discussion DFI Lanparty Blood Iron P45-T2RS Elite Motherboard Review

[Eldonko]

System Benchmarks

SuperPI Benchmark

SuperPi calculates the number of digits of PI in a pure 2D benchmark. For the purposes of this review, calculation to 32 million places will be used. RAM speed, RAM timings, CPU speed, L2 cache, and Operating System tweaks all effect the speed of the calculation, and this has been one of the most popular benchmarks among enthusiasts for several years.

SuperPi was originally written by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 and was updated later by snq to support millisecond timing, cheat protection and checksum. The recently updated version 1.6 of SuperPI will be used in these benchmarks.Version 1.6 was modified by TechPowerUp and it fixes Windows Vista issues and offers an updated validation page.

Results: A 25% increase in SuperPI 32M is noted going from 3000Mhz to 4200Mhz on the E3110 and the DFI Lanparty BI P45-T2RS Elite. This gain in PI time is not quite as high as the overclock percentage (40%), but this is because SuperPI is quite dependent on memory speed and latency.


CINEBENCH R10 x64

CINEBENCH R10 is a testing suite that assesses your computer's performance capabilities, both 2D and 3D. CINEBENCH runs several tests on your computer to measure the performance of the main processor and the graphics card under real world circumstances.

The test procedure consists of two main components: The first test sequence is dedicated to the computer's main processor. Next, a 3D scene file is used to render an image file. The scene makes use of various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders. In the first run, the benchmark only uses one CPU (or CPU core), to ascertain a reference value. On computers that have multiple CPUs or CPU cores, CINEBENCH will run a second test using all available CPU power.

In this review, x64 single-CPU and multi-CPU rendering speeds will be measured for both stock speed and an overclocked system.

Results: The CINEBENCH R10 x64 results show an impressive increase in performance in rendering moving from a stock system to an overclocked system. Improvements in rendering time of 29% and 28% are noted for single-CPU and multi-CPU rendering benchmarks respectively. Nice results that are on par with SuperPI.


Sandra Processor Arithmetic, Processor Multi-Media, and Memory Bandwidth Benchmarks

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. The software suite provides most of the information (including undocumented) users like to know about hardware, software, and other devices whether hardware or software. The name “Sandra” is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means "defender", "helper of mankind".

The software version used for these tests is SiSoftware Sandra Professional Home XII.SP2c and the three benchmarks used are the Memory Bandwidth, Processor Multi-Media, and Processor Arithmetic benchmarks. These three benchmarks were chosen as they provide a good indication of three varying types of system performance. The bandwidth test shows performance of memory sub-systems, the multi-media test shows how the processor handles multi-media instructions and data, and the arithmetic test shows how the processor handles arithmetic and floating point instructions. These three tests illustrate three important areas of a computer’s speed and provide a wide scope of results.

Results: Sandra processor arithmetic and multi-media show very impressive improvements on an overclocked system, with 34-40% gains in performance in arithmetic and 40% gains in multi-media. This is on par with the overclock percentage of 40%!

Results: Memory was ran at similar speeds for both tests: the stock run was at 466Mhz (DDR932) at 5-5-5-12 and the overclocked tests were at 467Mhz (DDR934) at 5-5-5-15. Both used tRD = 12. Looking at memory bandwidth, we also see a nice gain of 30%.

 

[Eldonko]

3D & Gaming Benchmarks

This section will provide an overview of stock vs. overclocked 3D results in synthetic benchmark and gaming situations. A stock Nvidia 9800GTX is used for all tests and comparisons will be made to show performance increases in overclocked situations. CrossFire results are not available since the board is not CrossFire compatible.


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. Since we did not change the clocks of the GPU, we only see very minor in improvement 3DMark Vantage, an increase of 1%.


3DMark 2006 Benchmark

Futuremark 3DMark 06 has been the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking since its release. 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. To be consistent with most users of 3DMark 06, the tests below use 3DMark 06 default settings and a resolution of 1280x1024.

Results: Since it is starting to get dated, 3DMark 2006 has a bit more reliance on CPU power than Vantage. This means we see more of an improvement with a CPU overclock. A gain in 3DMarks of 12% is noted in 3DMark 2006. Not huge, but still worth the effort to overclock the CPU.


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 “Very High” which gives fullscreen anti-alias at 4x and anisotropic filtering at 4x.

Results: The World in Conflict benchmark shows a modest gain in average frames per second, an improvement of 11% or an extra 3 FPS. This says that those extra CPU Mhz do contribute, but to a lesser extent than GPU overclocking.


Crysis Benchmark

Since Crysis is one of the newer games that is still 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. Having a stand-alone benchmarking system for a game gives much more accurate and replicable results than using programs like FRAPS.

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=4x, Vsync=Enabled, DX10, 64 bit test, FullScreen, and Global Game Quality was High.

Results: The Crysis benchmark shows a slightly better gain in average FPS on an overclocked system than World in Conflict. An improvement of 15% or an extra 6 FPS is noted.

 

[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 Lanparty BI P45-T2RS Elite 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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The voltage set in the BIOS for the Xeon chip is +0.3v over VID (which is 1.2v) giving a total of 1.5v BIOS, 1.49v actual. Under load the vcore dropped to a minimum of 1.44v, a droop of 0.5v. Taking into account that this is with vdroop control in the BIOS enabled, a .05v droop from idle to load on the BI P45-T2RS Elite is not too bad at all. We have seen much worse vdroop in the past with other budget boards. Ideally we like to see about .02-.03v droop; however it is important to note the more voltage used, the harder the motherboard's voltage regulation ICs must work and the higher the droop will be, thus vdroop is less with a more modest overclock.

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. Since it is a budget board, the BI P45-T2RS Elite 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.


Heat Analysis

Similar to many other P45 chipset boards, the Northbridge on the Lanparty BI P45-T2RS Elite runs remarkably cool, even without a fancy heatpipe cooler or fan. Measuring the Northbridge heatsink with a digital thermometer, temperatures hover around 31-32C even when the system is at full load. To put that in perspective, human body temperature is 37C, so we run hotter than the NB!

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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 40% overclock (4200Mhz), stressed for five hours, CPU temperatures remained in check (around 60C load) and the chipset did not exceed 35C. As a result, we have no long term concerns over heat on this board, as long as reasonable voltages are used.

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[Eldonko]

Long Term Impressions & Conclusion

Long-term Impressions

Before we make our final conclusions on the BI P45-T2RS Elite, we will first outline our thoughts regarding how the board will function in the long-term. For the most part, long-term impressions of the DFI LP BI P45-T2RS Elite are quite positive. The board has solid capacitors and a strong build quality, a cool chipset, the MOSFETS do not get overly hot and voltage is solid. Cool parts are generally durable parts and we have no long-term worries whatsoever seeing a chipset running under 40C. The only potential negative issue that we feel could arise would be running the board at high voltages over a long period. A four phase PWM and four layer PCB are not exactly built to maintain high voltages over long periods. However if overclockers use the board for short benching sessions and run lower voltages for 24/7 use, it should last for years to come.


Conclusion

While the Lanparty BI P45-T2RS Elite didn’t wow us with a hundred features and goodies included in the box; in terms of motherboard performance for a low price, DFI has a sure-fire winner on its hands. We feel that users who are looking to buy a board in this price range will be very pleased with this board’s overclockability, BIOS options and the included software. If you like all of the extras, DFI’s UT series is the way to go but if you want a budget board that performs like an enthusiast board this one is worth a look.

It is hard to think of any negative points or downsides about CMOS Reloaded and ABS II. We were able to use DFI’s preset OC profiles in CMOS Reloaded without any issue and a decent overclock was easier than we expected. This should delight novice users that want a quick boost to their FPS in games or just a faster system in general. ABS II allows for easy trading of overclocking settings with friends or even sending in an .abs file to tech support if you are having troubles. Smart Guardian is also a nice addition, and users can get different skins to customize the look while monitoring voltages and temperatures. Even enthusiast users will like the advanced BIOS options, excellent FSB capabilities and relatively bug free operation. The board will POST like nobody's business (even with unstable settings) and this saves a lot of tedious CMOS resets if you run some DOS stability checks. DFI has had plenty of time to work on the P45 chipset BIOS and we feel it is now at a level users demand.

Although the Northbridge heatsink on the BI P45-T2RS Elite may be basic, temperatures of the P45 chipset were very cool. Why add extra cost to a motherboard to put a fancy heatpipe or active cooler when a chip speced to run at 80C is only running in the 30s? On top of that the BI P45-T2RS Elite has very good Vdroop control and even at .3v over VID, droop remained in check. This shows us that DFI has done well making the best of a somewhat limited 4 phase PWM.

So what are you missing out on by buying a $100 USD motherboard? Well the main thing is CrossFire capability. However, DFI also makes a Lanparty BI P45-T2RS Elite with two PCI-E slots for your CrossFire needs for only a few dollars more. If we were out shopping for a budget board, we would likely grab the CrossFire version. A couple other things we like that the board doesn’t have are on-board power and reset switches and a Firewire port. Again though, these features are available on higher-end DFI boards.

To sum this all up, the features on this board work great and the little DFI extras like CMOS Reloaded and the Auto Boost System are icing on the cake. The Elite overclocked quite well and we were able to max out our chip with next to no headaches. Not to mention the fact that we didn't reach the FSB limit of the board even at 625Mhz and you can see why we like this little powerhouse so much. For those looking for a budget board that will be a decent overclocker, DFI’s Lanparty BI P45-T2RS Elite should be perfect. For those looking for CrossFire and a box full of extras, some higher end boards would probably be a better fit.


Pros
- Excellent value for the price
- Quality design, solid capacitors, runs cool
- The DFI BIOS is a tweakers dream
- Solid overclocker
- Huge FSB capability
- ABS and CMOS Reloaded


Cons
- 0 availability in Canada at the time of this review
- No CrossFire
- Warranty is only 1 year

Our thanks to DFI for making this review possible!

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...-elite-motherboard-review-comment-thread.html​