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DFI LANPARTY UT X48-T2R Review
[Abstract]
IntroductionIntel's enthusiast grade X48 chipset slipped into retail channels with a conspicuous lack of fanfare. A cursory search of the major board vendors showed that they have not issued an...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
Overclocking
DFI has built a reputation among enthusiasts for its overclocking options and the BIOS on the LANParty UT X48-T2R indeed allows for some extensive tweaking. Besides the CMOS Reloaded feature that helps overclockers to save (and restore when necessary) their tested, optimized settings, the EZ Clear feature is also a boon for overclockers if they fail to boot into the Award BIOS. However, there are many options that are less than well documented in the manual and which probably only serious overclockers will venture into. Below are some of the settings that you may find on board.
- FSB Settings: 200MHz to 700MHz
- DDR2 Settings: Auto. 200/667, 200/800, 266/667, 266/800, 266/1066, 333/667, 333/800, 333/1066, 400/800, 400/1066
- PCIe Settings: 100MHz to 250MHz
- CPU Voltage Settings: 0.90V to 1.60V (in 0.00625V steps)
- Memory Voltage Settings: 1.71V to 3.04V (variable steps)
- SB Core/CPU PLL Voltage Settings: 1.51V to 2.38V (in 0.13V steps)
- NB Core Voltage Settings: 1.265V to 2.04V (in 0.013V steps)
- CPU VTT Voltage Settings: 1.211V to 1.601V (in 0.005V steps)
- Multiplier Selection: Yes, 6 - 50 (CPU dependent)
Without going into the arcane settings used by more extreme overclockers, we were able to get the FSB of the DFI LANParty UT X48-T2R up to 460MHz. While it could boot up at 470MHz, it was unstable in Windows XP and further attempts to tweak the voltages failed to garner any success. Nevertheless, it was a decent overclock of the FSB and there are lots of information out there for those looking to get higher numbers.
CPU-Z overclocking screenshot. Click for full sized image. |
Test Setup
Since we have only benchmarked a X48 motherboard previously in the form of the Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6, which similarly uses DDR2, we will be comparing the DFI LANParty UT X48-T2R against it. Both motherboards were configured as below:-
- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor (3.00GHz)
- 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-1066 @ 5-5-5-16 CAS 5.0
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
- MSI GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB - with ForceWare 162.18 drivers
- Intel INF 8.3.1.1013 and AHCI 7.5.0.1017 driver set
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (and DirectX 9.0c)
Benchmarks
The following benchmarks will be run to determine the performance of the DFI LANParty UT X48-T2R:-
BAPco SYSmark 2004
Futuremark PCMark05
SPECviewperf 9.0
AquaMark3
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