SLI

Many of you are looking at the NF4 boards not for the newer chipset though, you are looking at the SLI capability. Like me, you would like to know whether or not it is worth upgrading to a board that can run two video cards versus staying with a single card. I've seen all kinds of numbers kicked around as to how much of an increase you would get from using an SLI setup over a single card, so I decided to see for myself. The cards I am using here are XFX 6600GT's, a reasonably priced card that won't break the bank if you purchase a pair.

In 3DMark01, a SLI setup only garnered an advantage of 11%, not enough to entice someone to upgrade. But remember that 3DMark01 does not take advantage of the capabilities of the new generation of cards. In 3DMark05 the performance delta increased to 40% in favor of SLI. But these are only synthetic benchmarks so I tested on a couple of demanding games.

The 70.3 FPS I got in Doom3 using a single card isn't actually that bad considering the 6600GT is a mid-range video card. However, slapping the second one in resulted in a framerate increase of 32%. The difference was about the same in Half-Life 2, I received an increased framerate of 35% using dual cards. Pulling framerates over a hundred in Doom3 and Half-Life 2 at stock settings is pretty good no matter which way you look at it. I paid around $360 for the pair of cards that can do that, about what you would pay for a single card with similar performance. But like a lot of folks who watercool but don't really need to... it's just cool to be able to say you are running an SLI rig. :)

Here's one final SLI benchmark after I overclocked the 6600GT's to 575/1200; I was actually able to double the single card score using two cards in SLI. That's the way it's supposed to work. I was able to do that without any voltage increase but you won't want to maintain an OC that high without some good aftermarket cooling.

Overclocking

Now a bit about overclocking... the DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR board is designed to OC. There are tons of settings that can be tweaked to squeeze more performance out of this board, but I won't use them. Everyone has their own favorite method, and most of us don't have the same hardware installed so any OC I get will mean nothing to you. So what I did is keep all settings stock, including voltages, and just started increasing the FSB. I was able to get up to 227 (454 DDR) before receiving errors. I have seen people who use the right RAM and voltage increases bust 300 (600 DDR) with this board so the overclocking potential is definitely there. Just the mild FSB increase garnered this in SiSoft's Memory Benchmark:

Not bad at all.

Conclusion

The DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR is a motherboard targeted towards the performance enthusiast market, and they hit the target. The multitude of hardware options and BIOS tweaks will put a smile on the face of an overclocker for days. It is obvious that DFI did market research when designing the LanParty board and fixed many physical aspects of the board to better accept high performance cooling gear and facilitate cable management. If there was a single 939 board that I would recommend to someone today, the DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR is it.

Because of the flexible settings and good component layout, I give the DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR board 9 hats out of 10 and award it the We Pimp Gear award. You can find it at most online retail sites that offer performance computer gear for around $180 USD.

Pimpin'
- Great drive and RAID options
- Well thought out placement of components
- Many tweaks available in the BIOS
- nF4 chipset and SLI greatly increases performance
- Known to be an overclocking banshee

Limpin'
- Poor software package
- Very limited info in manual
- Color scheme may be a little over the top for some
- Rounded cables don't hide well

Rating //

(9 pimp hats out of 10)

I would like to thank DFI for providing the LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR motherboard for review.