Overclocking

In order to find the overclocking potential of the DFI LanParty NF4, we put a Dangerden TDX waterblock on our CPU and set the multiplier to 4x with a memory divider of 2:1. This is to make sure that neither the CPU nor the memory are limiting our overclock here.

I was a bit disappointed by the maximum FSB of 363 MHz, especially after hearing that Mar's board does way over 400 MHz. One possible explanation might be that NVIDIA is speed-binning their chipsets. Those which can reach higher speeds are turned into the SLI version, the slower ones end up on Ultra boards. Nevertheless, as long as an AMD64 board gives you 350 MHz, it is pretty much guaranteed, your memory or CPU will be the limiting factor, once you use a performance optimized setting.

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



For more real-life overclocking we left the multiplier at 9x and slowly increased the FSB. 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, the CPU's limit is around 2700 MHz.

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 headers, heatsinks on all parts that could become hot and the additional power connectors complete the package.

What I miss a little bit is an own overclocking software by DFI. If I consider their talent for building overclocker boards - Wow their overclocking software would rock.