When it comes to gaming the AMD processor series are often considered the most powerful solutions. With almost no evidence of my own, I strongly believe the majority of today's gaming computers are built around an AMD processor. The Athlon64 for example is faster for gaming when compared to the current generation Pentium 4 and it's also cooler and therefore can operate quieter. Furthermore, the Athlon64 is generally more affordable when compared to Pentium 4 processors.
AMD have also had the advantage of exclusive SLI support for the past few months now. This will of course change in the coming months as NVIDIA will release the nForce4 series for the Intel platform. Nevertheless, I do not imagine that SLI support for the Intel platform will change much about Intel's position in the gaming market, at least for the Pentium 4. It is my opinion that NVIDIA really have done a lot to help the Athlon64 processor thrive and get it to where it is today.
Without taking any credit away from AMD, the Athlon64 is an amazing processor with or without NVIDIA's support. However, the introduction of the nForce series to the AMD platform really gave the company something strong to build on. Intel processors receive the majority of their chipset support from Intel and therefore make a quick and effortless entrance to the market every time. On the other hand AMD relies heavily on a number of companies to deliver chipsets that will support their latest processors.
The nForce4 has unquestionably become the key player in the success of the AMD64 939-pin platform. The past few months have seen the market flooded by nForce4 based motherboards. It would appear that not just AMD and NVIDIA are benefiting from this hugely popular platform. There are also the motherboard manufacturers that put the final product out on the market, and it would have to be said that DFI have had the most success with the nForce4 series thus far.
Already DFI offers a grand total of four nForce4 based motherboards, all of which feature the exact same board design. This might sound a little crazy, but in reality it has given DFI a huge advantage over competing motherboard manufacturers. This single proven design has allowed DFI to quickly offer a number of nForce4 solutions based on both the SLI and Ultra chipsets. This feature also helped the DFI nForce4 Ultra motherboard to quickly gain a large fan base. However, having already reviewed this motherboard I thought it was time to checkout the official SLI version.
The only real difference between the LANPartyUT NF4 SLI-DR and the LANPartyUT NF4 Ultra-D is that the latter does not offer official SLI support. However, the LANPartyUT NF4 Ultra-D can be modified to support the SLI mode. The user will then be required to source the SLI bridge connector in order for the modification to work. Furthermore, NVIDIA claim that the next shipment of nForce4 Ultra chipsets will not allow the SLI modification. Therefore, if you are after an SLI motherboard and cannot afford to mess around, the LANPartyUT NF4 SLI-DR may be the best option.
DFI LANPARTY 925X-T2 (2005-03-25)