"Official" DFI nF4 Ultra-D / SLI-DR Thread

[DarkStarRulz]

Nevermind, got it to work. Interestingly enough, i had to plug in a 4 pin power connector to the board that had a tag on it when i got the power supply that said "P4 Only". I had assumed since i had a 24pin main connector and had the 4pin molex connector plugged into the board i wouldn't have to plug anything into that 4pin square connector next to the power connector. I became sure of it when i checked the 4pin square connectors on my PSU and they said P4 only. Unfortunately, the documentation for this board isn't exactly very specific. While it pointed out all the different power connections, it never said which ones had to be connected and which were optional. I got the system up and running right now with just the 4pin square connector and the 24 pin main connector.

Another unfortunate thing is it will only detect 1 of my 4 sticks of ram... Tried putting them all in slot 2, 1 stick at a time, and only 1 stick will show up. So i think i'll RMA the ram (which was some cheap PC3200 512 stuff cause i thought i could run 2 sets of Dual channel using 4 mem sticks) for some better 512 sticks since i can apparently only have 1 set of dual channel memory.

 

[imported_doc007]

Yeah, I guess it used to be P4 only, but the AMD board started useing it too and yes, you certainly should plug it in. The other two ("regular" flat 4 pin molex power and floppy power connector) are kind of optional, but suppoed to make the board more stable, so can't hurt to use them, especially if you are going to do SLI.

Yeah, that's probably a good idea to stick with 2 sticks of ram on this board. Make sure to do some research on here and dfi-street as to what brands work well with this board. It's kind of finicky about RAM.

 

[CheesePoofs]

Originally posted by: zumbi9in
I would like you to help me with a MotherBoard/RAM question.

I?m about to buy a DFI Lanparty NFORCE 4 Ultra MB with 2 GB of RAM.
This machine will be for audio sampling and recording, and some gaming too ?

I?m worried if it can run 2 GB of RAM at DDR400, I don?t know if it will drop the memory speed with this config.

I would like to buy 4x512 KINGSTON PC3200 ULTRA LL 2-2-2-5, but as they are double sided, maybe they will run at DDR333
The 2nd option would be 2x1024 of OCZ memory PC 3200 3-3-3-7 OCZ4001024PF, is its performance good with this latency?

I have searched lots of forums and didn?t find a final word about this issue.

What would be the best performance choice? Do you think it can work?

Thank you very much,

On any A64 board, it will run 4 sticks of ram at ddr333, so getting 2 1gb sticks is the better choice. Also, try to avoid Kingston HyperX with this board, I'd avoid all Kingston if I were you, just to be safe.

 

[KrusteeShdw]

I have had a lot of trouble getting the DFI NF4 to work. I had to flash the BIOS but the mobo wouldnt recognise my floppy drive. I had to load freedos from a bootable cd and then flash the bios of a cd.

Everything seams to be working fine.

Have you guys seen the 'Performance' BIOS over at www.techpowerup.com?

I haven't had time to try yet.

Thanks.

 

[finger11]

does anyone know why there seems to be very very few places to get the SLI-D? I want the SLI capabilities, but don't need all the extras the SLI-DR comes with (including price)

thanks.

 

[Jank]

Re Kingston - I had no luck, there seems to be a compatibility problem with any Kingston RAM on this board. I tried 2 kits of KVR (Value Ram) with this board and only one stick would work fine and pass Memtest 86 with no errors.
I RMA'd them back - got a new set and both sticks would fail even boot.
I was able to return the RAM and got a Geil 1Gb kit instead - no more problems, boots fine, passes Memtest with no errors.
(at Fry's or Outpost)

 

[Sunner]

For whatever reason, the speeds reported during POST don't seem to take overclocking into account.
I setup a build using this board for a friend, and while I don't actually remember the exact mem/fsb/ltd settings, the end result was 2.25 GHz and ~215 MHz mem speed from a 3000+.
I'm normally an Asus man, so the way you overclock was kinda new to me.

Anyway, duing POST it'll just report 3000+ and a DDR speed of 333, which is pretty much what it would sans overclocking.
Seemed odd to me, but I booted anyway, and CPU-Z reported what I would expect, 2.25 GHz, ~215 MHz DDR, and a 250 MHz LDT speed.

Is this just the way this board works? That is, not reporting the overclock during POST?

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I don't really feel like reading all 800+ posts
Also sorry if this post is a bit...messy, it was a little while ago since I set this up, and I don't have said computer at home anymore, so I'm piecing it together from memory

 

[Nebben]

Yeah, that's just how it is. It always just says the processor type and RAM speed at POST. It was odd to me at first, too.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: mooncancook
I forgot to cancel my order of Asus A8N-SLI and now it's shipping. I guess I'll keep my DFI Ultra and sell the A8N.

I love my DFI except I can't OC it. Very strange as even setting FSB at 205 will crash my system. should I update the bios to see if it'll fix it? ..but using beta bios voids warranty

There's something wrong here. Um, trying to think what might be causing the problem.

I'd update to the newest BIOS. I believe they have an official one released sometime in March, so don't bother with the earlier ones. Also, since the guy who designed this board is the guy who writes the beta BIOSes (at least all of the ones I've seen), I think DFI wouldn't have a problem warranting it.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: Assassin
If anyone has $260 to drop on an SLI-D then go HERE.

Why? I was able to get it from ZipZoomFly for $220 shipped 2nd day a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Ok I got my ultra-d today and installed it into my sons machine replacing the msi k8n neo4 plat that was in there. It's got the 1-25 bios and I didn't have any problems at all with it and the kingston hyper-x low latency 512 memory. It's nice to have a mb that will boot like it's supposed to without fooling around unplugging usb cables. I also pulled the antec tp550w ps he was using and added an enermax 485w noisetake atx2 so we should be ok for a while.

 

[mooncancook]

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17

Originally posted by: mooncancook
I forgot to cancel my order of Asus A8N-SLI and now it's shipping. I guess I'll keep my DFI Ultra and sell the A8N.

I love my DFI except I can't OC it. Very strange as even setting FSB at 205 will crash my system. should I update the bios to see if it'll fix it? ..but using beta bios voids warranty

There's something wrong here. Um, trying to think what might be causing the problem.

I'd update to the newest BIOS. I believe they have an official one released sometime in March, so don't bother with the earlier ones. Also, since the guy who designed this board is the guy who writes the beta BIOSes (at least all of the ones I've seen), I think DFI wouldn't have a problem warranting it.

Thanks for the reply. I fixed the OC problem with the 3/10 bios and now it OC like a champ. It's currenty at 2.43G 270x9 1.525v DDR448 with 166 divider and 4x HTT, running cool and stable.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Nebben
Yeah, that's just how it is. It always just says the processor type and RAM speed at POST. It was odd to me at first, too.

Ok, thanks.

 

[Kosmic]

Guys, I need some help.

I did press DEL before the fourth diagnostic LED turns off. I ended up in:


PCI device listing.........
Verifying DMI pool DATA.......
NVIDIA boot agent 202.0467
Copyright (c) bla.. bla..
PXE-E61: media test failure, check cable.
PXE-MOF: exiting NVIDIA boot agent.
Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter.

I'm stuck here..... I need to go into BIOS to Load Optimized Defaults/save and then exit.

No joke, its my first build, never got into the BIOS before.

 

[Kosmic]

Nevermind, I got it.....keyboard problem.

 

[cronic]

@%*# keyboards!
lol

 

[Kosmic]

Yeah, it's that damn F key-lock on a Logitech keyboard!! lol!

 

[CheesePoofs]

Ugh
I hate that too. Drives me crazy. I'd just like them to have a little on/off swith for that "feature"

 

[cronic]

ok my sli-dr is runnin great with the fx-55 and i am hittin 6387 on 3dmark05. I got my 2nd asus 6800ultra today for sli. i shut the system down and pulled power. uninstalled the single card and reset the jumper blocks to the 2-3 position, reinstalled the both cards and hooked up video to the same dvi i was using before. booted the system and everything worked grea,t pic in bios and post, it to the windows loading screen, loads windows and i loss video signal as soon as windows loads. monitor says out of scan range. upon initial boot i left the the resoution set to 1600 x 1200 60hz. so i set the system back up to one card, booted windows ste the resoution up to 800 x 600 60hz. set everything back up for sli, rebooted windows, monitor losses video, monitor says out of scan range. what am i doing wrong? any tipps please. thanks, by the way, i'm runnin 71.84 video driver and 6.53 chipset ,bios 310

 

[deadseasquirrel]

cronic, i'd try uninstalling the 71.84s from your single card (and other card if they are installed). reboot into safe mode and run driver cleaner. shut down. install both cards, then boot and install 71.84s to both cards at the same time.

also, for grins, try a different DVI port. you got 4 there, try all 3 of the other ones and see if you get a picture.

 

[cronic]

OK I got it going last night. What I had to do was switch to the 1st dvi out on the 2nd card. boot the system, and then enable sli. Reboot, and switch back to the 1st dvi on the 1st card. Works Great now. Pounded out a 10,829 on 3dmark05 on my 2nd run!!!!!
Thanks for the help. Guys.

NIVIDIA SLI ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[vanvock]

I'm getting a BSOD & reboot when I exit Unreal T 04, OC'd or not. Anyone else had this? The game runs fine just most times when I quit it happens & reboots so fast I can't read what the problem is. Is there a way to hold it at the bluescreen or to find out what it was after I'm back in windows? I've tried the pause key. It may be a bad game file but I'd like to know before un-reinstalling. Thanks for any help.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: vanvock
Is there a way to hold it at the bluescreen or to find out what it was after I'm back in windows? I've tried the pause key. It may be a bad game file but I'd like to know before un-reinstalling. Thanks for any help.

Go to Control Panel--> System--> Advanced--> Startup and Recovery Settings--> Uncheck Automatically restart

 

[vanvock]

Thanks D S S Got it. It is IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Device manager shows no conflicts. I'm thinking maybe a corrupted file download when updating UT04?

 

[vanvock]

Originally posted by: Kosmic
Yeah, it's that damn F key-lock on a Logitech keyboard!! lol!

I've got one on this MS Multimedia k/b. Couldn't get Windows loaded 'cause F8 wasn't working, couldn't accept license. I thought it was locking up. lol!