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Chaintech VNF4/Ultra (NF4 W/PCI-E) -- I got Mine!! The Good and Bad So Far...

M

MajorPayne

Senior member
I recieved my VNF4 Ultra from Newegg yesterday, and got it set up and and running successfully, and I wanted to share my experiences/feelings about this board so far.

I got the system set up and running (very easily except for the RAID array and RAM configuration, which I will get to). My setup with this board is:

Thermaltake Xaser II Case
X-Connect Ultra 500 Watt PSU
VNF4 Ultra Motherboard
AMD 3000+ 90NM Socket 939 CPU (Currently clocked stock at 1.8GHZ
2 GB RAM (4 512MB Sticks of Kingston HyperX 3200)
Gigabyte Geforce 6600 GT
2 120GB Western Digital 7200 RPM SATA Drives in RAID 0 Array
2 Optical Drives (1 Dual Layer DVD +-R +-RW, 1 DVD ROM)
1 3.5" Floppy Drive
Stock cooling for all components (so far)

When I got my package, I already had my old system torn down, and ready to add the new MOBO, Video Card, and CPU. I took everything out of the package, and noticed the manual -- or should I say the 1 page of manual excerpt which was actually included. The excerpt only shows WHAT the components on the board are, how to hook the Front panel headers, etc. No RAID or SATA instructions. It tells you to email chaintech support for the full manual -- now how the hell do you do this when your only system is in parts on the floor, and you need to know how to get RAID set up!! Fortunately I have a laptop, so I jogged over to thier site, and downloaded the manual -- It ALSO does not cover HOW to create a RAID array -- although it does walk you through creating a RAID Driver disk for WINXP installation via the F6 key, which is good, since chaintech did not see fit to SUPPLY a RAID driver disk. Finally, I was able to discover that the option to create RAID is only enabled if you hook into the bottom set of SATA channels (I put my 2 connectors in the top 2 (labled SATA 3 and 4) by mistake initially. It DOES offer a large set of RAID types to choose from. I choose the "OPTIMAL" stripe size -- it offered 16, 32, 64, 128 and OPTIMAL sizes -- I will have to try others later to see which works best.

The next problem I tackled was that my memory was detected at 333 MHZ -- It should be 400 MHZ. Upon further research, I found that most boards apparently don't like using all 4 DIMM slots in dual channel at 400MHZ -- I will be playing with this more tonight to see if I can correct this, but as of now, if I cannot work around this, I have to choose between 1GB of Dual Channel 400MHZ memory, or 2GB of Dual Channel 333MHZ memory -- the chaintech website says that the board supports all 4 dimm slots in dual channel, but I am reserving judgement on this, until I have got my RAM working in Dual channel at 400MHZ.

Windows installed fine, and the software installed fine, except for the RAID monitoring software, which errors out as soon as Windows Logs on. I just disabled it, and everything runs fine so far. I also disabled the damn Nvidia firewall -- I have Norton Internet Security, which is more configurable, and has less ANNOYING ALERTS that pop up for every damn program in existence.

I have not had a chance to benchmark much before work this morning, but I DID run 3DMark 2003 (with the latest patch, because the original I had would not even run on my new system -- athough it seems to be a 3dMark issue, since the patch fixed it). My 3DMark score on the system (running only 1GB of RAM in dual channel at 400 MHZ, since I have removed the other set for now) was 10,110 -- not sure of the last digit, since I did not write it down). A very big boost considering my old rig (a socket 754 3000+ with a 9600XT) got around 4000!

The settings in the BIOS are many, and undocumented -- most of the downloadable manual simply says that Setting X should only be changed by people who know what they are doing -- gee thanks for the info Chaintech. I have not had a chance to play with any of them, but the CPU clock setting does not appear as a FSB setting, but as an actual CPU clock setting, and I can change it and save it, even though I have a 3000+, which should be multiplier locked -- so I belive this toys with the FSB. With luck, I will play some more tonight, and post my results here tomorrow.

Has anyone else gotten this board, and if so, have you had any similar experiences -- any advice would be welcome, since documentation for many of the features of this board are spotty to nonexistent. Also, if anyone has advice regarding my RAM issue (see above), or how best to overclock this board, please add your post! The more people we get talking about this one, the sooner we will all get our boards running full-out!



 
Originally posted by: webekyle
i may be getting one do to the fact the 360 dollar ram i bought wont work in my msi k8n neo platinum (wont run ddr2)...(so the guy says that i bought it from) [he's prolly right huh?]

heres what i bought from someone on ebay:

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=20-227-202&depa=0
Click to expand...


Hmmm... You might want to read the sticky thread on the A64-939 memory matric here at http://forums.anandtech.com/me...AR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear which answered my questions about my RAM, and which addresses yours as well. The tests they have been running show you get the same basic results from using cheaper 3200 memory than 4200, etc, and even underclocking to allow you to reach better timings gives a better result. I wish I had seen this earlier, but it still saves me a BUNCH of trouble. You might want to check it out.
 
I got my vnf4 ultra on monday but cant set it up yet since the CPU has not arrived(bought somewhere else) It shipped fast but has been stuck in a nightmare fedex backlog of somekind. Left atlanta last thursday as a 2day pack shipment and stopped in memphis and sat there till last night.

I call and complain today and they say they are backlogged and giving airplane priority to overnight stuff and since it was well past the 2 days anyway they just shipped it by truck to california. So its going to end up being over a week late, never had that bad a service or late time from fedex ever before.


 
Originally posted by: jgiants
I got my vnf4 ultra on monday but cant set it up yet since the CPU has not arrived(bought somewhere else) It shipped fast but has been stuck in a nightmare fedex backlog of somekind. Left atlanta last thursday as a 2day pack shipment and stopped in memphis and sat there till last night.

I call and complain today and they say they are backlogged and giving airplane priority to overnight stuff and since it was well past the 2 days anyway they just shipped it by truck to california. So its going to end up being over a week late, never had that bad a service or late time from fedex ever before.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that.... I had the opposite problem a few days ago.... I bought a different mobo from MWave.com (Never do that I learned), then bought the A64 3000+ and Gforce 6600 on newegg. Newegg stuff arrived almost 2 days early (and I got the cheap shipping). Mwave finaly sent me an email 2 days AFTER I got the stuff from newegg (ordered at same time), and it said that my order was "confirmed", but when I looked in the order it said that the mobo was recalled (I do not remember what the mobo was, but it was a different NForce 4 -- but NOT a better one, so I guess it was better this way). So I have 2 parts before X-mas, and 1 part on Teusday after!! Urg!

It IS worth the wait tho... I think you will like this board quite a bit
 
Originally posted by: MajorPayne
Originally posted by: webekyle
i may be getting one do to the fact the 360 dollar ram i bought wont work in my msi k8n neo platinum (wont run ddr2)...(so the guy says that i bought it from) [he's prolly right huh?]

heres what i bought from someone on ebay:

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=20-227-202&depa=0
Click to expand...


Hmmm... You might want to read the sticky thread on the A64-939 memory matric here at http://forums.anandtech.com/me...AR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear which answered my questions about my RAM, and which addresses yours as well. The tests they have been running show you get the same basic results from using cheaper 3200 memory than 4200, etc, and even underclocking to allow you to reach better timings gives a better result. I wish I had seen this earlier, but it still saves me a BUNCH of trouble. You might want to check it out.
Click to expand...

well....come to find out, they wont have any athlon 64 mobo's running ddr2 ram till atleast february...

any one with a mobo that supports 240 pin ddr2 ram want to buy some high-high-high-end memory?

$355.00 shipped email me at webekyle@yahoo.com ....[sbcglobal.net]
 
More on my VNF4 Ultra overclocking experience....

When I got the board, I had originally had 2 sticks of 512 Kingston HyperX 3200 DDR, and I saw 4 dual channel slots on the board, so I thought to my self, I will just get 2 more sticks of the same memory, and max out the board -- stooopid me, I did not research, or I would have learned that there are issues with filling all 4 dimms on a A64 Mobo with 400MHZ ram! The nice thing is that this board has EXCELLENT options for setting ram, easily letting you set the speed in MHZ (multiply by the CPU speed setting on the CPU/Voltage screen to get the actual final ram speed), Cas, Tras, TRCD,TRP, and TRAS individually (and it even shows ALL of these at boot too!).

Initially the mobo would only recognize the ram as 333MHZ, but last night I was able to (easily) get it to run all 4 512 MB Dimms (which ARE the ones with chips on BOTH sides of the RAM) at 400MHZ Dual Channel, at 2,2,2,4, BUT it is stuck with a command rate of 2T and the motherboard will NOT let me override this (the option apparently goes away when you have 4 dimms filled). This is OK, since I kind of expected it, and the performance boost of 2GB at 2T is 500 points in 3dmark 03 over 1GB at 1T, so I will keep it this way.

So those who are buying Nforce4 MOBO's and thinking you can run all 4 dimms BEWARE -- it can be done, but you may have to give a little to get it going (in this case, I will not be able to run my ram at a command rate of 1T, but will be stuck at 2T unless they put out a revised bios with this option -- fat chance!).

This board has a VERY easy to use BIOS for overclocking too (if you do not mind that the documentation in the FULL manual barely mentions the existence of a BIOS, and only shows 1 screen, and NEVER talks about any of the options!!). Aside from flying blind in the BIOS, the options are VERY extensive and helpful. For those wondering if this board has a functioning PCI and PCI-E locks -- yes, it does. The PCI bus never moved an inch no matter what the system bus was set at -- the option to lock the PCI bus (or set the PCI bus ratio) is never given in BIOS, but rest assured, the PCI lock IS there, and working fine. PCI-E bus is also set at stock rate (100) and NEVER MOVES when you change the system bus. You can adjust the PCI-E bus speed yourself easily though, in increments of 1 from the CPU/Voltage section (and if you are going to overclock, you will NEED to adjust this bus -- see below).

As far as overclocking the CPU itself, I have not had as much time to try as I would like, but the board does SEEM to be VERY overclock friendly. In the bios, there is a setting for processor speed -- this actually changes the system bus speed, as there is another setting (Hammer FID) to set the ACTUAL processor speed). Beware that as you change processor speed, the RAM speed goes up too, so you may need to change the RAM speed down as you go higher in clockspeed (which just gives you more room to overclock, since A64's are minimally affected by RAM Speed).

Another thing to be aware of is that the PCI-E bus apparently needs to scale with the system bus as you overclock in order to remain stable. I attempted to overclock my system initially, and could only get a boost of 187 MHZ (which is pretty low for a VERY cool running A64 3000+ 90nm). Past this point, the system would not boot with the higher processor speed, but would force me into a "safe processor mode" and politely request that I please change my processor speed to something more realistic -- I actually like this more than having to reset the BIOS after a failed overclock boot. I stopped at this point, and started researching overclocking on new MOBO's, and found out about having to scale the PCI-E bus upwards along with the system bus for stability (and the only other person I know of who overclocked this board successfully ALSO upped his PCI-E bus as he went). I tried this shortly before leaving the house this morning, and was able to reach 250MHZ overclock without problems (this is as High as I got time to try, but I never "hit a wall" so to speak, so I know it will go higher). I upped the PCI-E bus by 5, then overclocked until asked to reset my processor, then upped the PCI-E bus by 5, and overclock more.... In some careful steps, I should be able to reach an EXCELLENt overclock with this board -- So far, my CPU temp started at 20 degrees C initially, and has only risen 1 or 2 degrees with this overclock. I will play more with this tonight, but it definitely looks promising! Just make SURE to alter the PCI-E bus as you overclock (and benchmark using a 3d graphics program occaisionally before going to far with the PCI-E bus to make sure that it is not too high for your GPU). I will post more here once I have had more time to play with it tonight -- I am hoping to take my 1.8 A64 3000+ to around 2.4 GHZ with stock cooling.
 
I'm lovin' this board (and new 3200+ winchester, and new MSI 6600GT, and new 450W PSU, and the fact that the system is *silent* but still runs only a couple degrees above room temperature).
 
btw, since there was another thread that was almost identical to this one, you probably didn't have to create your own. Not a big deal though as the other thread hasn't been seeing too much traffic.
 
I love the board layout......they only beef I have is they aren't useing a stabilizer pad on the chipset heaksink, even though its an exposed-core flip chip. I popped mine off to check the paste application and noted that the paste at 3 corners was blacked.....turned out to be chipset microfragments from the heatsink vibrating/rubbing against the core. I own an A8N-SLI and a K8NF-9 and neither has this issue, but they are using low-profile active heatsinks. The tall passive heating on the VNF4 must be tall enough to touch the exterior packaging and transfer vibration/movement to the core. Please check your VNF4's to see if the have the same problem, I'd like to think I just got a roughly handled board.
 
Originally posted by: Wyck
btw, since there was another thread that was almost identical to this one, you probably didn't have to create your own. Not a big deal though as the other thread hasn't been seeing too much traffic.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I realized this after I posted my initial thread here. Oh well. So I have been adding my comments to both, in case anyone finds one thread but not the other.
 
Originally posted by: pcweltz
I love the board layout......they only beef I have is they aren't useing a stabilizer pad on the chipset heaksink, even though its an exposed-core flip chip. I popped mine off to check the paste application and noted that the paste at 3 corners was blacked.....turned out to be chipset microfragments from the heatsink vibrating/rubbing against the core. I own an A8N-SLI and a K8NF-9 and neither has this issue, but they are using low-profile active heatsinks. The tall passive heating on the VNF4 must be tall enough to touch the exterior packaging and transfer vibration/movement to the core. Please check your VNF4's to see if the have the same problem, I'd like to think I just got a roughly handled board.
Click to expand...


I took the heatsink off of mine (to apply some arctic silver thermal paste instead of the generic stuff MOBO makers always use), and my chip is fine. I had heard from someone else on another forum about this, so I was watching for it -- looks like you got the "lucky" board. I bet the FEDEX guys were playing soccer with the christmas packages, and picked yours to score a goal with! Did you send it back, or are you going to try and see how well it works as-is? Personally, if mine were that way, I would probably install it, and see how well it works, but I am not a notoriously patient person either, and I already waited days for the mobo to arrive the first time around.
 
This board has severe issues posting above 220HTT from things I've been reading...🙁


Maybe bios will fix!
 
Originally posted by: webekyle
Originally posted by: MajorPayne
Originally posted by: webekyle
i may be getting one do to the fact the 360 dollar ram i bought wont work in my msi k8n neo platinum (wont run ddr2)...(so the guy says that i bought it from) [he's prolly right huh?]

heres what i bought from someone on ebay:

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=20-227-202&depa=0
Click to expand...


Hmmm... You might want to read the sticky thread on the A64-939 memory matric here at http://forums.anandtech.com/me...AR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear which answered my questions about my RAM, and which addresses yours as well. The tests they have been running show you get the same basic results from using cheaper 3200 memory than 4200, etc, and even underclocking to allow you to reach better timings gives a better result. I wish I had seen this earlier, but it still saves me a BUNCH of trouble. You might want to check it out.
Click to expand...

well....come to find out, they wont have any athlon 64 mobo's running ddr2 ram till atleast february...

any one with a mobo that supports 240 pin ddr2 ram want to buy some high-high-high-end memory?

$355.00 shipped email me at webekyle@yahoo.com ....[sbcglobal.net]
Click to expand...


Link? I doubt A64 will ever see DDR2.
 
Originally posted by: Zebo
This board has severe issues posting above 220HTT from things I've been reading...🙁


Maybe bios will fix!
Click to expand...

I don't think it is a bios issue -- I ran into this too, until I upped the PCI-E bus along with my OC'ing, and then it allowed me to go further -- I have not had much time, but I got it going solid at 225 this morning, and it DEFINITELY would not go there before I upped the PCI-E bus. I think most people OC'ing this board miss that detail.
 
AMD won't be using DDR2 until 2006, if that. A64's are not memory starved like P4's. You wouldn't see any performance benefit to using it.
 
I'm very interested to see how this pans out, I have a gigabyte 4x and this chaintech board and was going to sell the chaintech because of the poor overclocks
 
Originally posted by: bob661
AMD won't be using DDR2 until 2006, if that. A64's are not memory starved like P4's. You wouldn't see any performance benefit to using it.
Click to expand...

Striaght to DDR3 I hope.
 
Originally posted by: MajorPayne
Originally posted by: Zebo
This board has severe issues posting above 220HTT from things I've been reading...🙁


Maybe bios will fix!
Click to expand...

I don't think it is a bios issue -- I ran into this too, until I upped the PCI-E bus along with my OC'ing, and then it allowed me to go further -- I have not had much time, but I got it going solid at 225 this morning, and it DEFINITELY would not go there before I upped the PCI-E bus. I think most people OC'ing this board miss that detail.
Click to expand...

my board came in today. good thing i printed the manual. what is your Htt set at.
and how hi does the pci-e bus go to. i start saturday with my build. any info you can give
will be a help. 😀
 
bah, this mobo has the same problem as the A8N-SLI i was using before! My Diamondmax 10 keeps not being recognized, and i can't figure out the problem. I checked grounding, the HDD is working, and i doubt the SATA controller is bad on 2 consecutive NF4 boards from 2 different manufacturers, so i don't know what to do. I'm thinking there must be a problem with compatibility with the NF4 SATA controller and the DM10. I'm really pissed.

So anyways, what is everybody using as far as hard drives? Is anyone successfully using DM10s? How about other SATA drives?
 
Originally posted by: gobucks
bah, this mobo has the same problem as the A8N-SLI i was using before! My Diamondmax 10 keeps not being recognized, and i can't figure out the problem. I checked grounding, the HDD is working, and i doubt the SATA controller is bad on 2 consecutive NF4 boards from 2 different manufacturers, so i don't know what to do. I'm thinking there must be a problem with compatibility with the NF4 SATA controller and the DM10. I'm really pissed.

So anyways, what is everybody using as far as hard drives? Is anyone successfully using DM10s? How about other SATA drives?
Click to expand...

I use a set of 2 120 GB SATA Western Digital 7200 RPM 8MB cache drives in RAID 0 -- I have not had any problems getting it to recognize these drives, or set up a RAID array.
 
Originally posted by: MajorPayne
Originally posted by: Zebo
This board has severe issues posting above 220HTT from things I've been reading...🙁


Maybe bios will fix!
Click to expand...

I don't think it is a bios issue -- I ran into this too, until I upped the PCI-E bus along with my OC'ing, and then it allowed me to go further -- I have not had much time, but I got it going solid at 225 this morning, and it DEFINITELY would not go there before I upped the PCI-E bus. I think most people OC'ing this board miss that detail.
Click to expand...

I finished buiding my board this morning im not going to oc til AS5 setups or hardens a little
im using a stock heat sink and fan my temps are 42c idle and 50c under load. I want to see if my temp
will drop a little more.
I was curious if you were able go higher than 225. 😉
 
Originally posted by: rpmcrash
Originally posted by: MajorPayne
Originally posted by: Zebo
This board has severe issues posting above 220HTT from things I've been reading...🙁


Maybe bios will fix!
Click to expand...

I don't think it is a bios issue -- I ran into this too, until I upped the PCI-E bus along with my OC'ing, and then it allowed me to go further -- I have not had much time, but I got it going solid at 225 this morning, and it DEFINITELY would not go there before I upped the PCI-E bus. I think most people OC'ing this board miss that detail.
Click to expand...

I finished buiding my board this morning im not going to oc til AS5 setups or hardens a little
im using a stock heat sink and fan my temps are 42c idle and 50c under load. I want to see if my temp
will drop a little more.
I was curious if you were able go higher than 225. 😉
Click to expand...

No, unfortunately, I was NOT able to get past 225, and it proved unstable during major benchmarks (occaisional reboots) at this speed. Upping the PCI-E bus did not prove as helpful as it seemed initially. Hopefully a new BIOS will fix this. It is a good board, but the overclocking ability seems limited at this time.
 
The Diamondmax10 uses SATA2... or the Maxline3 drives. Maybe this standard is not really standard yet? That's a scary thought... guess i'll have to wait until April before buying anything. OR..maybe switch to Intel (shudder) since I'd like to go PCI-express sometime soon. I hear the Asus P5GD2 or whatever it is is quite good.

The Intel Chipsets 915 and 925X also support NCQ.
http://www.intel.com/support/c.../imst/sb/CS-012305.htm

The intel stuff seems to be more mature. Anyone got comments on pci-express & NCQ and Intel? 🙂

Jeff
 
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