DFI
Encyclopedia
DFI, or Diamond Flower Inc., is a major motherboard
Motherboard
In personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...

 manufacturer based in Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

.

History

DFI was first established in 1981 by Y.C Lu. At that time, DFI began as a graphics card maker with a turnover of 100 cards. In 1992, DFI abandoned its graphics card production and switched to the production of motherboards as the graphics card market was too limited at the time and did not have potential to grow. After 5 years, DFI quickly gained a reputation in the Asia-Pacific region. It peaked as high as one of the top 15 motherboard manufacturers at that time.

In 1998, DFI became the sole design partner for the Intel 810 series chipset, which gained more attention. In 2003, DFI internally reorganised its line into 3 distinct groups. One was the standard OEM line, another is the Infinity budget range, and the last as the LANParty range. The head of the LANParty range was Oskar Wu, who joined DFI after he resigned from ABIT after the NForce series.

Currently, as of 2006, DFI had left being one of the most competitive manufacture as it used to be in 90's. They now specialized in some industrial computing and legacy parts for old computers.

Name

Recently there has been confusion over what DFI means, however Design for Innovation appears to simply be a slogan, a situation with close parallels to Lucky Goldstar with their slogan of Life's Good and Micro-Star International
Micro-Star International
Micro-Star International Co., Ltd is a Taiwan-based electronics company and one of the world's largest motherboard and video card manufacturers.-Overview:MSI is one of the top three motherboard and video card manufacturers worldwide...

's slogan of My Style Inside.

Actually, DFI, stands for Diamond Flower International. Diamond Flower being the name of David and YC Lu's mother, translated from mandarin.

Location

DFI is located in Hsi-Chih City, Taiwan with regional offices in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

.

Popular products

DFI caters to the enthusiast market with motherboards with advanced overclocking features and a design with ultraviolet-reactive connectors on a black PCB
Printed circuit board
A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...

. There are two versions of the LANParty line with the UT similar to the full LANParty gear except for the omission of the PC Transpo bag, UV sleeving kit, FrontX Panel, and less UV-reactant cables.

DFI introduced their Junior lineup in the mid summer of 2008 with two products, p45 and 790gx, but have somewhat been extended with a nvidia chipset and X58 chipset in late 2008.
The junior lineup "JR" is micro-ATX and they usually support Crossfire or SLI setups with dual-slot videocards.
This series has proven to be a valuable segment in the future for small, powerful computers. However, they don't contain the same power circuitry ("VRM/PWM") and BIOS options as their full-sized "ATX" counterparts.
There are other LanParty series like LT and DK(Dark).
Lanparty UT is still the most high end line of products and few chipsets are reserved under the name.
The different variants include some of these popular products in the Lanparty series:

Socket AM3
  • DFI LP JR 790GX-M3H5
  • DFI LP DK 790FXB-M3H5
  • DFI LP BI 785G-M35


Socket AM2/AM2+
  • DFI LP JR 790GX-M2RS
  • DFI LP DK 790GX-M2RS
  • DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RSH
  • DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RS
  • DFI LP DK 790FX-M2RS
  • DFI LP UT 790FX-M2R


Socket AM2
  • LANParty UT nForce 590 SLI-M2R/G


Socket 939
  • LANParty UT Crossfire CFX3200-DR
  • LANParty UT Crossfire RDX200 CF-DR
  • LANParty UT nForce 4 SLI-DR Venus
  • LANParty UT nForce 4 SLI-DR Expert
  • LANParty nForce 4 SLI-DR (UT Version also available)
  • LANParty UT nForce 4 SLI-D
  • LANParty UT nForce 4 Ultra-D
  • LANParty UT nForce 3 Ultra-D


Socket 754
  • LANParty UT nForce 3 250 GB


Socket A (462)
  • LANParty NFII Ultra
  • LANParty NFII Ultra B
  • LANParty KT400A


Socket T (LGA775)
  • LANParty UT X48 T3R
  • LANParty UT X48 T2R
  • LANParty LT X48 T2R
  • LANParty JR GF9400 T2RS
  • LANParty JR P45 T2RS
  • LANParty DK P45 T3RSB+
  • LANParty DK P45 T2RS+
  • LANParty LT X38 T2R
  • LANParty UT P35 T2R
  • LANParty LT P35 T2R
  • LANParty DK P35 T2RS
  • Blood Iron P35 T2S
  • LANParty UT Crossfire ICFX3200-T2R/G
  • LANParty UT Intel 915P-T12
  • LANParty Intel 925X-T2
  • LANParty Intel 875P-T


Socket (LGA1366)
  • DFI LP UT X58-T3eH8
  • DFI LP JR X58-T3H6
  • DFI LP DK X58-T3eH6


Socket (LGA1156)
  • DFI LP Dark P55-T3eH6

DFI also has another line primarily aimed at budget overclockers. This line is the "Infinity"/"Bloodiron", which started with the nForce 2.
The "Bloodiron" is just the Infinity series renamed.

AMD lineup
  • nForce 4 DAGF
  • nForce 4 Ultra Infinity
  • nForce 4x Infinity
  • nForce 4 SLI Infinity
  • RS482 Infinity
  • nForce 2 Infinity
  • CFX3200-M2/G Infinity


Intel lineup
  • Intel 975X/G Infinity
  • Intel P965 Express


DFI is also manufacturing various motherboards for mainstream users. This product line is the "General" line. For those wanting to build silent computers, there is a product line called "Silent PC".

DFI-ACP

DFI is also manufacturing motherboards for various industrial purposes. DFI-ACP is a Wintel
Wintel
Wintel is a portmanteau of Windows and Intel, referring to personal computers using Intel x86 compatible processors running Microsoft Windows...

 based platform provider for non-PC business, products range from board level, open frame, add-on boards to barebone
Barebone computer
A barebone computer is a partially assembled platform or an unassembled kit of computer parts allowing more customization and lower costs than a retail computer system. They are available for desktop computer, notebook and server purposes, and in nearly any form factor...

systems.
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