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Installation

We did run into our fair share of problems with the LanParty initially. We managed to get a couple boards from a batch that seemed to have faulty BIOS chips so that there were stability and boot problems as well as the BIOS forgetting settings. DFI was extremely responsive and diligent in replying to emails and getting our BIOS chip replaced. Thanks to the crew at DFI for their understanding and patience in resolving the mainboard issues with us.

Test Setup

DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B
AMD Athlon 2500+ Mobile
2 x 256 Corsair TwinX PC3200
Western Digital WD1200 7200RPM 8MB IDE HD
Seagate SATA V 120GB 7200 RPM 8MB HD
Nvidia Geforce 5950 Ultra
MSI K8N Neo
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
Windows XP Pro SP1 w/ all updates
DirectX 9.0b

One of the questions that we will attempt to answer is if Socket A is dead yet. It has certainly been a workhorse for AMD but it was overshadowed in its latter days by the faster P4 chips and now is superceded by the Athlon 64. Clock for clock, the Athlon 64 is undoubtably faster but the overclocking prowess of the Barton based XPs cannot be ignored. We test the DFI LanParty at both stock speeds (133x14) as well as overclocked at (205x12) and compare it to the MSI K8N Neo running the 3400+ at stock speeds and see how the sub 100$ wonder performs against one of AMD's high end chips.