again. I just wish they use the marvell SATA chip instead even though its a fair bit more expensive.
One other thing to consider, is that the DFI has less space between it's PCIe16 slots, which is a pain in the a**e for SLI paired cards with big HSF's...
S.
Might want to wait for the DFI Expert, it fixed the space issues.