This BIOS section also includes options for controlling FireWire, SATA and network controllers, for changing the full-screen BIOS image and for protecting the BIOS from re-flashing. This is rather strange, as we got used to seeing such options in Advanced BIOS Features and Advanced Chipset Features pages. By breaking this unwritten rule they make the user browse through all the pages searching for the necessary one: it’s usually not where you would expect it to be.

It’s also strange that we have no temperature control option in the PC Health Status page, which would turn the computer off after a certain critical temperature has been reached. In other words, we don’t have any overheat protection in an overclocking friendly mainboard! Of course, the PC will be shut down when the CPU is 110°C hot, but that’s not a reassuring fact, since the processor may fail even at 85-90°C.

Yet another drawback is the fact that the BIOS displays processor frequency instead of its rating when you set up a non-standard FSB frequency. For example, our processor was identified wrongly when we set its 2200MHz as 220x10.

In case of over-overclocking, or if you set up incorrect parameters in the BIOS and the system doesn’t boot up, you may press and hold the Ins key on startup. By doing this you reset CPU and memory parameters so that the computer could start and let you enter the BIOS Setup. That’s a useful option many manufacturers forget to implement in their mainboards. As for clearing the CMOS memory up, you can do it by pressing the Pause key.

So let’s check out the capabilities of the BIOS during overclocking. We can overclock the processor by increasing the FSB frequency or by setting a higher CPU multiplier. It’s all right with the multipliers: the mainboard supports them all including 22x. It was worse with FSB overclocking: the mainboard was stable in the dual-channel mode (both synchronous and asynchronous) at a frequency of 225MHz. when we set higher frequency the mainboard refused to even start. It is a rather average result I should say. Flagship products from ABIT and EPoX reach as high as 230-235MHz. Thus, DFI’s mainboard showed exactly what I had been expecting: average overclockability. Of course, I would like to see higher frequencies, but there are no miracles here.

Performance

We took one of the fastest nForce2-based mainboard, ABIT NF7-S to participate in our test session together with our today’s hero from DFI. This way we will be able to estimate if DFI engineers managed to achieve the appropriate performance level. The testbed was configured as follows:

• Athlon XP 3200+ CPU;
• 2x256MB PC3700 DDR SDRAM from OCZ;
• ATI RADEON 9700 PRO graphics card.

We used the chipset driver version 3.13 and the graphics card driver version 3.10. The memory worked in the synchronous mode with 2-4-4-9 timings.

The following table shows you the performance results in different applications:

DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B mainboard is fast enough to compete with the renowned mainboard from ABIT. So we can conclude that the engineering team from DFI did a great job.