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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ciwell - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
"Overclocking for Dummies"I like the sound of that! :D
punko - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Impressive Article !Can't wait for the first edition of Anantech's "Overclocking for Dummies"
as the whole concept of FSB and memory tweaking both interests and scares me.
Now if only I could justify to the wife retiring my current rig . . .
gimper48 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
So when is the next overclockers guide? Can we expect to see this board in it?Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
#1 - The Asus K8N-E will be included in a roundup of new 754 boards in the next week.#2,#4 - Corrections made
#7 - The final correct name of the series is LANParty UT, as you point out. The name has been corrected in the article. DFI considered many last minute changes - from full LANParty to bargain board. Final decisions were quite recent.
#9 - We received this production board by Express shipment direct from Taiwan on September 1, after several delays. We are told by DFI that this is the production board. DFI, like other manufacturers, will likely make further improvements during the production run.
mikedustin - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I've been waiting for this board for a long time, only one problem I have with it, why did they pick yellow? I was wanting UV green. :(Oh well, I hope it will match my green case anyway.
DFI is on the right track as a mobo maker, this board is just another big win for them.
tomati - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I have read in other forum that DFI have postpose the 2 september to the 9 because of last change in the design board , so can I expect the same result as yours ?(you told about the pre version , right?)
tomati - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
geoff2k - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Any reason that the review calls the board the "Lanparty UL NF3 250GB" and DFI's own site calls it the "Lanparty UT NF3 250GB"?Ecmaster76 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Talking about weak SATA connectors...I just built a Shuttle XPC for a friend and it had custom SATA connectors on the board and (slightly) custom cables that make things a lot better. The board connector is a lot like a USB socket, it has an outer support ring with the original SATA data pins in the center (its backward compatible). The cable has added bits on it that make it snap into the board connector. No more accidentally pulle cable. I wish the SATA mechanical specs would be revised to such a system or something similar. The electrical aspects of SATA are awesome but they didn't put much though into the connectors.
kmmatney - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
"We were also able to complete stress testing at 300x8 with 2.5-3-4-10 memory timings. At that speed of 2.4Ghz at DDR600, we achieved the following results:Quake 3 - 474.0
Return to Castle Wolfenstein-Enemy Territory-Radar - 104.3 "
So...with overclocking the you saw the following increases?
Quake 3: 411 up to 474
Wolf-ET: 70 up to 104.3
Wow....