New DFI LanParty nF4 Official BIOS

WizZard

For all with DFI nF4 boards - who are having "little hiccups"

06/15
Get it here (Official Site)

[strike]If the site is slow - it is now - I have a copy I can email to people.[/strike]

or locally here and here (floppy image)

ChangeLog wrote:

1. Support Dual-Core Athlon64 CPUs.
2. Fix certain PS2 mouse detection failure.

po0k

Wizzard, email to me, [my boards username] at gmale.cum

I'll host it.


Does anyone know if Infineon 64x8 BE-5 chips work well with the DFI board?
I don't want to spend 300+ on ram to find out it barely runs at stock speeds and timings.

WizZard

Edited my post with files hosted on boards webspace

No idea about the infineon chips. Have you asked over at DFI-Street? I think I remember a thread by you but I've no idea if there were any replies.

po0k

The traffic is fairly high on that board

I have everything else pretty much specced, only two components I'm unsure of are the PSU and memory.

I want at least a 480W, preferably a 550W. There are nice Fortrons on komplett but while the 480 is a reasonable ~70euro, the 550W is double that at €146. Madness.

For memory, I want 2x 1024meg DDR400 sticks with timings of 2-3-3-6 at least, and height is a factor. I can't use Corsair PRO modules for instance.

WizZard

You need at least a 480W for that board! Minimum
I would go with the 500W if I were you, since a good PSU is an investment.

Why is height a factor? And Corsair does not play so nice with the DFI nF4 boards!

po0k

Aye, I want a good PSU, but cash is kinda limited

Height is a factor because I'm using an XP-90c as a heatsink, and it overhangs the dimm slots.

I'm worried about the Corsair stuff, apparently their 512Meg sticks use TCCD/TCC5, much like the OCZ stuff. But after emailing OCZ and checking the Corsair Ram Guy forums, it appears that they both use Infineon BE-5 (datasheet) in their 1Gig modules, and I've seen very few DFI NF4 rigs running 2x 1GB sticks of any kind of ram. I'd be happy buying 2x512Meg sticks if I could buy another pair of 512Meg sticks in a few months without compatability issues or having to drop to 2T tCmd.

I can't believe people and memory vendors are happy with only 512Meg sticks. What use is 2x256MB sticks running at 600Mhz 1-1-1-2 if you can't run lots of apps on your bloated OS while burning DVDs in the background and scanning for spyware on the side?

I'm willing to spend about 300euro (+/-50) on a pair of 1Gig sticks that'll clock happily with the SLI-DR.

po0k

Any chance of posting the release notes for that bios image?

WizZard

The changelog quote in the first post is all the release notes that there are!

2T is gauranteed with 4 sticks, unless you can find single sided 512mb sticks (rare). The shift to 2gb memory is coming soon, but will most likely wait for DDR2. It's harsh but it's just something we have to put up with for a while

astrofool

the sooner the amd platform makes a change to ddr2 the better at this stage, if only for higher capacity ram.

I've usually been a generation ahead ram wise, I had 256 when 64 was popular, 512 when 128 was recommended, and had a gig for years now, but I don't want to go down the road of relaxing timings for greater capacity, which going to 2gig would do. What I really want to do is build an 8gig system (use them at work ), but 4 would do, providing 2gig dimms with decent timings came out, and now that ddr2 is pushing 800 to 1000, it seems to be the time to do it.

jozi

I have OCZ 3200 platinum revision 2's and a xp90 (not coper if it matters) and there's plenty room to insert the stick with the heatsink on the cpu.
Now i dont know if the ram your looking for is higher thou, just taught id post it incase it might be of help.

po0k

Cool, could you post the exact model etc. or a dump of the SPD data?

You running a DFI board too?
Timings, clocks etc. would be appreciated

WizZard

astrofool wrote:

the sooner the amd platform makes a change to ddr2 the better at this stage, if only for higher capacity ram.

I was actually hoping that they would jump straight to DDR3

Dman_15

this bios isnt as good as the 510 beta that i had been running. Having said that i have bh-5 and thats prob optimised for tccd

WizZard

Dman_15 wrote:

this bios isnt as good as the 510 beta that i had been running. Having said that i have bh-5 and thats prob optimised for tccd

It is indeed. You'll be wanting the -1 or -2 BIOS version's I think. DFI are working on a compilation for BH-5 at the moment AFAIK

astrofool

going to ddr3 would be stupid, economies of scale come into it, and when it comes to RAM, AMD with a 20% market share has to follow Intel with an almost 80% share. Besides, Ath64 isn't bandwidth starved, and ddr2 at 800 even with latencies of 4-4-4-8 would be faster than ddr400 at 2-2-2-5

rsynnott

WizZard wrote:

I was actually hoping that they would jump straight to DDR3

Their new socket, which is out early next year, will house chips with onboard DDR2 controllers. Reports of a jump straight to DDR3 were incorrect.

po0k

XDR is also being considered.

jozi

SyxPak wrote:

Cool, could you post the exact model etc. or a dump of the SPD data?

You running a DFI board too?
Timings, clocks etc. would be appreciated

Dont know what SPd data is but here's the exact model name etc:
1Gb kit EL DDR PC-3200 Platinum Rev. 2
And i have the dfi mobo
Have not really overclocked just yet, only once i tried. Got the fsb up to 300 and was able to boot in to windows for a few seconds. There's so many options

EDIT: have to rma gfx card so had to put old mobo gfx etc in case, while i was at it....
there's just over 4cm of space from the top of the plastic slot ram sits in to the bottom of the sp90 (of the part that hangs over the ram) dont know if its any addiion to you

astrofool

this bios seems to have been pulled from the DFI site, I just tried it and the sata/raid didn't function correctly, in that it wasn't recognised after a reboot, going back to 310 till the next official bios hits.

po0k

What dating/versioning scheme do DFI use for their Bioses?

Is it Month.Day or what?
What happens if bios releases for a board span more than a year?

DemonOfTheFall

XDR would be damn expensive if they went for it. Can't see that happening anytime soon. DDR2 is useless aswell... Theres nothing wrong with good old PC3200 (for A64s at least)

WizZard

astrofool wrote:

this bios seems to have been pulled from the DFI site, I just tried it and the sata/raid didn't function correctly, in that it wasn't recognised after a reboot, going back to 310 till the next official bios hits.

Looks like it.

There have been 3 new Beta BIOS's since that one so maybe mistakes/errors were found. It was official though.

SyxPak wrote:

What dating/versioning scheme do DFI use for their Bioses?

Is it Month.Day or what?

Yes, month(/.)day, so if released today it would be 624 or 6/24, or 6.24

SyxPak wrote:

What happens if bios releases for a board span more than a year?

Never will with a DFI. There are beta's released for popular boards nearly every week.

po0k

Capacity.
DDR2 *was* shít due to higher latencies than DDR at similar frequencies, but as the frequencies of DDR2 increase rapidly, the actual time taken by the number of clock latencies will grow shorter. Plus there are electrical considerations, like load on the memory controller circuitry - especially in high-capacity (4Gig+) configurations, these are very hard to do well using DDR on common-place desktop solutions.

po0k

WizZard wrote:

Never will with a DFI. There are beta's released for popular boards nearly every week.

So they only update BIOSes for new boards for the first 6/8/whatever months? Most manufacturers will support products for at least a year with drivers and firmware (where required or there are things that can be improved).

WizZard

Hmm, that's not what I meant. Maybe that's how it sounded. It seems, naturally, that newer boards will have BIOSes coming out every week, in BETA only! An "official" release seems to come out every couple of months, usually coinciding with new h/w, eg. CPUs.
Again, this is what I have gathered from the BETA BIOS release schedule and the official releases on their websites.

For more information from DFI themselves pop along to DFI-Street and ask them.

astrofool

I think what he means is that even the official bioses are named the same way (e.g. 310 on march 10th), so what happens next year? Do they go from releasing v1231 to v11?

I reckon they'd just add another number to it, but it does seem quite short sighted.

I must say, I really like the way ATI numbers its drivers, year than month, though what'll they do in 3005? nVidia will probably be on release 14231235.

And syxpak is correct re: ddr2, its capacity not speed that should drive the need to change over.

po0k

20050624 is the only real way to write today's date.

aaf

So what's the skinny on the latest bios now? I just checked dfi site and it's not there. I did download it from here last week but didn't get the chance to flash it yet. Maybe I should hold off then?

@Dman_15
Will the new bios offer better support for that Mushkin TCCD you sold me?

WizZard

The newest BIOS AFAIK is 623 but that's still a beta.

SyxPak, I agree that the only way to write a date is 20050624

As regards DFI, I think on the official pages the BIOS dates are specified fully, eg. 05/03/10 for the last official BIOS. The 623, or 310 seems to be internal shorthand which has passed on to users (who like to get their hands dirty).

I would imagine that instead of releasing a BIOS on the same date a year later for the same board, they would probably hold off on the release for a day, so as not to confuse things...

astrofool

or a day earlier and you'd have a lower version number

The official site has them numbered the same way WizZard, which I think is what syxpak is getting at.

po0k

It would really spice things up if they started releasing different streams like IOS or Debian ie. stable, testing and unstable.