DFI LT X38-T2R LanParty - Living Review.

[Ace-a-Rue]

any word on when the X48 boards will start to show up?

[Clunk]

Mid March is all I know mate, it is in the hands of Intel - If I find out anything, I will let you know

[Ace-a-Rue]

geez...i don't know if i can last that long without a board to play with!

[supershanks]

geez...i don't know if i can last that long without a board to play with!
Edit/Delete Message

Thought you'd be after the abit max Ace , or are you swinging towards DFI ??


luck

[bustamove]

Thanks for the living review, Ive been scouring the web since getting my dfi lt x38-t2r from the us.
I have an e8400 on board [seems to have a mind of its own] its like a petulant child with strong stubborn tendancies.
Ive neen testing the combo myself for a couple of weeks now and the most I have got so far under water is 4.5ghz, not stable enough to run any proper benchmarks.
My max 'stable' so far is 4.3ghz.

I should list my components etc to give you an idea, and possibly help me gain a higher oc for benchmarking.

dfi lanparty lt x38-t2r
e8400
2gb ballistix [8500's]
enermax galaxy 850. [I read clunks woes on these, mines been awesome!]
ati 3870x2.
those are my main components...

cooling..

Dtek fuzion block [cpu]
xspc x20 chipset cooler [n/b]
stock dfi cooling for s/b and mosfetts.
pa.120.3 thermochill rad
laing ddc ultra pump [18v version]
ek full cover 3870x2 block [only on since last night, I will say here these are a great investment. Idle temps dropped by 22c one one core and 30c on the second! it now idles at 36c and 34c respectively with a 4.23 oc on the cpu.

My bios settings are very similar to what clunk is using.

Like I said above I managed to get 4.5 cpuz validated, the board seems to have a fsb limit below the similar p35 version of this board.

any help or suggestions would be most welcome.

and thanks again for the comprehensive review.

[Clunk]

Welcome to the forums

After testing with my E8400, and looking at other peoples results, I think it's safe to say that you aren't going to get much higher, especially not stable as the chips don't respond too well to extra voltage.

Some people are seeing 5Ghz+, but I suspect they are often hand picked chips.

Regarding the FSB limit, I couldn't manage more than around 480 on the P35 with an E6850 or a Q6600.

Again, looking round at what a lot of other people seem to be hitting a wall at, is around 530 on the 9x multi, which is inline with my tests.

I suspect the limiting factor in this case is your CPU.

Nice system by the way

P.S. you didn't say what problems you were having.

[bustamove]

Thnx for the reply, my max stable with occt has been 478x9 with the e8400 on this board so that must be the limit for my set up. like you ive seen ppl claim 5ghz on air with e8400, maybe those are lucky chips? or tall stories?

I have a qx6700 which im going to put in this board to see what that will do. its a power hungry toasty chip and the most I saw on a asus commando was 3.6 stable, however I did'nt really test it further.

The e8400 is giving very varied temp readings in core temp everest, hardware monitor etc, a couple of times its shown volts in cpuz and everest as 2.2v! when bios has been set at 1.45. slightly worrying. I did send this chip back to the retailer bcos of big difference between cores temp wise, like 7c between them at idle. they returned it and said it was ok, im not convinced;

back on topic tho im very impressed with the mobo, it has a lot of potential. i had a failed bios flash, dfi sent a replacement chip out the same day I mailed them which is good, saved me sending the board back to the usa.

I havent taken it over 1.5v cpu n/b 1.5 also MAX Ive given it. [e8400]
im getting very good results with the gpu which is to be expected
overall im happy, but niggling doubts around the cpu?

[Clunk]

It's hard to say what is the norm and what is just a bad chip at the moment really.

As far as the Wolfdale temp sensors go, that was the main reason I didnt test with air cooling - I was seeing 40c+ at idle with stock VID of 1.1v.

I have also seen reports of one retailer alledgedly doing a test and submitting the results to Intel, and Intel telling them that everything was normal. The problem there, is that their results were nothing like mine, or anyone elses that I've seen, and they measured the temps on an Intel board with Intel's temp monitoring software, so it was hardly conclusive. They also said that several manufacturers were working on BIOS fixes for the problem, which sounds to me like they are just recalibrating things so that the temps show as lower, but we will see

Have a look at this graph, it shows how my E8400 did on phase cooling. You can see how it won't go any higher, regardless of voltage.



To be honest, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

P.S. There's another thing you might want to test, and I say this to everyone with those sticks - do a memtest v2.01 test 5 on each stick and see how it goes

[bustamove]

I have 3 sets of 8500 ballistix, two sets show no errors 1 set is being returned

Was your 40c idle on water? I see you have one of LD's phase units. could you tell me how much improvements over water you see with the phase unit in terms of fsb?

Im getting one of His units at the end of the month. leaving gpu and n/b watercooled.

I think you are spot on about the 8400, intel have imo released it too early, they must have seen the diode issue in tests.
I was at first hoping it was a software compatibility issue with 45nm's, but doesnt look like it.
The volt thing is worrying tho, its done it twice completely randomly.
Mixed feelings on it atm.

The board on the other hand, I really like, not sure why they placed the top x16 slot right under the ram clips tho?

[Clunk]

Originally Posted by bustamove

Was your 40c idle on water? I see you have one of LD's phase units. could you tell me how much improvements over water you see with the phase unit in terms of fsb?

Im getting one of His units at the end of the month. leaving gpu and n/b watercooled.

The volt thing is worrying tho, its done it twice completely randomly.
Mixed feelings on it atm.

The board on the other hand, I really like, not sure why they placed the top x16 slot right under the ram clips tho?

The 40c+ idle was on air cooling with a Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 - To be honest, I simply fired it up, did some general everyday stuff for maybe half an hour and kept an eye on the temps, they were 40c-45c, so, to me, that was way too high.

I didn't see any improvement in FSB on the Q6600, but I did see a much higher max stable of over 4ghz.

I didn't use the E8400 on water for the same reasons I didn't do the air cooling tests - the diode was miles out

I have a new Q6600 G0, which appears to be an ok overclocker as far as low voltage clocking is concerned, but I have yet to test it for max FSB, and so far, I have only tested on air. Other tests on that will have to come later

That voltage fluctuation happens on a lot of boards, and I think it's down to the monitoring software, so maybe try something else and see if it still does it?