Forum Overview :: American McGee's Honda Civic :: Addendum/Correction

[quote name="Motherhead"][quote name="Motherhead"]The <a href="http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_details_r_us.jsp?PRODUCT_ID=3872&CATEGORY_TYPE=LP&SITE=NA"target="new">DFI LANPARTY</a>, is supposed to be <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspxi=2620" target="new">extraordinary</a> (note: that article was from earlier this year). Though I could never get past this: <img src="http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/dfi/expert/box.jpg">[/quote] Since it's easier to find an Xbox360 than an A8N32-SLI, I acquired the "LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert" instead. <b>Impressions:</b> Pros: • Excellent quality, the magnetic-levitation chipset fan is notably better than the one provided with the A8N-SLI Deluxe, which is (scientifically speaking) a failing piece of shit. • SLI is controlled by BIOS. No jumpers, dip-switches or chip switching. • Bundled accessories commensurate with what Asus provides in their Deluxe and Premium kits. Cons: • The USB headers are located under the second graphic card when it's seated. • Procedure for enabling SLI in BIOS is poorly documented. Gratuitous Engrish everywhere. • The kid on the box is wearing orange gloves. <div align="center"><img src="http://image.basspro.com/images/images2/27000/27065.jpg"></div> <div align="center">Not Included</div> The board, components and overall engineering is all world class, the quality of fabrication is superb. The manuals, marketing materials and website – not so much. Recommended over the A8N-SLI Deluxe. Good alternative to the A8N-Premium. [quote name="Motherhead"]If you take my advice and get an Nforce 4 based board, be aware of a problem that will knock your speed from DDR400 to DDR333 if you fit a DIMM in all four slots, so 2 sticks of 1GB if you want 2GB at DDR400.[/quote] First, this is not specifically an nForce 4 issue. The same is/was true with the K8 Via and SiS chipsets. The K8 (AMD64/X2) architecture puts the memory controller on die, as opposed to Intel CPUs including it in the chipset (which is why each permutation of Intel chips necessitates a new fucking motherboard). The blessing is that it's far more efficient, the curse is that you can't support newer RAM buss and chip speeds by simply introducing a new chipset. I apologize for any trauma I might have caused Nvidia. Second, not exactly true anymore. Keeping in mind that four sticks of anything is not optimal (command rate drops from 1T to 2T with four DIMMS), you can populate all four DIMM slots with 512MB and get the 2GB at DDR400. I tested this on the A8N-SLI Premium with four sticks of Corsair TWINX512-3200XL. (Two sets of matched pairs.) Note: an OCZ rep on the OCZ forums mentions the A8N-SLI Premium is more stable the Deluxe, in either case flash to the latest BIOS rev. My advice is to pretend I was right in the first place and stick with 2 DIMMs.[/quote]