DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS mATX Motherboard Review

[Eldonko]

3D & Gaming Benchmarks

3D & Gaming Benchmarks

This section will provide an overview of stock vs. overclocked 3D results in synthetic benchmark and gaming situations. CrossFire is enabled for all tests and comparisons will be made to show performance increases in overclocked situations.


3DMark Vantage Benchmark

3DMark Vantage is the latest release by Futuremark, creators of the 3DMark suite. This program is the first Futuremark version of 3DMark designed exclusively for Windows Vista. 3DMark Vantage consists of 2 CPU and 2 GPU tests as well as and 6 feature tests all of which are very hardware intensive. Four presets are available to allow for those with older PCs to benchmark just as easily as those with cutting edge hardware. For our testing, we will use the Performance setting with all other settings at default. The build version is the latest patched version of Vantage v1.0.1.

Results: Similar to 3DMark 2006 upon it’s release, Vantage performance relies heavily of graphics card performance, with modest gains going from 3000Mhz on an E3110 to 4066Mhz, an improvement of about 9%.


3DMark 2006 Benchmark

Futuremark 3DMark 06 has been the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking for a few years now. A fundamental tool for PC users and gamers, 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests. 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today. The tests below use 3DMark 2006 defult setting and a resolution of 1280x1024.

Results: Due to the age of the benchmark, 3DMark 2006 has a bit more reliance on CPU power. This is part of the reason for more of an improvement with a CPU overclock than we do with Vantage. A gain in 3DMarks of 25% is noted in 3DMark 2006, quite impressive for only an increase in CPU speed.


World in Conflict Benchmark

The World in Conflict in-game benchmark is a great test to show video card performance in real gaming situations. Under the Graphics menu in options, you can choose a variety of video settings and there is a "Run Benchmark" button. The actual benchmark uses all of the game’s graphic capabilities and is a good indication which settings will be optimal for a user’s system. For the tests below resolution was set to 1680x1050 and graphics was set to “High” which gives fullscreen anti-alias at 2x and anisotropic filtering at 2x.

Results: The World in Conflict benchmark shows a minor but respectable gain in frames per second, an improvement of 6% or an extra 3 FPS. This tells us that not only overclocking a video card will improve your gaming experience; those extra CPU Mhz also contribute to FPS to a smaller extent.


Crysis Benchmark

Since Crysis is one of the latest games that is also among the most popular, we thought we would take a look performance increases in an overclocked system. Luckily Guru3d.com provides a robust front-end to benchmark Crysis downloadable from their website. It provides the ability to queue up many runs and will provide detailed results for each test as well as an overall summary with accurate averages.

For this test we looped (3 times) and recorded a standard timedemo on the Demo Map Island level which goes through jungle, over water and in vehicles. Resolution used was 1680x1050 and other settings included: AA=2x, Vsync=Disabled, DX9, 64 bit test, FullScreen, and Global Game Quality was Medium.

Results: The Crysis benchmark shows a much larger gain on an overclocked system than World in Conflict. An improvement of 31% or an extra 19 FPS is noted. This tells us that overclocking your CPU is definitely worth the effort for Crysis.

 

[Eldonko]

CrossFire Benchmarks

CrossFire Benchmarks

This section will provide an overview of single card vs. CrossFire performance. For CrossFire testing, two different brands of the ATI HD3870 were used; a MSI model and a HIS ICEQ model. The cards have slightly different speeds, the MSI runs at 800/1125 (GPU/Mem) and the HIS runs at 780/1126. The MSI card was installed in PCIE slot 1 and all tests were completed using Catalyst 8.9 drivers and Windows Vista Home Basic 64bit. Additionally, all CrossFire comparisons will be ran at overclocked CPU settings (4066Mhz/452Mhz 4-4-4-4).

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3DMark Vantage Benchmark:

The first 3D benchmark test for CrossFire is quickly becoming the new standard among benchmarking enthusiasts, Futuremark 3DMark Vantage. Performance settings will be used and all other settings remain at default to allow other users to compare their results.

Results: CrossFire results are really where the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS shines with a gain in Vantage 3DMarks (Performance preset) of 3,226 or an improvement of 65%.


3DMark 2006 Benchmark:

The second 3D benchmark test for CrossFire is among the most common in the enthusiast world, Futuremark 3DMark 2006. To be comparable to other users’ systems, all settings remain at default, including the resolution which is 1280x1024.

Results: Not quite the impact CrossFire had on Vantage, but pretty close. We see a 56% gain in 3DMarks when adding a second HD3870 and running the benchmark in CrossFire.


World in Conflict Benchmark:

For World in Conflict tests, resolution is set at 1680x1050, Detail is set to High, all other display options remain at default settings.

Results: In a gaming benchmark that simulates gaming situations, the performance gained when running CrossFire vs. a single card is outstanding. When adding a second HD3870 in World in Conflict, FPS improves 66%!


Crysis Benchmark:

For Crysis benchmark tests we looped (3 times) and recorded the Demo Map Island level which goes through jungle, over water and in vehicles. Resolution used was 1680x1050 and other settings included: AA=2x, Vsync=Disabled, DX9, 64 bit test, FullScreen, and Global Game Quality was Medium.

Results: Similar to the World in Conflict results, the performance gained when running CrossFire vs. a single card in Crysis is excellent. A second HD3870 in Crysis gave an improvement of 47% or 26 FPS!

 

[Eldonko]

Voltage Regulation & Heat Analysis

Voltage Regulation & Heat Analysis

Voltage Regulation

When evaluating a board’s voltage regulation, we first need to know what a few voltages refer to. More specifically vcore - BIOS set vcore, vcore in windows, and vcore under load. In theory these numbers should all be the same but load line droop (commonly known as Vdroop) is an intentional part of any Intel power delivery design specification.

Droop by definition is the real voltage delta from idle to load on a motherboard. Vdroop is usually larger for quads due to the extra power going through the voltage regulation integrated circuits and some boards have larger vdroop than others, depending partly on the quality of the voltage regulation of the board.

What we will look at on the DFI JR P45-T2RS is vdroop and how smooth the voltage line on an overclocked system is over a 5 hour period. For these tests OCCT monitoring is used.

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Voltage set in the BIOS for the Xeon chip is 1.40v, giving 1.39v idle and 1.36v load. Taking into account that this is with vdroop control in the BIOS enabled, a .03v droop from idle to load on the JR P45-T2RS is excellent. However, it is important to note the more voltage used, the harder the motherboard voltage regulation ICs must work and the higher the droop will be. This also holds true for quad core CPUs with higher power requirements.

There are numerous other factors regarding the voltage stability such as how many layers the PCB has, what type of PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) it uses, and the voltage regulation IC itself. Due to its small size, the JR P45-T2RS uses a 4 layer pcb, 4 phase digital PWM, and a pretty standard voltage regulation IC. This somewhat limits the extreme capabilities of the board although short benching sessions at high voltage are manageable. We discussed some voltage issues with long-term stability in the overclocking section and this will be revisited under long-term impressions. It seems that although it is available, users must be careful to not use more voltage than the voltage regulation transistors and ICs can handle safely.


Heat Analysis

Similar to many other P45 chipset boards, the Northbridge on the DFI JR P45-T2RS runs remarkably cool, even with a simple heatpipe cooler. Measuring the Northbridge heatsink with a digital thermometer, temperatures hover around 34-36C, even when the system is at full load.

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A point worth mentioning is the cooler over the MOSFETS. This is often the hot spot on DFI boards and we have seen many blown fets (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor or MOSFETS / transistors for short) in this area over the years. This generally occurs when the voltage regulation circuit is overloaded and thus heat over a long period. For example, when users run Orthos / Prime on a quad core CPU at high voltages over long periods these transistors tend to fail and burn up. To compensate for the high heat output, DFI provides a MOSFET cooler, which is attached to the Northbridge via heatpipe. The PLUS version of the board adds a second MOSFET cooler over the voltage regulation IC area to allow for more extreme voltages to be used.

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As for CPU and board temperatures, everything looks good. There are a few hot spots on the board around the voltage regulation areas, but even at a 35% overclock (4066Mhz), stressed for five hours, CPU temperatures remained in check (around 60C load) and the MOSFET cooler did not exceed 40C. As a result, we have no long term concerns over heat on this board, as long as reasonable voltages are used.

 

[Eldonko]

Long-term Impressions & Conclusion

Long-term Impressions & Conclusion

Long-term Impressions

Overall, the long-term impressions of the DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS are largely positive. Solid capacitors and overall build quality are quite strong, the chipset very runs cool, and voltage is rock solid. On the negative side, long-term overclock stability is quite shaky and running high voltages over time can lead to stability issues.

Solid caps have been a standard for DFI for some time now and are said to be more durable than older style caps. Taking this into account and looking at the overall build quality of the board, we must say the design seems to be excellent. Chipset and MOSFET temperatures remain very low, even after adding higher voltages and running orthos to produce heat. Cool parts are generally durable parts and we have no long-term worries whatsoever seeing a chipset running under 40C.

The issues we had with the board stemmed from running high FSB and doing stability tests over five or more hours. We could not for the life of us get 500+ FSB to be stable enough to say it is solid in the long-term. It is hard to say at this point if we could not find the perfect combination of settings in the complex DFI BIOS, if the board is actually not stable using a high overclock because of four phase PWM (or four layer PCB), or if we just got a bum board. We do want to point out however that we likely spent ten times the time testing this board than a standard user would be willing to devote to it. From reading other users’ experiences with the board in general, it seems like the consistency in quality is just not there. One point to add is it appears DFI is willing to constantly work on BIOS versions for all of their boards, as several have been released since the board became available. Hopefully, in the future DFI will add some auto settings for GTLs, RCOMPs, and skews so users without a degree in computer engineering can overclock the JR P45-T2RS and achieve a standard overclock that will be stable in the long-term.


Conclusion

Well what can we say other than that for a micro ATX board DFI managed to squeeze most things you need into a smaller package. In terms of motherboard features, the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS has almost all of the options of a full-sized board including CrossFire, 8 channel HD audio, heatpipe cooling, CMOS Reloaded and a solid design with all solid capacitors. The only thing really lacking compared to a standard board is a Firewire port. All the features tested in this review worked as promised and setup was quite straightforward.

For motherboard layout, DFI did a good job in squeezing everything possible onto a smaller board. The layout is actually great; connectors are in the most convenient places, the 24 pin ATX connector is out of the way on the right edge and there are two CMOS jumpers (which is good because you will need them!). The PCI-E slots leave enough space to use full-sized water blocks on GPUs or even dual slot coolers although the second card covers one of the CMOS jumpers. One thing in the build that may limit the top end use for enthusiasts is 4 layer pcb and 4 phase PWM.

So we have a micro ATX board that looks and sounds great on paper but what matters to most enthusiasts the most is the overclocking ability. First off, while an advanced BIOS is a good thing, there is such a thing as too advanced. We found that to be able to overclock this board to a point that is easy on most boards with our chip (4.0-4.1Ghz) it was very frustrating and time consuming in this case. If GTL REF voltages, RCOMPS, memory timings, and skews were not perfect the board would just shut down totally when you hit save in the BIOS. The only way to revive it was to flip the power switch and clear CMOS. It would be nice if DFI added a few extra auto settings to give users a starting point. We did manage a respectable overclock of 4066 Mhz, but above that long-term stability just wasn’t there. We have seen some other users of this DFI board boot to 500-600FSB by hardly adjusting anything so it seems these boards may be hit and miss in terms of consistency in quality and overclockability. We also did get an early revision so that could be a contributing factor to this as well. One plus on the BIOS side is DFI frequently releases BIOS updates so this board will only improve in the future.

Crossfire results did make the JR P45-T2RS shine with huge gains in benchmarks and games when moving to two cards. But we should mention the max 8x PCI-E slot speed. Even with a single graphics card, only a maximum of 8x PCI-E is available where many competitor P45 boards allow for 16x when a single card is used. While,the difference is not noticeable with the HD3870 used in these tests this could be a different story with the latest top-end GPU.

To sum this all up, the features on the board work great and the little DFI extras like CMOS Reloaded and the Auto Boost System are icing on the cake. However, the JR P45-T2RS was not perfect for what we care about most: overclocking. We experienced some issues when trying to achieve long-term stability and it was more time consuming than usual to get a decent overclock.

For those looking for a micro ATX board to do some overclocking this DFI board should be perfect, but for a hard core bencher or a user without patience maybe not. All in all, we think this is definitely one of the better options for a micro ATX board and when comparing competitor micro boards there is nothing else on this level. Appealing to a niche market and expanding that market to more advanced users is an innovative move by DFI but there were just too many small issues to warrant any more accolades from us.


Pros

- CrossFire support
- 8 channel HD audio
- Quality design, with solid capacitors
- Efficient board cooling
- Tweakers dream
- Clocks well with low voltage
- Size: Micro ATX
- ABS and CMOS Reloaded


Cons

- Only moderate over stable overclocks
- Not for the novice overclocker
- 4 layer pcb, 4 phase power
- Max 8x single card PCI-E
- Iffy long-term stability at higher voltages

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