Overclocking

In order to find the overclocking potential of the DFI LanParty NF4, we set the CPU multiplier to 5x with a memory divider of 2:1. This is to make sure that neither the CPU nor the memory are limiting our overclock here. The LDT multiplier was dropped to x2 as well.

The maximum FSB the board could run at a chipset voltage of 1.72V was 450 MHz. Further increasing voltage (remember, the settings go up to 1.9V) will sure yield overclocks into the 500 MHz region, but this also decreases chipset life drastically, especially if you do not have proper cooling on the chipset.

Above settings might give impressive FSB speeds, but performance is lacking, because the memory is running very slow.

Our "@ 2700 MHz" benchmarks were run with a CPU multiplier of 9x at 300 MHz. As cooling a watercooling system utilizing the Swiftech Storm waterblock was used. Since our memory can not run that fast, we had to drop the memory ratio to 2:3 which means the memory was running at DDR400 while the CPU ran at 2700 MHz. The board was no limiting factor here at any time. In fact I played with the Sapphire Athlon64 Crossfire motherboard a few days ago and had major issues getting 2700 MHz stable with the exact same setup. I had to tweak BIOS settings for a long time, increase the CPU core voltage beyond reason and remount waterblock and redo thermal paste about six times until it was stable.

With the DFI it was just:

• plug CPU in
• do not give big attention to thermal paste application
• slap waterblock on top
• screw down somehow, no big attention need here either
• boot, go into the BIOS and change CPU voltage:1.55V, CPU clock:300 FSB, LDT multiplier:x3, memory divider:2:3
• Boot Windows and run benchmarks - rock stable.

After playing with this board for a while I must say this is an awesome overclocking board. It offers all the features and settings you may want, plus a few extra BIOS tweaks. The option to run your memory at a voltage higher than 3.3V is pretty unique in the motherboard business. Other things like five fan available headers, heatsinks on all parts that could become hot and the special power connector completes the package.

One drawback to having so many options in the BIOS is that the average user might get confused with all of them. I found the "Auto" settings for memory to work quite good.