DFI Lanparty UT NF3 250GB

[Penoir]

Well, I've finally decided to put together a build. I've decided to make it very cheap, so I'm going 754. I've been reading and it seems that lots of people like the DFI Nforce 3 board. I was going to get the Asus K8N for $88 from zipzoomfly but NewEgg has the DFI board for 109, so if the DFI is considered the best out of all of them, for $20 more I'll probably just get that.

I don't plan on doing more than a little bit of overclocking, and the only features I see that the DFI board has that the K8N doesn't are firewire and gigabit LAN. Will the lack of gigabit LAN even affect me if I'm not on a large network? Honestly, I know much less than I should about networking so I really don't know what difference 100mb ethernet and gigabit would make. Is that primarily used for computer to computer transfers? Please forgive my ignorance.

Also, does anyone know how the microphone input is on the DFI board? My input on my current ECS board now is horrible and barely picks anything up.

Thanks for your input.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

The DFI is considered the best because it overclocks well. For a board to be an excelent overclocker it has to use quality components and have a solid BIOS. Performance out of the box is not that great though, but you can play with the "unlimited" options and tweak it some. http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/dfi/LP-UT-NF3-250GB/tuningguide.htm

I'm not sure it's worth an extra $20 for everyone though. The ABIT NF8 has basically the same features and is $88. The KV8 Pro lacks Firewire but otherwise is a solid board, only $75 shipped at xtremegear.com.

For the mic input, hardocp tests that in their motherboard reviews but they haven't reviewed the DFI nF3 yet. I'm sure someone will help you, but in the meantime you can check out how the other DFI boards they reviewed (and also the ABIT KV8 Pro) did.