Summary
DFI have produced a exceptional motherboard in the NB80-EA, especially when you consider that it is using a brand new Intel chipset. There are reports of instability and problems with the Granite Bay chipset, none were evident on this board which is a real achievement.
The board is produced to a very high standard. Only one problem was experienced while running the board in the Vapochil. When booting the system from cold the vapochil takes a minute or two to begin cooling, once the critical t1 temperature is reached (0c in this case) the vapochil applies voltage to the motherboard allowing booting. From a cold boot the moment power was applied to the board it turned its self off immediately. Restarting cures the problem. An annoying, but not terminal fault.
With a small amount of physical tweaking we managed to overcome the boards most major failing, lack of vcore adjustment. It is true that the board does not provide any voltage adjustment for AGP or DDR, but with Dual Band DDR we were able to get the RAM to fully utilise the P4's potential bandwidth without the need for very high ram speeds and therefore additional voltage. So no real loss.
It is all very well producing good benchmarking scores based on tests like Sandra. The NB80-EA proved that its performance is equally as impressive in real world tests like Seti and PiFast. The scores are better than many Asus P4T's with 4200Rimms.
Although difficult to quantify, the board feels incredibly fast. A full install of Windows XP, including a quick format, took only 10 Minutes. Games like UT2003 run effortlessly. All this with a P4 2.4b running at 3,100Mhz. What would the performance be with a P42.8 or 3.06 one wonders?
DFI, a relatively unknown component maker, have produced a real winner in the NB80-EA motherboard. With a revised bios giving greater vcore control the board has the potential to become an overclockers delight. Hopefully DFI will move this board into full retail production very soon, they certainly should do.
