DFI NF4 sli-dr Question

[Tom Theison]

Hi all. Probably my first post here, but looked through the section here extensively and just couldnt fing a simple answer, hope you can help.

I am an avid simracer, and own a simconmotion which is giving me fits due to iRacing maxing out my cpu during racing thus causing a very long (sometimes 4 or more second lag) between my steering /throttle/braking inputs and what my motion cockpit sends out. Should be in the neighborhood of 3ms response time. Current specs are:

DFI NF4 sli-dr. rev ao3. 939 pin
amd4000 clawhammer (stock 2411mhz since reinstall of windows the other day)
Thermaltake xp120 heatpipe w/120mm silverstone cooling fan
2x1gig ocz pc3200 ram. 2.5-2-2-5 (stock speed)
evga 8800gtx (180.48)
ocz 700 watt gamers xtreme psu
Audigy 2 platinum.

Anyway. I was running a 2x512, 1 gig set of the ocz pc3200 ram and was maxing it out in the task manager when racing. So as a test I ordered a 2 gig set which solved that problem. But am still gettting the response lag. Figured the next step is to try a faster cpu. I know its an older system, but has been very faithfull for two years since its birth. With Christmas and some hospital bills due there is nothing I would love to do more than hit Newegg and order a new I7 core setup, but thats an impossiblity right now. I've looked on DFI's site and the specs of my motherboard, and in the cpu tab it says it does support an amd dual core. I have a guy that is willing to give me an amd athlon64 x2 4800 to test. The DFI site says I would have to update the bios to the latest. Currently running 3.10 I believe. So my simple question is, will the mobo take a dual core amd 4800 or not?

I used to be very involved when I built this rig on the DFI street forum, but it seems to have disappeared, and DFI's support has gotten terrible, which unfortunetley will steer me away from DFI in the spring when I do a rebuild. Angry Games was always very helpfull with our issues and DFI.

Video link to what I do do in my spare time. This was taken running GTR2. Which runs just fine with the current rig, but iRacing is a lot more cpu intensive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T65CXTjYmU

Thanks for any help in this issue

Tommy T.

Specs from DFI's site on my mobo.

LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR

CPU

AMD® Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 / Sempron
Socket 939

Front Side Bus
2000MT/s HyperTransport interface

Chipset
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI - Supports NVIDIA SLI (Scalable Link Interface)

Memory
Four 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM sockets
Supports dual channel (128-bit wide) memory interface
Supports up to 4GB system memory
Supports DDR266, DDR333 and DDR400 DDR SDRAM DIMM

[Big B-man]

Yes, as long as you have the proper BIOS support, the DFI NF4 boards will fully support a dual-core CPU.

[Tom Theison]

Thanks Bigman. I did read your post that day when you posted and do have the 4800 here now, but got real busy at work for a while. Gonna look like a dummy here, but flashing spooks the poop outa me. I've never done it solo hehehe. Have a silly little question. Should I use the zip. or exe? The exe seems so much simpler, as I dont know crap about making a boot disk or bios backups. Other than putting that exe on a floppy, setting my 3/10 bios' to fail safe defaults, and setting boot priority to the floopy drive. Care to type in a simple step by step for me? I have read up on flashing them lately, but its all still kinda vague, and thats where the spooky comes in at.

Thanks T.T.

http://www.dfi.com/portal/CM/cmprodu...lse&itemId=471


..EDIT.. By the way. Happy New Year everyone. Hope we all can hit 6ghz by 2010.

[Big B-man]

I've flashed from Windows with the .exe part, since I just don't use them floppies any more.

After flashing, you'll want to clear CMOS. If your RAM requires a higher voltage than, like 2.5V, you may need a generic stick installed at first until you can get into BIOS and set the voltage, then put in your high-performance stuff. Also, once you've flashed DO NOT use your old CMOS reloaded settings.

[Tom Theison]

Thank you sir.

T.T.

[Tom Theison]

Ok, after a half a pack of smokes, a shot of tequila, and a hail mary prayer. I loaded the fail safe defaults, and apparently succesfully flashed the bios to 4/06 with the floppy. It gave me a little scare at first just as windows would load it was bsod'ing on me. I cleared the cmos (removed the battery) for several mintues, and is running ok now. Just a couple of quick questions if I may. After I shut this thing down, and install the 4800+ (running a single core 4000 right now), will, or should I need to reinstall windows (new install, 1 week old), motherboard chipset drivers (nforce6.86's), or do anythig unusual to it after I fire it up for the first time with the 4800+ in it?

Seriously though I really appreciate the help arooud here.

T.T.

[Big B-man]

If you have Windows XP Service Pack 3, you shouldn't need anything in the updates, IIRC. You won't have to reinstall Windows, but check in Device Manager to ensure the Computer's HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) has switched from Uniprocessor to Multiprocessor. It should autodetect after the upgrade and ask you to reboot, but that should be it.

[Tom Theison]

Ok, its running. Had a few issues with bsod'ing after the flash, but got it stable and installed the new cpu. Took a while to get the 4800 running also. Kept having to jumper the cmos to get it to reboot to windows. It kept doing a repeating POST. But have it stable now. Speed is a little slow (cpu-z). I seen Zoltans post in the database, and would think I could get close to that (2800 would be a nice oc'). Running nearly the same stuff he is (psu, 2 gig instead of 1 on ram, and a 4800 instead of his 4600)

http://forums.pcper.com/showpost.php...2&postcount=18

But some of the other stuff in the bios I am pretty much clueless about. I havent really played around in there in a couple of years since I first built this setup. Wonder if anyone would take a look at my bios screenies and make some suggestions. Stuff like the pci, or pci-e-x intial first display (8800gtx pci-e gpu), cpu video control, ur2 half duplex, cpu thermal throttling. And maybe some suggestions to kick 'er up a notch or two? etc. etc. I'll remove the jpegs later to save bandwidth here.

I dont see a "donate" button on this site, but I would be more than willing to if there was one. Certainly appreciate all the help Big B-man, and others. I see your a fellow Hoosier. If you ever need or want a couple of 500, or Brickyard tickets, I can arrange that on me.

Tom

[Big B-man]

Well, we do have a lot of good info in the DFI ReadMe Sticky which includes the DFI nF4 Builder's Guide...and that has a lot of links that should be very helpful in fine tuning things. For now, I don't see anything that looks like a major setting that would break things. I don't want to sound like I'm blowing you off, but there is some trial and error.

From what I've seen, it looks good. I do know the DFI motherboards tend to undervolt a tad, so you might consider manually bumping up your voltage by .05 to 0.1V, and set your memory voltage to 2.7-2.8V.

[Stevea]

This should help you figure out what settings to try easier. Just remember to keep the HT to as close to 1000 as possible without going over and the memory to as close to 200 as possible.

http://home.arcor.de/xxmartin/Calculator/

You can play with the calculator and see what changes change what before plugging them in and trying to boot...... go slow and stress test, before going higher each time.

.

[Tom Theison]

Thanks guys. I tried every setting I can change to get that utility. IE keeps blocking me. Anyhoo, Just woke up and checked the pc after running prime all night and she's running just fine now. 2820 will do just fine for now until I can get into an i7 or something along that line.

Thanks again for all the help guys

T.T.

[Tommy Trauma]

Next question if I may please.

I just built a new nuclear reactor hehehe, and am going to give the girlfriend my DFI setup above. I kept my seagate sata drives and attempted to just install an 80 gig IDE WD into her new tower, and reinstall windows for her to start fresh. Every IDE drive I've tried (and have several IDE WD's) I cant get it to detect the HDD. I've loaded the optimised bios, and set the boot priority to the cd-rom to install windows as none of these drives has an OS on them. Could it not be detecting the drives from the last bios flash I did? In the bios I let it try to detect the new HDD, but comes up 0. I ran two Seagate SATA's before and it was fine. Any suggestions would be appreciated.


Oh yeah, BTW, the nuclear reactor is an:
Antec 1200
evga x58 SZ1G
i7-940 @ 3780mhz
True black 120 lapped/kaze3000
3x2gig ocz3g1600lvgk
corsair cmpsu1000hk a
evga 8800GTX....GTX295 due in Monday
Creative Audigy 2 platinum
Xp Pro 32

[CMB]

If it's a wd ide and alone on the cable, remove all the jumpers on the drive.

[Tommy Trauma]

Hehehe, DOH!!!. That solved that issue. Thank you. Still not able to get it to start installing windows though. Just keeps reposting. Pulled out a stick of ram as a test, but even with one stick of ocz 1024 in she wont start installing. Tried a different HDD too. I'll have to keep looking around and see what I can find. Again, thanks for the reply CMB.

T.T.

wow, really need to update my signature here too. I'll get right on that.

[CMB]

Disable any sata controllers, if windows sees a sata it will want drivers for it.
Edit...
Not sure if you mean restarting during install ?
Anyway you should make sure that sil sata is disabled, and nvidia are all set to ide compatible and not sata.