The DFI Lan Party NF2 Ultra board is a board that stands out from the pack. We can clearly see that DFI has leap ahead and they have done their homework well. The DFI Lan Party NF2 Ultra is not just a overclocking feature packed board, it also comes with lots of goodies. It is also the first manufacturer to bundle with Transpo, for transporting your barebone system to LAN parties. Although I find the UV feature more of a decoration to the board, it might looks exceptionally impressive under UV lighting for those who love to mod their casing. There is also the FrontX for mounting configurable front panel connectors.

Based on the nVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset, this mainboard supports AGP 8x, Dual Channel DDR400, Dual 10/100Mbps LAN, 6 ch audio, IDE RAID 1.5, SATA, IEEE 1394, 6 USB 2.0. Most importantly, this board has Genie BIOS which allows you to fine tune your multipliers, fsb, voltages. Multipliers can be tuned up to 22x, FSB to 300MHz, Vcore up to 2.0v etc.

Features-wise, this board is quite complete with all the bells and whistles common to most nForce2 boards out there. The only pity is that it does not come with Serial ATA RAID. It only has one SATA port. Well, it might be compensated through the 2 channels of IDE RAID if they have supplied a SATA<->PATA converter. As for performance, this board is just as good as the Gigabyte and Epox. The results are very close to one another. One of the most important category that it outshines the rest is in the 3D category. A new performance king is born.

Installation was a breeze. The only problem is that our Gladiatech heatsink/fan seems to be blocked by the capacitors right next to the Socket 462. We used a few different RAMs from Kingston, Buffalo Winbond -5 DDR modules. It performs well under CAS 2, 5-2-2 at 2.6v. There aren't any major hiccups in the rams we used.

Overclocking wise, it has a almost everything you need. FSB can be adjusted from 100 ~ 300Mhz at 1mhz stepping. AGP can be set to 66~100MHz, FSB is selectable from 100 ~ 300MHz, There are lots of ratios for CPU:MEM. We used 1:1, Multiplier can be set from 5x ~ 22x, AGP Voltage can be set to 1.50 ~ 1.80v
CPU Voltage Control up to 2.0v, DRAM Voltage from 2.50v ~ 2.80v, Chipset Voltage from 1.60v ~ 1.90v
Using a AXP 2400+, we managed to get it run well at CAS 2, 5-3-3 at 212MHz.

Overall, the DFI LAN PARTY NF2 Ultra is a board that is aimed at gamers. If you are one of them, you might want to give it a good consideration.

Suggested Retail : USD178 on pricewatch.com

Discuss

Pros 好处:

• 6 Channel audio
• USB 2.0 
• 1394
• Dual LAN, 10/100Mbps Ethernet
• IDE RAID
• Vcore, Vdimm, VDD, multiplier, fsb control

Cons 坏处:

• Certain heatsinks might be blocked by capacitors near socket
• Price is steep
• No SATA RAID

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.

Gold Award