DFI LANParty UT nF3-250Gb: Overclocker's Dream
by Wesley Fink on September 8, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Tech Support and RMA: DFI LANParty UT nF3 250Gb
Our support evaluation procedure tries to determine the responsiveness of manufacturers to Technical Support problems. Our procedure:The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first, we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server in order to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure that we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We allow the manufacturer up to 3 (business) days to respond, and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don't receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar everyday, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
DFI's easily obtainable RMA policy can be found by visiting their U.S. website at www.dfiusa.com and by clicking on the Support hyperlink at the menu listed on the left of their home page. The international DFI site is linked from this site, or can be accessed at www.dfi.com. Further Technical Support and FAQ's are available at this main site. There are links at the main site to a dedicated site for the LanParty series motherboards, which can be directly accessed at www.lanparty.com.tw. If you would like to RMA your DFI motherboard, DFI suggests that you first contact the vendor from where you purchased your motherboard before reaching out to DFI's tech support and RMA.
For US customers, Technical Support is available by email at techsupport@dfiweb.com. Since the DFI LANParty UT was a pre-release board, there was little point in testing tech support response time. We have found tech support response time to be excellent from DFI in the past, and we expect that you will receive the same fast turnaround that we have found recently from DFI. We will test and update the DFI response time in the future when we test a release motherboard.
DFI offers very clear instructions for motherboard returns as well as any technical support questions - for both US and international customers. Those who cannot find a local resource should send their Tech Support inquiries to the main site in Taiwan. DFI has expanded their on-line resources, and there was more on-line information available than what we found in the last look at DFI. There is more good news: the information and resources are easy to find without going through endless links. DFI has done an excellent job of making customer service a priority, and we think many of you will be pleasantly surprised at the responsiveness that you will find in your contacts at DFI.
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alex1971 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
alex1971 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I think its tested with Raid 3+4 that are the two native Ports directly at NF250GB.The Ports 1+2 are native also, but have to use an external PHY.
This Ports 1+2 are finished when HTT > 240 MHZ !!
Try it.....
Remeber: Main S-ATA Problems only at PORT 1+2 because of the PHY .....
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Glad I didn't buy a MSI K8N Neo Platinum yet... I'll wait for this board before I go A64. =)SLIM - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Great article man, but I almost blew by the part where you mentioned that the Far Cry and UT results were with a 9800pro vs 6800ultras. You might consider putting asterisk on those graphs and bold or highlight the huge difference in graphics cards.It might help those who prefer to only look at the pretty pictures.
SLIM
PS: I second the Iwill board review request.
SUOrangeman - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Review request: http://www.iwillusa.com/products/ProductDetail.asp...Although this is not a 754-pin mobo, the experience should be great nonetheless!
-SUO
at80eighty - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
i second..umm...third...punko's Anantech's "Overclocking for Dummies" idea...i'd LOVE to dig into my rig...but it kinda scares me if i f*ckup : )
Myrandex - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I think the yellow looks cool, but a UV reactive plastic would have been cool along with it. This does seem a bit more of a 'budget' type board when compared to other LanParty series boards. I sure do like it a lot, and I have considered moving from my old MSI K8T Neo board to this one (so I am kinda happy about it being S754). I do wonder about the two SATA cables near the AGP socket, as they are extremely out of the way, and it brings more cable clutter to the center of the board.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
#16 - The test bed had a MaXLine III 250GB SATA hard drive with 16MB of buffer. We first tested with the SATA on Channel 1 between the AGP slot and the CPU -- the plan was to see where SATA failed and then switch to IDE to find the top OC. When we reached DDR600 then DDR616 while running this SATA drive we saw no point in the IDE switch. This board is really stable in OC - even with SATA.rjm55 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
You say on page 6 that you ran the overclocking tests with a SATA hard drive. Can you please confirm that you did DDR616 running a SATA hard drive, because I've read that SATA drives can hold back overclocking.Avalon - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
*drool*