DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B
In order to best take a look at the new LanParty, rather than just run through its features in isolation, I'll do a side-by-side feature comparison with the old board.| LanParty | LanParty B | |
| CPU Support | All Socket A processors | All Socket A processors |
| Northbridge | NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 SPP | NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 SPP |
| Memory Support | 3 slots, DDR400, 3GB max | 3 slots, DDR400, 3GB max |
| AGP | 8X | 8X |
| Southbridge | NVIDIA MCP-T | NVIDIA MCP-T |
| Audio | Realtek ALC850 from MCP-T feed | Realtek ALC850 from MCP-T feed |
| Audio Connectivity | 3 port backplane speaker, S/PDIF I/O on I/O shield | 5 port backplane speaker, S/PDIF I/O on backplane |
| PCI | 5 x 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.1 slots | 5 x 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.1 slots |
| IDE | 2 ATA133 compliant ports from MCP-T | 2 ATA133 compliant ports from MCP-T |
| IDE RAID | Highpoint HPT372N RAID controller w/ 2 ports | None |
| SATA | Marvell 88i8030, 1 port bridge from primary ATA | Silicon Image Sil3114, 4 port |
| SATA RAID | None | 4 device RAID0, RAID1 |
| Ethernet | NVIDIA 10/100, RTL8101 10/100 | NVIDIA 10/100, RTL8110S 10/100/1000 |
| USB | MCP-T, 4 x backplane USB2.0, 2 x I/O USB2.0 | MCP-T, 4 x backplane USB2.0, 2 x I/O USB2.0 |
| FireWire | 1 FrontX port, 2 x I/O ports, Agere FW803 PHY | 1 FrontX port, 2 x I/O ports, Agere FW803 PHY |
| Other I/O | PS/2, Parallel, 2 x Serial | PS/2, Parallel, 1 x Serial |
A nip here, a tuck there. The biggest change is the dropping of IDE RAID support in favour of SATA. The Sil3114 offers 4 full SATA channels which the board duly makes good use of, giving you 4 physical ports to hang your drives from. The chip does RAID0 and RAID1 on all channels, giving you decent flexibility in your disk configuration. You can run seperate RAID levels on two channel pairs, as far as I can make out without explicit testing anyway. The lack of physical IDE ports for the old Highpoint chip on the old board means a layout change for the B revision, I'll talk about that on the following page.
Audio wise, while DFI have stuck with the Realtek ALC650 CODEC for Soundstorm compatible output from the MCP-T bridge, the connectivity options have changed a little. The B revision still enjoys the FrontX hardware for external audio connections (more on that later), but the physical board connections are a little different. Gone is the old 3 port shared speaker I/O on the older board and in comes full 5 port connectivity on the B revision board. That means no sharing of microphone and line-in sockets for 5.1 audio output, instead the LFE and rear channels get their own. S/PDIF input and ouput for the Dolby hardware on the bridge are moved from a PCI I/O shield onto the ATX backplane, in place of the 2nd serial port on the older board. A welcome change.
Networking sees an overhaul too. Sticking with Realtek for the 2nd network port, favoured over the 3Com MAC on the MCP-T bridge, the B revision board uses the RTL8110S ASIC. That provides Gigabit Ethernet for the LanParty B, versus the more sober 10/100Mb/sec provided by the RTL8101 on the older board. Both NVIDIA and Realtek provided ports reside in the same place on the backplane. Nothing extravagant and arguably of little use on a desktop board, especially since it rides the PCI bus, it's nice to see Gigabit Ethernet on boards nonetheless, since it drives market acceptance which in turn drive prices down.
The B revision sticks with the same FireWire support as the A and puts an Agere FW803 PHY above the top PCI slot, along with 3 header clusters for 3 possible connected ports. With one port provided by the FrontX and two by a fly-off PCI I/O plate, you get full use of the FireWire capabilities that the MCP-T bridge provides.
Memory and CPU support remain unchanged between the two revisions, with full support for any and all Socket A processors, including the latest Barton and Thorton core Athlon XP's, along with Applebred Duron's, should you wish to underpower your LanParty with something cheap, while you save up for that XP3200+. Memory support stays at 3GB max using 3 sticks of memory. Dual channel support is provided by slots one and three. With the memory controller offering twice the theoretical bandwidth maximum that the processor can make use of, the SPP bridge allows isynchronous access to the memory controller by peripherally connected devices like the Ethernet MAC's and the Soundstorm audio, independently of the CPU. With the Realtek 8110S riding the PCI bus, seperately from the MCP-T bridge, it's really down to the NVIDIA Ethernet and the FireWire to make most use of the surplus.
All in all, a nice upgrade to the core feature set of the original board. 4 port SATA is especially nice to see for those embracing the SATA hard disk evolution, along with its RAID capabilities. I'm also pleased to see full 3 port FireWire (6 pin powered ports no less) and movement of S/PDIF to the backplane, along with no requirement for sharing the input ports for the speakers when using a 5.1 speaker set.
Let's talk about layout for a page, before moving on to the extensive bundle.