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DFI Lanparty LT X38-T2R S775 Motherboard Review

Motherboards/Intel S775 by massman @ 2008-02-19

We take a look at the newest DFI Intel motherboard, based on the X38 chipset, the successor of the high end version of the P35. Can DFI work their magic and produce a tweakers dream X38 board? We find out.

Aquamark, cinebench, everest and superpi

Aquamark3

While this 3D benchmark is aging quickly, it still serves as a good evaluation tool for system performance, as it stresses the VGA, CPU and memory subsystem, any advantage had from a faster motherboard or memory setting will be apparent:

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The difference stays rather small in the Aquamark3 benchmark.

Cinebench 10

This benchmark only stresses the CPU a lot, the rest of the components are not really that important.

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It seems that the X38 is has a very small cpu performance bonus.

SuperPi

The mother of all “enthusiast” benchmarks, SuperPi, still is a good single core measurement tool to determine what's fast and what's not.

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The 32M run makes me wonder why exactly the X38 turns out to be that slower. My first thoughts would be that leaving a lot of BIOS settings on auto makes the system a bit slower or that DFI hasn't tuned the X38 chipset as good as they tuned their P35 chipset based motherboard. Any way, it seems that the memory management system isn't fully optimized, however, hardly noticeable in daily usage and an enthusiast can tune the board so it performs as fast/faster than the P35 version.

Lavalys Everest 4.2

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This makes things a little more clear, as the lavalys everest results show us that the X38-T2R is as fast at high memory speeds, but comes a little short on stock and low-end memory settings.

Comment from eva2000 @ 2008/02/21

Nice review maybe try with 1/11 official bios as it changes the way clock fine delay values are set. Also try with clock cross settings and common clock setting set to More Aggressive with Enhanced Data transmitting and addressing set to FAST and T2 Dispatch enabled.

Quote:

DRAM Timing
- Enhance Data transmitting: FAST
- Enhance Addressing: FAST
- T2 Dispatch: Enabled

Clock Setting Fine Delay
Ch1 Clock Crossing Setting: More Aggressive
- DIMM 1 Clock fine delay: Current
- DIMM 2 Clock fine delay: Curren
- DIMM 1 Control fine delay: Current
- DIMM 2 Control fine delay: Current
- Ch 1 Command fine delay: Current

Ch2 Clock Crossing Setting: More Aggressive
- DIMM 3 Clock fine delay: Current
- DIMM 4 Clock fine delay: Current
- DIMM 3 Control fine delay: Current
- DIMM 4 Control fine delay: Current
- Ch 2 Command fine delay: Current

Ch1Ch2 CommonClock Setting: More Aggressive

love to see how that changes your results

Comment from jmke @ 2008/02/21

thank you for your input, always appreciate feedback from experienced OCers

Comment from KingDingeling @ 2008/02/23

Greetings from Germany!

Just a question, if you're reviewing such a high-end OC board, why is there no overclocking section? Many other mobo reviews I read include a section where they talk about overclocking, for example if this mobo was able to push more CPU clocks outta their system or not.

Comment from jmke @ 2008/02/24

last time I checked 500FSB is not standard speed, this board was tested at 500Mhz = OC

Comment from KingDingeling @ 2008/02/25

Yea, I saw that, but that's your standard overclocked speed for that E6300 from what I've seen? What I meant was how this boards overclocking potential compared to other boards, for example if you were able to achieve an even greater overclock from this board than you were from for example the Asrock 4core P35 board

Comment from Massman @ 2008/02/25

I did not continue my tests above 500FSB, for the simple reason that I cannot guarantee stability above 500FSB with the E6300 on air cooling (and I did not want to insulate the board for phase-change tests).

600FSB is very easy for the Dfi in 99,9% of the cases. The Asrock P35 is not built for overclocks, whereas the DFI is built especially for the overclockers.

Comment from Massman @ 2008/02/25

Quote:

Originally Posted by eva2000

Eva, is it okay to test these settings on my P35 motherboard? Or is it purely for the X38 board to tune the memory settings?

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