XtremeResources US reviewer Steve "WxChaser" Carmel today evaluates what may be the ultimate overclocking board produced so far for the AMD A64 platform, the DFI UT LP NF4 Ultra-D motherboard. This board and it's SLI brothers have broken numerous performance records around the world in both 3D and HTT overclocking, and in overall system performance.
" The nF4 SLI-DR is based on the nVidia nForce4 SLI chipset, while the nF4 Ultra-D is based on the nForce4 Ultra chipset. Both of these motherboards include 2 PCI Express X16 slots and they use the same BIOS. The main difference is that the Ultra-D doesn't come with the 4 SATA ports that are provided by the Silicon Image 3114 on the fully featured nF4 SLI-DR board. Many motherboard manufacturers represent themselves to the enthusiast computing community and market their products as "overclocker" friendly. However, the caveat with nearly all of these Tier 1 and Tier 2 motherboard manufacturers is that their overclocking options - in both hardware and software implementations - are often times piecemeal and ineffective towards overall results. The best overclocking motherboards must provide stable power, effective heat dissipation on power MOSFETS and VRM's (voltage regulation mosfets), along with a logical layout, and a BIOS which allows the user to tweak the board parameterization's for their own benefits."
Full review is here
Full review is here