DFI LANParty UT CFX3200-DR

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/04/21/dfi_lanparty_ut_cfx3200-dr/1.html

 

Woohoo, nice to see DFI has got it right again. Sweetness

 

wow . got to start saving.

 

question : why do all these boards now have like 8 SATA ports -- most cases can only hold 4 harddisks and most users only want 2 DVD drivers. Seein as these are aimed at gamers etc, its not like they will be havin huge RAID5 arrays etc or mamouth amounts of storage space.

Also, why 2 NICs, I have never worked that out either. Surly they could remove some of this stuff and make the board cheeper // more spaced out // more other features.

 

A lot of people around here have hard drives out the wazoo-and a fair number of them actually do use RAID because their data is valuable to them. Its fair to provide it. And honestly, a case that holds 4 hard disks is a cheap piece of junk or a small one IMHO.

 

my case can hold 9hdd's. and i had 3 dvd rom drives (till 1 broke) the more the merryer!!!
and you want more features. but you want to remove some *confused*

 

Nice MB, I'll consider it when I buy a new pc (If I have the money ).

DFI keep up the good work

 

Yup, they could remove some of the stuff, but they're trying to appeal to a wide market, and at the high end of the mobo market, the money saved on missing out an extra NIC or using one less SATA controller wouldn't swing many people towards the mobo, but might put quite a few off due a competitors high end mobo having more SATA ports of Ethernet ports. As for the idea that gamers don't have lots of data, I think thats very far off. PC gamers tend to be general techies, who have the internet, and many are going to have very large collections of media.

 

With AMD Socket M2 just a few months away, is it wise to buy socket 939 motherboard or processor at the moment, especially top of the range stuff?

I'm still using a socket A Athlon XP and I've been putting off upgrading for quite a while, so I may as well hold on for a little longer, skip socket 939 altogether and go straight to M2.

 

I think hanging around for M2 is still a bad idea. Being an early adopter sucks, it costs too much, the tech is generally buggy, and speed benefits are often questionable. The time to really think "should I hold on for M2" is once the first gen crap is released, thens the time to start evaluating whether M2 is going to be decent and cheap enough to warrent waiting a while, or whether 939 is still king.

 

I agree, it's probably not best to get the first M2 processors and motherboards off the production lines, but hold on for a couple of months after that. However, socket 939 will be a dead end once socket M2 gets underway and as I've managed with Socket A up until now, holding on for another 3, 4 or even 5 months won't hurt.

If I'm honest my ageing XP 2600 does everything I "need" to just fine. It's only really some later games where it's showing it's age and that's partly down to my middling graphics card. I've held off upgrading the AGP graphics card as when I finally do get a newer motherboard it will be PCI Express and I will have to get a new graphics card anyway. Socket M2 will also need DDR2 memory, so this is going to be quite an expensive upgrade when I finally do it.

 

AM2 also doesn't provide much of a benefit at the moment based on the benchmarks that are already out there... if you're looking to stick with DDR for the time being, this board is likely to be worth your pennies.

 

eer why is DFI striping all the features from their packages like here http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_pro....jsp?PRODUCT_ID=3449&CATEGORY_TYPE=LP&SITE=US
that enqludes everything you might possibly need and more, but now they only give you a few s-ata cabels, IDE-cabels and some more

 

Am I right in taking from this the impression that this Crossfire board is a better board than the SLI board?

 

I've gotta agree - the stock version of my case holds a dozen, and the smaller version holds six. My cheap fileserver case holds five plus a couple more in floppy bays, and is a reasonably small case.

Starting the article with "for the win"? Oh the hypocicy...

Looks like a nice board though, however set I am with mine for now.

 

It's not so much of a case of wanting extra performance from the AM2 socket as not wanting to buy a premium priced motherboard which in a few months will be obslolete. I believe that once socket AM2 hits the market no new socket 939 CPUs will be developed, which means that there will be limited potential for futute CPU upgrades.

In addition, even if you were considering socket 939, we may see some price reductions in a few months when socket AM2 is released. Either way, I think now is a bad time to buy a socket 939 motherboard or CPU, unless of course your current PC has failed and you absolutely need a replacement immediately.

 

It depends how often you're looking to upgrade - this board isn't for people who've not already got a socket 939 system. If you're using something other than a socket 939 Athlon 64, this board isn't for you and you may as well wait for AM2.

However, people don't want to upgrade from AGP because it means they've got to buy a new motherboard and a new graphics card. If you've got a socket 939 chip and want to upgrade to AM2, you're going to have to buy new memory, a new motherboard, a new CPU and if you're an AGP user, you're going to have to buy a new graphics card too.

The performance difference that is seen between AM2 and S939 isn't something that is worth shelling out all of your hard earned cash for if you've got a S939 system already... I'd say that it is those people that are likely to be in the hunt or a new motherboard like this.

 

Hi & welcome to the forums.

There are two different types of bundle under the LANParty series. LANParty is all bells, all whistles and LANParty UT comes with a cut down bundle... Hope that helps.

 

Depends what you're looking for. Choose your graphics platform first and then look at the mobo - I use an nF4 SLI-DR in my own system, but I'm running NVIDIA graphics at the moment. If I was using ATI graphics and wanted to run CrossFire, I'd choose this board above any other CrossFire-capable board out there.

 

im very glad to see that DFI has now changed the layout of the NB location and the pcie gfx slots. looks like you can use a pretty decent cooler on the chipset now