What makes a board an “enthusiasts board”?

Gamers around the world seek out motherboards which allow the user to adjust basic system values such as processor and memory speed. almost all motherboards allow some adjustments of these settings. These motherboards are typically the upper- end of the normal consumer line such as the DFI Infinity series and ASUS P5 line. The motherboards that gamers normally flock to allow several more adjustments including voltages to the CPU, ram and even north-bridge chip-set. these voltages are typically enough to squeeze out 20 - 50 % more performance than a stock configuration. For example typically a gamer will buy a mid-range CPU such as the sub- $200  E6400 from Intel which runs at 2.13 GHz stock, and by overclocking  the speed in bios can  fairly easily achieve 3.0 GHz or higher. the x6800 Extreme Edition cpu  in contrast operates at 2.93GHz and costs about $1000. As you can see the savings is $800 which is used for video cards, fancy peripherals etc.

 Another  type of motherboard are what are called “enthusiasts boards”. These boards offer adjustment to almost every possible voltage and timing setting imaginable. They are extremely complex boards and their price reflects that. The best Examples of this class is the DFI LAN Party series and the ASUS R.O.G. series. Almost every Enthusiasts board is capable of operating at twice the stock speed with proper adjustments. For most Enthusiasts boards the chip-set cooling as well as mosfets for power supply are cooled by exotic heat-pipe configurations due to the heat increase that is associated with raising the voltages and speeds. a good example is DfI’s Trans-piper as seen on the P35 model. A top enthusiasts board will also allow control of the memory systems latency settings, Manufacturers usually set these very loose to allow a greater compatibility between different brands and types of ram. adjusting these settings can allow a dramatic improvement in both speed and latency (Basically the time between a request for data and when the data is available). another invaluable asset of an enthusiasts board is the built in De-bug function, normally a two digit l.e.d. which displays the sequence code for the operations the board is performing during post. By watching the l.e.d.’s you can determine what stage of the post (power on self test.) the board is failing at.

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Tuesday at Intel developers forum Paul Otellini  introduced Intel’s next generation 45nm quad-core Yorkfield cpu to the world in the best way possible by setting 10 world records in various benchmarks including an 8.4 second super pi 1m run and records in aquamark 3 and cinebench 10 32 bit. Charles “FUGGER” Wirth owner of xtremesystems.org was the man behind the scoresas he used his personal triple stage cascade cooling system to get the chip down to about -109 Celsius allowing it to overclock to 5.6 GHz.FUGGER is no stranger to world records as at least 1 of the records he broke belonged to him already (pcmark 05).

 In contrast to the extreme cooling used the motherboard was an un-modded Intel X-38 board using ddr3 ram. this should be a very good indication of what the future holds.

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The first step in overclocking is to understand what it means.

The term overclocking means to raise the default clocks of a given component such as a cpu, motherboard , ram or even graphics cards. nearly all modern components can benefit from increasing the speed they operate at. The downside is the possibility of making the system unstable, so along with explaining the process of overclocking i will be explaining how to ensure that your system remains stable, reliable and definitely faster.Today i am going to show the results of taking my E6600 Core 2 Duo from a stock speed of 2.4ghz up by 50% to 3.6ghz. Using the DFI LP UT P35 T2R motherboard.First up we see a popular benchmark called ” Super PI/mod 1.5 XS” it’s purpose is to calculate the decimal places of PI and has an online validator to ensure that your results are accurate. a link will be provided at the bottom of the article so you can download it and try it yourself.Here is my “stock” or baseline run. at 2.4 GHz with default settings in bios.

Below is a run at 3.6 GHz a 50% increase in CPU speed.

As you can see the time it took to calculate the first 1 million decimal places of pi was 21.093 seconds with a stock processor and my DFI LP UT P35-T2R motherboard. Then I raised the front side bus from 266 MHz to 400 MHz, which gives me a CPU speed of 3.6 GHz. Then I re-ran the same benchmark again and the result was 14.078 seconds. a seven second improvement! not bad, but since i am never satisfied i decided to see if i could do better so after a few dozen attempts and plenty of adjustments i was able to get my 2.4 GHz CPU up to 4.7 GHz and had a go at the same bench again.

10.875 seconds with CPU at 4.7 GHz . Running on my DFI LP UT P35 T2R motherboard and using Crucial Ballistix Tracer ddr2 800 ram running at ddr2 1050.

As you can see from the above results raising the CPU’s operating speed can dramatically increase your pc’s performance. keep in mind the more you increase the speed of a CPU the more heat it will put out. most new Core 2 Duo processors can get to 3.0 GHz without much effort and usually with the stock Intel heat-sink-fan combo. above 3.0 GHz you will need to use an aftermarket solution such as a high performance air-cooler ( with much more capacity than stock) or a water-cooling solution. with good cooling and a proper motherboard and ram you can get about 3.4 - 4+ GHz. Not to bad considering the current top bin Intel sells for around a thousand dollars and runs at 3.0 GHz. For my tests I use a custom vapor phase change cooling system which lowers my CPU temperature to -45 celsius to reach 4.7 GHz.

I need to stress how important the motherboard is in overclocking. without a board that allows you to adjust the settings in bios you are very limited in what you can expect. The best boards are going to give you the ability to adjust almost every setting related to getting your board cranked up. But as with anything else you need to use common sense, go slow and test stability with each small increment.

Here is the super Pi Link

And for testing stability:http://www.ocbase.com/download/OCCTPT1.1.0.zip This test needs to run 30 min. I recommend using it every 100 MHz increase in CPU speed. As i’m sure you noticed i haven’t mentioned the voltage settings or memory settings as they will vary from one peice of equipment to another. Auto settings will only go so far. If you would like to see more in depth information just ask. And check Motherboardpro often for updates and new product reveiws.

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The term overclocking may be new to most people. Over the next few weeks we will be covering the basics of overclocking and overall system performance.

The gains you can expect from overclocking would surprise you, and who doesn’t want a faster pc. I plan to cover the basics from board selection to aftermarket cooling using stock heatsink / fan combos to watercooling and even a little extreme sub-zero cooling just for kicks. Also we can discuss the effect different chipsets and components can have on your ability to wring the most performance possible out of a given processor. For the most part we will be looking at the Intel Core 2 duo series of cpu’s but almost all of the tems and processes discussed are universal. Amd folks will not be left out!

I will also be giving our readers my impressions of the new boards on the market from the p35 and x38 chipsets.I plan to test the new boards in real world testing , since i use the boards i am testing as my 24/7 pcs. i don’t believe in setting up a board just for tests as it may not reveal the problems most users would encounter in their daily useage. The first board i will be covering is the DFI Lan Party p35 UT. It is definitely an enthusiasts board with a massive amount of bios options to keep even the most hardcore tweaker satisfied, as well as being easily set-up by the first time builder.

Stay tuned to Motherboardpro for more.

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MSI Diamond pictured above.

If you’re planning for Penryn to come out the X38 chipset is where you’ll want to be. The x38 chipset is the successor of the 975x in the same way the P35 is the successor of 965P. It will work with 1333FSB 45nm Conroes out of the box.

Aside the infamous DDR3 support, what’s really new in the X38 is the fact that it integrates dual full-speed PCIe 2.0 x16 slots. The dual PCIe 2.0 slots are compatible with AMD’s CrossFire technology but no one knows when AMD’s PCIe 2.0 VGA cards will come out. X38 can also sustain a third PCIe 2.0 x16 for physics processing but due to chipset limitations this one has to use lesser lanes (4 to be more specific).

ASUS, Biostar, DFI, Gigabyte, Intel and MSI have X38 Express MoBos showcased at Computex 2007 . ASUS for example, plans to release an X38 Express-based workstation board which will probably do away with the third PCIe 2.0 slot but will incorporate ICH9R as southbridge. DFI on the other hand takes a different approach and integrates DDR2 instead of DDR3 onto an X38-based motherboard. The LANParty X38-T2R supports DDR2-800 memory while the X38-T3R supports DDR3-1333. Aside from the DDR2/3 support, DFI has also produced a new audio solution called DFI Bernstein 8-channel theater-level audio solution.

Gigabyte has the same approach as DFI, with two X38 Express based motherboards, one with DDR2 while the other supports DDR3 even at 1600MHz speeds. And since onboard audio quality has always been a problem, Gigabyte’s X38 MoBos use the new Realtek ALC889A HDA coded, offering a 106dB SNR.

INTEL will also roll out an X38-board which will be the successor of D975XBX2 BadAxe2 . The new DX38BT codename “Bonetrail” will have 3 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots but will do away with heatpipe cooling. As for MSI, they will produce an X38 derivate with no less than 4 PCIe 2.0 slots, 2 of them running at full speed while the other two will run only at half speed.

Just digg it

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