DFI due to release LANParty v2?

Author: Richard Swinburne
Published: 11th June 2007
Comments (17) Stumble
The northbridge gets a make over first, but what will come later?

The northbridge gets a make over first, but what will come later?

DFI has shown bit-tech its new intentions for upcoming boards, and the outlook is even more crazy than ever before! Featured on the stand are it's standard LANParty thoroughfare we have known and loved for many years, but that is set to change drastically. Despite pressing questions, an arm lock and a very harsh Chinese burn, we were unable to extract information on the "totally new look" the new range will take, other than the fact it'll have some seriously crazy cooling.

Where the nForce 680i LT SLI LANParty board had a huge alternative northbridge cooler bundled in the box, the future boards should have something similar in addition to a whole lot more. The demo product shown to us (no pictures allowed, unfortunately) had variable placements for the fin arrays to best optimise the cooling to suit your case fan arrangement. It was very obviously an engineering concept that was far from completion, but it was enough to definitely make us interested.

Also shown was a prototype audio unit that's an evolution of the Karajan module. The daughter board PCB may not be a new concept and this one has no discrete grounding or EMI to improve its signal-to-noise ratio, but it is on a flexible cable to put it on whatever PCI bracket you want. Of course, the whole advantage of Karajan to us was that it didn’t take up a PCI slot, but we’ll reserve judgement until when we see the final product.

Product specifications for the future include a P35-T2R and T3R for DDR2 and DDR3 respectively, an RD790-M2R with seven phase digital PWM and eventually an X38 board, but no final arrangement has been made yet as for a choice between DDR2 or 3 support. The products shown on their stand were only mock-ups for the public.

The RD790-M2R has a seven phase digital PWM system (six Vcore and one northbridge), while the P35 and X38 have eight phase. Each uses a second generation system similar to Abit's, with improved BGA controller ICs that use less power and thus remain cooler. Eight phase may seem excessive, but it provides better power regulation for overclocking quad core CPUs. DFI always design boards for the extreme high end, and as such it's expected these users will likely have Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs.

DFI may have previously been slightly late to market with some of its products, but that was mostly due to the limited (but exceptional) BIOS team. Now the company has recently employed two more engineers and are still looking for another two to not only provide the most extensive BIOS creations on the market, but also ones that are highly optimised in a shorter period of time.

Several days at Computex gives you enough time to really catch up on industry news behind the scenes. It appears Foxconn has nabbed a few ex-Infinity engineers to design their high end MARS board due out soon. With DFI pedigree under the hood it could provide some stronger competition for the rest of the industry, because Foxconn is one of the biggest companies that haven’t previously been as successful at the high end.


DFI's LANParty RD790 motherboard

Looking forward to the next generation of LANParty boards? Let us know in the forums.
Quote DougEdey 11th June 2007, 15:20
Damnit I want to be a trainee DFI BIOS engineer :'(
Quote ./^\.Ace./^\. 11th June 2007, 15:44
I don't know anyone that uses a DFI board so I don't really know how good they are. could some one tell me what they would give this board out of 10 :? or compare it to a new ASUS board :? I must say that it does look pritty impresive.
Quote Bindibadgi 11th June 2007, 15:51
They are generally regarded as very hit and miss. Some are superb but others are littered with incompatibilities. DFI has made some legendary boards though thanks to their BIOS guys and crazy hardware engineers. They are generally regarded as a "know what you're doing if you want to play with one" board. It took me two weeks to learn the BIOS of the ICFX3200 T2R/G before writing that article in Jan :)

Tim and I sat there for a good half hour and went through a few ideas with the guys from DFI about their V2, and some of the stuff being thrown about could be super crazy if it makes production.
Quote knowyourenemy 11th June 2007, 15:54
I can't wait for this board. I have had my Lanparty UT nForce 4 for about two years now and it is certainly the best motherboard I've invested in.

This new one is going to be Intel, right?
Quote Bindibadgi 11th June 2007, 16:00
Two Intel and one AMD are due.
Quote teamtd11 11th June 2007, 16:01
Im probbly going to be getting the am2+ board when it comes out, but i think i will hold off till a bit-tech review :p
Quote Burnout21 11th June 2007, 16:08
DFI boards are great, a use to own an epoxi 8RDA3+ on skt A, and that was a monster board, then some chaps i believe left epoxi and went to DFI, and BAM the 754 and 939 series was born!

I have owned the Ultra rare 939 NF3 DFI board, which hits 310MHz FSB which is handy, and im now on my second DFI board, the SLI-DR 939.

Fantastic overclockers, if you want all you can get out of a CPU in terms of OC'ing then DFI is for you!!!!!

Iv been waiting to see how DFI would take on the C2D properly with the lanparty series.

I believe DFI boards hold the highest front side bus speeds in overclocking, so maybe they will manage to get the Nvidia 680 chipset to out run TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF lol!! :D
Quote capnPedro 11th June 2007, 16:15
Fantastic brand, between myself and two friends, we've used about 10 or 11 DFI boards between us. They rock !

But I wouldn't really recommend a LanParty to a 'noob'. An Infinity, though, hell yeah.

RE: DFI BIOSes. They are superb, probably the best around. Only niggle I've ever had is my current board only has On/Off for "Power state after AC power fail" (not "Last state") but nevermind, it's usually on anyway :p.

Looking forward to the AM2+ board, but by the time I'm lookign to upgrade my mobo, I'm sure we'll be way past Socket 1000+.
Quote wafflesomd 11th June 2007, 16:49
DFI-Ultra -D

Best mobo ever.
Quote Mankz. 11th June 2007, 16:53
I'm glad that most board makers are now making sata ports that exit at the side of the mobo.

DFi, please don't use heatpipe coolers! They are a pain to remove and are ugly!
Quote radodrill 11th June 2007, 17:06
Can't wait for the new boards; DFI is da bomb
Quote Ghys 11th June 2007, 18:38
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burnout21
DFI boards are great, a use to own an epoxi 8RDA3+ on skt A, and that was a monster board, then some chaps i believe left epoxi and went to DFI, and BAM the 754 and 939 series was born!

It's EPoX by the way ;), or at least it was, it's kinda dead
Quote karbonKid 11th June 2007, 19:08
DFI LanPartyUT NF3-250GB was simply the best board that ever existed. Stupidly overclockable, and with the latest BIOS, absolutely flawless (apart from crappy nVidia RAID drivers). I've had a sempron @ 340FSB on it (with 1:1 DRR:FSB ratio). 'nuff sed.
After the SLI-DR it kind of went downhill - they're boards remained amazingly clockable, but were finicky about what hardware they would work with at best. Some people just find it annoying; for those with time and patience it's apparently called 'character'. I guess DFI boards are just one of those things you have to try yourself to decide wether you like them or not. If you do, though, you can be guaranteed you'll spend days, even weeks, trying to eke every last drop out fo your system's performance. Seriously, DFI's BIOS's must be chemically additive or something!
Quote completemadness 11th June 2007, 20:26
wow that cooler looks nice

although it looks similar to the thermalright HR-05 SLI, a very interesting cooler http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main_product_hr05sli.htm

and the nice thing with that cooler is it will work on those motherboards where they decided to put the chipset under the end of the GFX card (like the SLI-DR which seems to be one of the most popular 939 boards for enthusiasts)
Quote mikeuk2004 12th June 2007, 12:20
One thing I will say is this. DFI customer service is spot on. My Nforce 3 board has had its Northbridge fan fail 4 times now over 3-4 years. DFI have posted me replacements each time at no charge within in 3-4 working days from overseas. They responed same or next day to your emails and very helpfull unlike other big named corporations who dont even acknowledge your emails, nevermind responding.

DFI is definatley a brand ill stick with as their products are spot and even better customer services. Before my AMD NF3 Ultra Lanparty UT I had a Nforce 2 AMD board which had no issues.

Id recomend them any day. Past boards Ive had like MSI, Gigabyte, Elite, have been pants.
Quote Neoki 12th June 2007, 12:48
To be honest i must say its about time the northbridge had a revamp, as mikeuk said my fans on my DFI boards have always died. Im on my 3rd 939 SLI-DR from DFI.

Other then that It has to be said that they are amazing boards and got to love the UV.

Miss the non UT boards though because of the bundle.

Hopefully they will keep the same level of service up :D
Quote severedhead 12th June 2007, 19:42
Just what I wanted to see. My nF4 + Opty 144 combo is getting a little dated now and was looking for upgrades, I might just wait until these come out.

I'd definately go for a DFI mobo again. As others have stated, you can squeeze every last drop of performance out of your hardware providing you have a few weeks to understand and tweak the BIOS.

But please no heatpipes.
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