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May 2008, Intel launched their new chipset solution, P45 + ICH10R

This June, many motherboard vendors launched their new P45 products just like P965 and P35 in the last two years.
DFI, well known on high-end overclock motherboard market, as we were told,
DFI will release 3 of P45 models to retail market this year to please their loyal overclockers and gamers.
This review, we will primarily focus on these two, DFI LANPARTY DK P45-T2RS and DK P45-T2RS PLUS,
retail price expected to be lower than most of high-end overclockable P45 products in the retail market.

LANPARTY JR P45-T2R - This is DFI’s first attempt on OC Micro-ATX products, will also be released soon.
DFI LANPARTY DK P45-T2RS and DK P45-T2RS PLUS are almost identical, except Plus edition comes with extra 2 SATAII ports.
DFI LANPARTY DK P45-T2RS product, color printed carton.
Each new released Dark series product comes with new package design.


Motherboard accessories also includes CrossFire bridge


DFI LANPARTY DK P45-T2RS motherboard




Motherboard lower-left corner
2 PCI-E x16 slots (support PCI-E link width x8- x8 CrossFire)
2 PCI-E x1
2 PCI
1 FLOPPY connector
Network controller Marvell 88E8053
Audio chips Realtek ALC885, Support 8.1 channels and HD technology, and also come with DFI exclusive Tantalum capacitors.


Motherboard lower-right corner
6X SATAII(ICH10R)
South bridge ICH10R Support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5
PLUS will come with extra two SATA II ports
Built-in Power/Reset switches and LED debug lights


Motherboard upper-right corner
1X IDE(JMicron JMB368)
4X DIMM DDRII support 667/800/1066(DDRII 1200 can be reached, however it will depend the quality of users’ DRAM modules)


Motherboard upper-left corner
Equipped with 5 phase digital PWM module and 12 MOSFET, capable of handling dual core or quad core 45/65nm CPUs.



IO connectors
6X USB 2.0
1X Gigabit LAN
Optical S/PDIF-out/RCA S/PDIF-out
RED JUMP is for Clear CMOS feature


DK P45 is equipped with black heat-pipe solution

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Full screen boot up logo emphasizes the newly developed Auto boost system.
As it showed on the boot up logo, press F1 right after boot up will activate ABS feature


BIOS Main setting menu


Some users are not familiar with DFI BIOS setting options
The BIOS setting menu is separated to two modes, standard mode and advanced mode.


Easy Mode






Advance Mode will allow experienced users to utilize more setting options
Overclock duo core CPU, CPU Clock0 Skew is suggested to set to 100ps
Shutdown after AC loss option will prevent system reboot several times after overclock. ( This issue is caused by Intel South bridge design)

All of P965/P35/X38/X48/P45 platform come with this annoying characteristic, however DFI exclusive design can eliminate this annoying symptom.


CPU Feature


DRAM Timing
To overclock non-performance DRAM modules, tRP and Read Delay are few settings can be tried first.
None-performance DRAM modules could try to vary tRP or ReadDelay value to increase DRAM clock.
None-Micro D9 modules could go up to 1150 ~ 1200.


First three are key elements for DRAM overclocking, normally these two set of setting 0/0/2 or 3/3/1 could have good result.

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This part, just select Auto will do.


Voltage setting menu
CPU VID Special Add +12.5mV~787.5mV
DRAM Voltage 1.789~3.280V
SB Core/CPU PLL Voltage 1.555~2.15V
NB COre Voltage 1.1825~1.9700V
CPU VTT Voltage 1.10~1.60V
Setting might slightly vary according different characteristic on each CPU
Personally, 0.63/0.67/0.58 and 0.61/0.61/0.58 are two set of settings used oftenly.


DRAM speed


PC Health Status


The above settings are some reference overclock setting, those settings were done by E8400 C0 overclock higher than 600MHz.
Most of P45 products need to set NB/VTT Voltage to 1.45V~1.6V for better performance.
DFI DK P45 just need NB/VTT set to 1.34V ~ 1.45V to reach the same level of performance.


Test Environment:
CPU: INTEL Core 2 Duo E8400/Quad Q8200
MB: DFI LANPARTY DK P45-T2RS PLUS
DRAM: CORSAIR Dominator TWIN2X2048-8888C4DF/TWIN2X2048-8500C5D
VGA: GAINWARD HD4850 + MSI R4850-T2D512 CorssFire
HD: Seagate 7200.10 320GB
POWER: Corsair HX1000W Modular Power Supply
Cooler: Thermaltake BigTyp VP/JETART Nano Diamond


Drivers and Utility programs


New revision of hardware monitoring program


Alone with their P45 products ,DFI also launched their latest designed automatic overclock technology, called “ABS”, short for “Auto Boost System”.


Select your motherboard model name and press confirm to next step.


ADVANCED

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Second step will show users current CPU status, press Reloaded or Upgrade to next step


A pop-up windows with BACKUP and RELOAD options will appear right after WIN RELOADED is selected.


BACKUP interface
During system boot up, ABS will utilize the setting stored on CMOS reloaded,
and follow the sequence from bank 4,3,2,1 to find a bootable setting and stay with first bootable bank.


Apart from saving your own setting, there are wilder usage for adopting other’ overclock profiles.
Allow users to share some stable or high performance overclock profiles through Internet to other overclockers.
DFI also provides some overclock profile samples on their official website, such as E7300/Q660/E8400’s overclok profiles on LP DK P45-T2RS product webpage.


VGA
GAINWARD HD4850 + MSI R4850-T2D512 CrossFire tests
CPU: 476X7=>3332.7Mhz
DRAM: DDRII 952 CL5 5-5-15
VGA: 625/993Mhz

3DMARK2003


3DMARK2005


3DMARK2006


2008 popular game - Crysis


ATI Radeon HD4850 is deserved to be the best value middle range graphics card.
Well Graphical performance after Crossfire, 3Dmark and Crysis have outstanding performance, however the only drawback will be temperature slightly higer.


DRAM performance
Use high cost efficiency DRAM module “CORSAIR Dominator TWIN2X2048-8500C5D”



DDRII 1179 CL5 5-5-15 dual Super PI 32M stable


None-Micron D9 memory modules could also reach DDRII 1180 on DFI DK P45-T2RS.

DDRII 1212 CL5 5-8-18, the bandwidth reaches 10884MB/s, quite close to DDR3 performance.


DFI DK P45 default setting are pretty tight, increase DRAM clock and test bandwidth
DRAM timing, loosen up tRP to 7 or 8 could overclock higher.
This DDRII DRAM modules could not enter operating system if overclock higher than 1190MHz.
However it could reach DDRII 1212 on DFI DK P45.
Hard to believe none-Micro D9 DDRII modules could performe so well like this.

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CPU
Quad core Q8200 R0, the latest stepping
Reach two Super PI 32M stable at 500Mhz


Although we could not reach four of Super PI 32M during our tests, perhaps it is reachable by few more touches, however our test result already showed the remarkable quality compared with other P45 products currently exist in the retail market.

Dual core E8400 C0
606.7Mhz SP2004 over 15 minutes


616.3Mhz single Super PI 32M


Roughly around 620~625Mhzcould enter operating system and completed CPUZ verification.
Utilize SetFSB to reach ultimate performance.
Air cooling dual channel 636MHz CPUZ verification completed

Stability is the major concern during our tests, exteme overlcok just to show you how well this product is capable of.
Basically, according to our test results, dual core CPU is capable of reaching 606Mhz,
and quad core CPU could reach 500Mhz with two of PI 32M completed on this DFI DK P45.
Both stability and performance are important factors to consider while overclock CPU.

DFI LANPARTY DK P45
Strength
1. 100% Japanese brand solid capacitor, powered by 4 phase didgital PWM module,
provides stable power source for overclock usage as well as high input efficiency to match the energy saving concept for everyday computing activities.
2. ABS technology is easy to use for users who are no so familiar to overclock,
adopt ABS profiles from other experienced overclockers seems to be a handy short cut for those beginners.
3. DFI exclusive design to avoid system reboot after overclocked can pro-long hard disk life-spam.
4. Outstanding performance on dual core and quad core CPU, and good
5. The prices come in very affordable range, US$160 for none-Plus edition, and US$180 for Plus edition.

Drawback
1. The visibility of DFI products are low in retail market, DFI need work harder to bring up more attention on retail market.
2. motherboard 3.3V/12V voltage are slightly lower, and also do not have mechanism to prevent CPU Voltage drop.

Performance ★★★★★★★★★☆
Components ★★★★★★★★☆☆
Physical Appearance ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Cost and performance ★★★★★★★★☆☆

This time, DFI LANPARTY DK P45 launched slightly slower than other motherboard vendors, and price could be lower than market expectation.
Since there is no major differences between P35 and P45 specification, most of consumers are hesitate to make their final decision of what should be picked.
However most of P45 products capable of reaching dual core 600MHz and qual core 500MHz are high-end products.
It is not easy to find a well designed and highly overclockable P45 products, price around US$150 ~180.
Except two models from BIOSTAR, this DFI LANPARTY DK P45 is highly recommended with surperb overclock capability at very affordable price.

The good overclock performance, good quality components, and exclusive design to prevent system reboot,
easy to use ABS user interface, all of those excellent features make this DFI LANPARTY DK P45 a must have item, and not to forget it is priced between USD$160-180.
LANPARTY JR P45-T2R - The first attempt on OC Micro-ATX products for DFI.
We heard it will release soon, named as JR P45, we are hoping this upcoming product will be as good as this DK P45 on our review.