Yes Cathar I totally agree! I sold a mobile Barton 2500+ to someone at AMDMB, and I had only been able to get it to 2550Mhz on this DFI, so wasn't particularly hapy with it. The guy who bought it stuck it in his NF7-S and on his first day he managed to get 2.7Ghz out of her.
My currenct mobile 2500+ is even better, it boots into WindowsXP at 2.8Ghz, but running a SANDRA benchie freezes the mouse, nearly always a sign of not enough voltage. 2.72 Ghz should be easy with this CPU and watercooling, but the undervolting of both the Vdimm and Vcore is a serious thorn in my side. I have 3 pairs of 512MB (1GB DC sets) Corsair PC3500 v1.1 BH5's that are able to hit 245Mhz+ with 3.3-3.4Vdimm, but this board seems to constantly stay around 3.20-3.25 which gives me blue screens under stress.
All in all I am not too happy with this board, a high FSB does not compensate for overall bad stability, cold-booting issues, and far lower overall Mhz. Besides, on a Vmodded NF7-S people are hitting 240Mhz-250MhzFSB and they have the option of up to 2.2Vcore and amazing stability. Not to mention SATA writes are much faster.
DFI are said to be putting forth a new revision of the DFI Lanparty Ultra B though before the AthlonXP finally dies it'd death, most likely so as not to be remembered as having a piss-poor board out, apparently it will have better stability, voltage regulation, and more Vcore options. I think they should give current DFI owners a complimentary upgrade to be honest, and i'll push for that if and when it is released.
On another note, the watercooling does seem to be working it's magic, I was expecting a bit too much in the first place I think. Idle temps of 33c @ 11*240, 2650Mhz, 1.95Vcore at an ambient of 26c are nothing to be sniffed at, and load only rises 5c or so. Only problem I have now is that it's going to be a scorchingly hot summer, and my bedroom is south-facing, lol, time to shell out for a mobile air conditioning unit methinks. :shrug:
The MCP600 is a good little pump too, i'm very impressed with it's power and lack of noise, and it copes with the Cascade and Maze3 blocks without breaking a sweat, not to mention the humongous Thermochill 120.3 which must be a bitch to push water through.
I'm waiting on that GPU block that you're supposed to be bringing out though, lol, I don't think the Maze3 GPU block is the be and end all, and hasn't helped my core OC all that much in comparison with my old Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer. Is that project still on hold indefinately then?
Thanks for the replies I appreciate it,
Regards,
Rich.
