DFI LanParty UT X58-T3eH8 LGA 1366 Motherboard Review

BIOS Rundown

DFI has always been known for a complex BIOS absolutely stuffed to the gills with settings. Memory manipulation has been a specialty of the DFI LanParty UT BIOS in the past. This doesn't actually turn out to be the case with the X58-T3eH8. For beginners and amateur overclockers, this is a very good thing. The X58-T3eH8 is as easy to get clocking as any board we have tried. For the expe3rienced overclocker looking for every little edge, there is a level of disappointment. Let's take a look and see exactly what we are talking about.

The first few sections are rather boring, just typical BIOS features that we can adjust including IDE drives, the date & time, as well as the BIOS boot options. The layout is nice and straight forward though. There is no searching through endless menus to find what we are looking for. Everything seems to intuitively be where we want it.

Keeping in tune with the first three sections, the integrated peripherals section is just that. Here we find all of the onboard devices that the DFI X58-T3eH8 is home to. The sections are broken up nicely, again, in a cohesive and intuitive manner. The WinBond IT8718F-S gets its own section where we have control over all of the devices it powers. We also get a separate section for USB devices.

Next up is the Power Management, PnP/PCI Configurations, and PC Health Status pages. The PC Health Status page will be my focus for this blurb. DFI offers only "fully on" or "fully off" options for the CPU, NB, and a system fan header. These are pretty basic options that allow us to set the temperature, according to the monitored temperature for each, for when a fan should be at 100% or off. Considering the NB is passively cooled this is a basic carry over from another BIOS. To be honest, we feel it is quite a lazy effort. There isn't even a way to set steady fan speed % for the fans. This can be done through software which we will look at shortly, but having the ability to control fans in the BIOS is pretty common for high end motherboards these days. Having this ability is a must and DFI's implementation of it falls short here. We do get a whole slew of voltage readings which is a nice parallel to the onboard voltage readings we can pull with a digital multi-meter. This should also allow us a lengthy Everest on screen display of voltages and temperatures.

This is where the real BIOS begins. Much like the rest of the BIOS, the Genie BIOS section is well laid out. Getting from top to bottom isn't too much a chore but we would still like to know why ASUS BIOS's are the only ones where the Page Down key moves the focus down a whole page. Either way, the initial Genie BIOS page is nice. We have three sub sections at the top followed by CP multiplier manipulation, and the main overclocking section which includes the BCLK control and QPI/DRAM/UnCore multipliers. Everything runs off the BCLK and it is nice to have all multipliers within the same vicinity. One item we would have liked to see is an output of what the current configuration will produce, such as CPU frequency, memory frequency, and UnCore. On this early BIOS we do not get those options, however, on later BIOS releases we do see what the memory and UnCore clocks will be.

The first sub-section is the CPU Features section which provides control over the various CPU Features. These include EIST which provides the ability for the system to lower the multiplier when the system is idle saving power and Thermal Management Control which allows the internal thermal controls of the CPU to regulate itself if the CPU gets too hot. The option at the top is the Set VR Current Limit Max and as obscure as it sounds, leaving this disabled results in the CPU multiplier fluctuating under load conditions at higher clocks so you will want to Enable this to prevent that from happening. With the 965 Extreme Edition processor the TDC and TDP limits can be set which is what the VR Current setting controls for non Extreme Edition processors. With a 920 or 940 processor, the last two (TDC and TDP) options are not available. Enabling the VR current option disables the onboard TDC and TDP limitations found on all i7 processors.

Although there weren't many, a major disappointment hit us when we reached the DRAM Timing page. History has not repeated itself with the DFI X58-T3eH8 and the LanParty tradition has failed. The amount of memory timing adjustments is easily bested by the EVGA X58-SLI or any X58 motherboard we have looked at thus far, even the notoriously user friendly Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 X58. This provides a level of security to the average user as there isn't a daunting page of options staring them in the face, but it severely lets down the power user. Without the ability to change memory timings within Windows, these lackluster timing options severely hampers memory tweaking capabilities on this motherboard.

What is not hampered is the voltage adjustments afforded to us. At least some things haven't changed with the LanParty series. The voltage adjustment options are plentiful and rich in value. DFI continues to use a base voltage setting in conjunction with the "Special Add" nomenclature for a percentage raise. It takes a bit of getting use to if you've never used a DFI board before as you don't actually set a specific voltage, you adjust percentages. This of course only comes into play well over the normal range of adjustment. So for the majority of users, it won't be something they need to bother with. As we said though, the voltage range for the important components seems almost limitless. Here is a table of the voltages and ranges we found.

We certainly weren't joking when we said the LanParty lineage of voltage levels was unchanged. I still remember the first time I took my DDR BH-5s to 3v on a DFI LanParty Ultra-D. It was a heavenly experience and one only afforded by the LanParty board. We won't be sending any ungodly amounts of vDIMM to our modules we are using today but for those into extreme overclocking, the additional vCORE afforded by the DFI X58-T3eH8 may just come in handy.

The last BIOS screen shot we are looking at is our favorite part of the entire DFI BIOS, CMOS Reloaded. Other manufacturers offer similar functionality or take it a step further by offering the ability to save BIOS settings to a USB drive. DFI also offers that option - more on that in the Included Software section - but no one can compare the ability to save 4 complete sets of BIOS options that CMOS Reloaded can. In addition to saving every single BIOS option, CMOS Reloaded allows for a three line text description, and hotkey ability to choose which set of options you wish to load at startup. It is nice to see and old friend again and we hope DFI sticks with CMOS Reloaded on boards to come as it really is a dear friend of ours.