by Doors4ever
09/22/2008 | 09:11 PM
Unlike ASUSTeK Computer or Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), DFI Company can’t boast billions of dollars in revenue from the sales of their overclocker mainboards. However, DFI’s LANPARTY brand has more significance in the market than ASUS’ Republic of Gamers. At least, Google search engine returns over 2.5 million links for “DFI LANPARTY” inquiry and only around 2 million links for “Republic of Gamers”. No wonder, since DFI LANPARTY UT and LANPARTY LT mainboard series have been popular among overclocking and modding fans for a long time now. DFI Infinity mainboard series hides in the shade of the well-known LANPARTY brand, however, it is now being renamed to a better sounding “Blood Iron”. These are less ambitious mainboards, they are targeted for commencing overclockers and feature only basic overclocking-friendly functions.
DFI mainboard fans used to have only two choices: a not very expensive and not very overclocking-advanced mainboard from the Infinity/Blood Iron series, or a LANPARTY UT or LT mainboard with all possible and impossible overclocking related functionality available at a pretty high price. Now, however, they started to roll out new boards known as LANPARTY DK. “DK” is an abbreviation from the word “Dark”, so the boards from this series use dark-colored textolite. Unlike LANPARTY UT and LT, the new boards do not have Thermalright chipset cooling systems, so we hope that their retail price will become more affordable. However, there is no need to worry about the cooling efficiency: LANPARTY DK boards do not use simple heatsinks like Infinity/Blood Iron series. They are equipped with cooling solutions using heatpipe technology. And since these boards also belong to LANPARTY series, their overclocking-related functionality promises to be pretty advanced, too.
So, we can conclude, though preliminarily, than new DFI LANPARTY DK mainboards should be a little less expensive but should retain advanced overclocking-friendly features typical of other LANPARTY solutions. At this point, these are only our suppositions, but our today’s review of the new DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard will show if we are right.
DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard comes in a black box, just as we have expected. There are very few decorative elements on the package, which is traditional for DFI:
There is no photo on the back of the box, there is a just a brief list of mainboard’s technical specifications.
The mainboard is bundled with not too many accessories. The kit includes round FDD and IDE cables, two Serial ATA cables and a power adapter for two SATA devices, system case I/O Shield and a few replacement jumper caps in a plastic bag:
Moreover, there is a user’s manual, boxed cooler installation guide for Socket LGA775, a CD disk with drivers for the chipset, audio- and network controllers, and a floppy disk with RAID controller drivers.
DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard looks extremely beautiful thanks to a very successful combination of dark textolite and yellow-orange connectors:
Attractive looks is definitely a good consumer feature, however, we are mostly interested in the applied aspects, so let’s take a closer look at the chipset cooling system. Although it has become significantly simpler compared to the chipset cooling on DFI LANPARTY UT and LT mainboards, it cannot be called weak or primitive at all. It is very good that the chipset North Bridge heatsink uses secure screw-on retention instead of weak plastic clips like much more massive heatsinks on some DFI LANPARTY UT or LT mainboards. The chipset South Bridge is cooled with a small plate-heatsink. The chipset North Bridge is topped with a larger one. Plus there are two more heatsinks on MOSFET transistors.
This is pretty standard structure for contemporary mainboards. The only puzzling part is the heatpipes connecting all these heatsinks together. There is one heatpipe coming out of the base of the North Bridge heatsink and leading to the side heatsink on MOSFET transistors. The second heatpipe originating from the center of the North Bridge heatsink leads to the heatsink next to the rear panel connectors. It doesn’t make any difference for most processor coolers, but the widely-spread tower-coolers are usually installed to direct the airflow towards the rear panel and the exhaust fan there. Therefore, it seems much more logical to send most of the heat to the heatsink at the rear panel and have the heatpipe originating at the base of the North Bridge heatsink lead there, instead of making the side heatsink the primary one. However, even this particular cooling system design proved efficient enough during our practical tests, although the side heatsink felt tangibly hotter to the touch than the one at the rear panel.
DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard has four-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry built with high-quality components. All power connectors are very conveniently located. And so is the Parallel ATA connector provided by JMicron JMB368 controller. Overall, the top part of the mainboard PCB is very well put together, no complaints here.
The bottom part of the PCB also looks pretty good. A few small things worth pointing out are a not very convenient location of the FDD connector and DIMM slot clips blocked by the installed graphics card. As for the advantages, they are quite numerous: color-coded front panel connectors, Power On and Reset buttons, POST-indicator, horizontal Serial ATA connectors, three PCI slots besides two PSI Express 2.0 x16 slots and one PCI Express x4 slot.
The rear panel has PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse, six USB 2.0 ports, network RJ45 connector provided by Marvell 88E8053 PCIE Gigabit LAN controller, an optical and coaxial S/PDIF and six audio-jacks provided by 8-channel Realtek ALC885 codec.
The Clear CMOS jumper is barely visible between the coaxial S/PDIF and the first pair of USB 2.0 ports. It is a jumper, and not a button, which is a pretty doubtful and even useless solution. It is pretty easy to find a button on the case rear panel if you need to clear CMOS. However, it is simply impossible to accomplish if there is a jumper instead of a button. Remember, that it will be barely seen through the thin slit in the I/O Shield. In this case it is much easier to use a similar jumper right on the board, which is luckily still there. Trying to save a few cents, DFI engineers have simply ruined a great solution that should make overclocking easy and quick.
Clear CMOS jumper on the rear panel is the only seriously annoying drawback of DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS PCB layout. It is called EZ Jumper, which should be coming from the word “easy”. However, it should in fact be called HD Jumper or DF Jumper from the word “hard” or “difficult”, or even IP Jumper from the word “impossible”.
The PCB layout schematic reveals a few more advantages, which we haven’t yet mentioned in our review. Among these advantages we should point out a laid out COM port, six fan connectors and a set of jumpers for setting the base FSB frequency.
Overall, DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard looks pretty attractive. Even after a closer look at it, there is no concern that its functionality may be limited in any way. The manufacturer did its best to make the board more affordable for the end-users and you can notice it from the missing additional controllers, such as the second (or even fourth) network card, IEEE1394 or WiFi. The only thing they added to the functionality of the Intel X48 Express chipset is the Parallel ATA controller. You may wish there were eSATA there, but its absence is not too bad. The chipset cooling system is a bit simpler, but it is efficient enough. Other than that DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard has everything LANPARTY UT or LT mainboards have, which is a very pleasing fact.
As always we would like to wind up our discussion of the mainboard features and functionality with a detailed list of DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS technical specifications, according to the official DFI web-site:
During our discussion of DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS PCB layout, we didn’t find any serious issues that could be typical of LANPARTY DK mainboard series. Now let’s see how the transition from LANPARTY UT or LT to LANPARTY DK affected the BIOS settings and functionality.
The main menu looks like there are no visible limitations or changes at all. The sections are all pretty familiar. The functionality of the first few sections is also pretty common; we have already discussed them in our previous reviews of DFI mainboards and solutions from other manufacturers. So the first page we are going to dwell on will be PC Health Status.
The ability to correct CPU temperature using Adjust CPU Temp parameter is unique for DFI mainboards: you will not find anything like that on other manufacturers’ solutions. if the temperature setting is evidently higher or lower than the actual temperature, the user may calibrate the setting within ±15º interval without waiting for the new BOS update. It is a definite and indisputable advantage.
The board can automatically adjust processor fan rotation speed, the user just needs to set the border values. Unfortunately, this feature will only work if the fan has a four-pin power connector. The rotation speed of the remaining five fans cannot be adjusted, so the general verdict about fan rotation speed control potential is not very positive.
However, monitoring has been implemented just perfectly. The board controls all major voltages from the power supply as well as the processor core voltage, memory and chipset voltages, i.e. all the voltages that can be changed during overclocking. Moreover, monitoring does register CPU and chipset temperature as well as the temperature of the area around he processor voltage regulator. It also monitors rotation speed of five fans out of six that can be connected to the board.
Now we have come to Genie BIOS Setting page that includes all overclocking related parameters.
We are going to start with DFI’s unique options again. O.C. Fail Retry Counter sets the number of allowed failed restarts with given BIOS settings with the maximum of three attempts. After that the system will restart in safe mode or will load one of the four previously saved settings profiles. The number of the profile to restart with is set by the O.C. Fail CMOS Reload parameter.
CPU Clock Ratio and CPU N/2 Ratio parameters set the processor clock frequency multiplier, CPU Clock parameter determines the bus frequency (from 200 to 999MHz with 1MHz increment), and the resulting frequency value will be displayed by the informational parameter called Target CPU Clock. Boot Up Clock sets the starting FSB speed from100 to 410MHz with 5Mhz increment. The next three parameters deal with fine tuning of the chipset on Intel P45 Express based boards. They are usually located in a separate ClockGen Tuner sub-menu.
PCIE Clock parameter sets the PCI Express bus frequency from 100 to 250MHz. the memory frequency - DRAM Speed – can be selected from a list of ratios, but the resulting frequency depends on the FSB speed and will increase if you overclock your processor by raising the bus speed. You won’t need to calculate anything, the resulting memory frequency will be displayed by Target DRAM Speed parameter.
Three first settings in the Genie BIOS Setting section provide access to individual sub-sections dealing with processor-related parameters, memory timings and voltages. CPU Feature sub-section contains a complete set of processor technologies. Advanced BIOS Features section has everything it is supposed to have: nothing is missing there, unlike solutions from other mainboard makers.
DRAM Timing section is very conveniently structured. Each available parameter can be changed independently. There is a special option for adjusting the Performance Level.
However, it will be pretty hard to find your way here, because there are two more subsections. The first one is Clock Setting Fine Delay:
And the second one is Read Delay Phase Adjust:
The third sub-section of the Genie BIOS Setting contains voltage adjustment options. It is very convenient that the current monitoring data from PC Health Status are also given here, so you don’t waste any time switching between sections forth and back.
There are the supported intervals and increments for the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor:
As you can see, these are pretty big intervals, however, you will only be warned against overly increased processor core voltage:
The last but not the least BIOS section of DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard is CMOS Reloaded. It may store up to four complete BIOS settings profiles. Each may be given a detailed multi-string description, assigned a “hot key” to load the desired profile on system boot-up without even accessing the BIOS Setup. Moreover, if the board booted successfully, then the current settings profile will be saved by default, so that you could go back to it at any time, when needed. This is one of the best implementations of user profile saving option.
Well, despite our concerns, the BIOS of DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard seems to be full and complete without any limitations or restrictions. This is a fully functional BIOS from DFI, not free from a few drawbacks, of course, but with all its indisputable advantages. DFI didn’t follow in some other manufacturers’ footsteps who limit the functionality of their mainstream models to justify the positioning. This is a very pleasing fact. So, now we just have to check out how well DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard works and overclocks processors.
All experiments were performed in an open testbed built with the following hardware components:
In order to check how well DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard can perform at high FSB speeds, we lowered the processor clock frequency multiplier to the minimal possible value of x6, set the memory divider to 1:1, increased the voltages. However, the system refused to boot at 500MHz FSB. We tried disabling processor power-saving technologies, setting Enhance Data Transmitting and Enhance Addressing to Normal, increasing the voltages even more. The board either wouldn’t boot at all, or would hand on boot-up. At best, the BSOD appeared during Windows Vista loading, but we never saw the desktop.
At 490MHz FSB the system booted just fine and the OS loaded completely. However, everything hung on restart: this frequency seems to be still too high for this board. However at a 7MHz lower frequency of 483MHz FSB the board worked just fine. Note that the processor clock frequency multiplier was not x6 any more (so that the CPU frequency would be below the nominal 3GHz). Instead the CPU was running at its maximum speed of 4.1GHz obtained by raising the multiplier to x8.5.
IntelBurnTest utility couldn’t detect the fractional processor multiplier of x8.5 correctly and reposted that it was set at the default x9. That is why it displays higher frequency. However, CPU-Z utility makes everything clear and reports the correct values:
This way we can state that DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS is capable of ensuring stable operation of an overclocked dual-core CPU at FSB speeds of up to 485MHz. frankly speaking this is pretty average result. But maybe the board will do better with quad-core processors? Unfortunately, not. Our experiments with Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 overclocking stalled at 450MHz FSB: the board failed to reach the next height of 460MHz FSB.
This time IntelBurnTest utility reported the CPU frequency correctly, but just in case let me also provide the CPU-Z screenshot:
Most of the DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS tests were performed with the BIOS version dating July 25, however, while I was working on the article already I found a newer version from August 29. I repeated all the tests with the newer BIOS version, however, overclocking results didn’t improve.
We were also planning to take a closer look at the new Auto Boost System (ABS) Technology, however, unfortunately, it failed. I have already mentioned during the discussion of DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS BIOS functionality that DFI boards have one of the best and most convenient systems for saving user settings profiles. Auto Boost System technology should allow you to save user profiles not only in the BIOS micro-chip, but also on external storage media for the purpose of exchanging them with other mainboard owners. ASUS boards have similar functionality, however, DFI’s implementation is better and much more convenient.
The manual for Auto Boost System suggests that it should launch if you press F1 on boot-up. However, in our case this key would automatically load user profile 4, which was empty at the time, so the system wouldn’t boot at all. So, we saved an operational settings profile into slot 4 and repeated our attempt to launch Auto Boost System again. The saved profile 4 would load and the system would work just fine, but where is Auto Boost System technology and how is pressing F1 different from pressing hot key “4” assigned to profile 4? We couldn’t figure it out.
Frankly speaking, the actual way of launching the ABS technology by pressing F1 is pretty doubtful to begin with. This key already has a function reserved for it - to continue booting after clearing CMOS.
We also couldn’t use the special utility for Auto Boost System to work in Windows OS. For some reason it requires to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 during installation, although Windows Vista doesn’t need it. It installs eventually and allows saving the current user settings profile on the hard drive, but that’s all it does.
The utility cannot load the profiles it has just saved, it doesn’t see the profiles saved in the CMOS, and when we tried to launch a special file for automatic update downloaded from DFI web-site, it reported incompatibility of the current BIOS version:
We learned about Auto Boost System technology from DFI’s official web-site, the page devoted to DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard. Here you can also download a special auto-upgrade profile, a program installation file, a user’s manual in .pdf and Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 formats to launch the program under Windows XP. However, before you start, they suggest that you should download BIOS version X48DD711.
You can get much newer BIOS versions for a long time now, but maybe Auto Boost System technology works only with his particular BIOS version? No, even in this case the program still claimed that the BIOS version is not the same. Moreover, the tests showed that the board showed poorer overclocking results with BIOS version X48DD711. The system becomes unstable, although it worked perfectly fine with BIOS version X48DD725 and X48DD829.
By the way, it turned out that there are at least two different pages with BIOS Updates for DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard on the official site. If you click on the word “BIOS” in the navigation pane on the left-hand side of the page, you will get to the page with the latest BIOS version X48DD725 from July 25. If you click the link offering to download BIOS version X48DD711, you will get to a different page with a completely different set of BIOS versions available! The last one is version X48DD829 from August 29. For a while we couldn’t explain the difference between these two pages, however DFI fans helped us out. It turns out that if the URL of the page contains “FLAG=A” – it is the page with official BIOS versions. If you replace “FLAG=A” with “FLAG=B”, you will get access to beta-versions. In other words, the latest official BIOS version is X48DD725 dating July 25, while BIOS version X48DD829 from August 29 and version X48DD711 from July 11 – are betas.
The description, screenshots and ABS utility suggest that there are at lest three cases, when you may really need Auto Boost System technology. First of all, it will be very helpful for commencing overclockers. We all know that the BIOS of DFI mainboards contain a scary amount of settings, which may be pretty hard to figure out. Instead, an inexperienced user may download a special settings profile that will overclock the processor by, say, 20%, or overclock DDR2 800 to 1066MHz.
However, commencing overclockers are not the only ones to benefit from this technology. I managed to get my mainboard sample to work only at 483MHz FSB, and someone else may have reached 580MHz bus frequency. Wow! How did you do it? Instead of describing all the details of your overclocking success, you can just email me a tiny file with the settings profile that will contain all the necessary values for the BIOS parameters. There are no two same mainboards, like there are no two same processors anywhere: each has its own potential, its Vcore, its cooling system… You may need to correct a few values so that they fit your particular system, but the main tendency will be clear.
There is also the third use for Auto Boost System technology. If I am going to surf the Internet or listen to music, a CPU working at its nominal speed is more than enough. I press “1” on system boot-up and load the first profile with default settings. If I am going to play some contemporary high-tech game, I will need everything my overclocked system can offer. So, I press “2” on system boot-up and load the second profile with the settings for successful CPU overclocking to 4.1GHz. But what shall I do if I decide to play a game after I’ve listened to enough music and have read all hot news and articles? I have to reboot the system, wait for the beginning of POST and hit “2”, so that the system could boot in overclocked mode. Auto Boost System technology allows me to launch a special utility right from Windows and load the desired profile, so that I could simply restart the system and enjoy.
Unfortunately, these are just our guesses. Since, Auto Boost System technology didn’t work, we have to postpone discussing its features and functionality. So, hopefully next time we will be able to offer you more details of the ABS technology and its potential.
Well, despite a few things DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard made a very good impression. No, we couldn’t make I work at 500MHz FSB frequency, but you don’t rally need FSB speeds like that for successful overclocking of most contemporary processors. Namely, our Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU sample overclocked easily to 4.1GHz, which is the maximum it can do anyway. The board is very smartly designed, it has a fully-functional BIOS without any restrictions. The technical specifications of this board will definitely satisfy most users. Besides, the board is not overloaded with any excessive additional functions.
Of course, there are a few drawbacks that we can’t disregard. What doesn’t go together with the great overall impression from the board most of all, is the useless Clear CMOS jumper on the back panel. Moreover, the board could use a bit more options for fan rotation speed control. The rotation speed doesn’t adjust automatically depending on the temperature and you can’t even simply lower the rotation speed to some more suitable value. We did point out a few more drawbacks in our today’s review, but they are not so serious, so no need to mention them here again.
Throughout the article we called DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard “new”, although it is not really a new product any more. Besides, there is a similar mainboard on Intel X38 Express chipset, which design was used for DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS. The thing is that it is the first DFI LANPARTY mainboard from the new DK series that we tested in our lab, so it is a bit hard to get rid of this feeling of newness.
All in all, DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS performed rally well in our tests. It doesn’t amaze you with any crazy innovations, but doesn’t annoy you with any significant drawbacks, as well. It is a good reliable board, a true work horse. It is one of those boards that I feel like installing into my own computer system, which is a pretty rare occasion these days. This board is very reliable data, its functionality is good enough and its price is reasonable. You should definitely check it out, maybe it is something you have been looking for.