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Review: DFI 865PE INFINITY

by Tarinder Sandhu on 16 October 2003, 00:00

Tags: DFI (TPE:2397)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qatw

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Systems setups and notes

Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.
  • Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz ES 800FSB CPU
  • AMD Barton XP3200+ S462 CPU (2200MHz / 200FSB)
  •  
  • DFI i865PE INFINITY Springdale motherboard (8/8/03 BIOS)
  • ABIT IC7-MAX3 i875P Canterwood (21/08/03 BIOS)
  • EPoX 8RDA3G nForce2 Ultra 400

Other components

  • ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (380/340)
  • 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2, run at 2-6-2-2 @ DDR400 for all motherboards. Run with 'Super Patch and 'Enhanced' extra timings on the DFI i865PE and 'Street Racer' and 'Enhanced' on the IC7-MAX3.
  • Liteon 16x DVD
  • Samcheer 420w PSU
  • Samsung 181T TFT monitor
  • Akasa Silver Mountain cooler
  • Thermaltake AX478 cooler with a 25CFM fan

Software

  • Windows XP Professional 
  • DirectX9.0a
  • Intel 5.00.1012 chipset drivers
  • NVIDIA nForce 2.45 drivers
  • ATI CATALYST 3.7 drivers and control panel (6378s)
  • Pifast v41 to 10m places
  • Lame v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (631MB)
  • SiSoft SANDRA MAX3 (9.73 release)
  • Hexus SETI benchmark 0.417WU
  • Realstorm Raytracing benchmark v1.10
  • 3DMark 2001SE v330
  • UT2003 Demo (Build 2206)
  • X2: The Threat - Rolling Demo
  • Comanche 4 benchmark
  • Serious Sam 2: Sierra De Chiapas Demo.
  • Quake 3 v1.30 HQ

Notes

The DFI i865PE INFINITY Springdale motherboard will be compared to the impressive Canterwood-driven IC7-MAX3 from ABIT. Both boards feature BIOSes that attempt to provide uber PAT settings. Highly competent RAM is the order of the day. The DFI will be run at two speeds. Firstly, and usually, it'll be run with a 3.2GHz P4. That's what all recent P4 motherboards have had in their  respective sockets. However, very few users can justify laying out £500+ on a shiny 3.2GHz CPU. More often than not, a Springdale board will be paired with a lower speed 800FSB P4. That's why we've decided to run the DFI i865PE with a stock 2.4GHz 800FSB CPU, with the same RAM timings and associated BIOS options as the 3.2GHz system. The 2.4GHz setup will attempt to show what kind of stock performance a £250 CPU and motherboard bundle will deliver.

3222.6MHz - EPoX 4PDA2+

3208.2MHz- ABIT IC7-MAX3

3207.7MHz - DFI i865PE INFINITY

2205.1MHz - EPoX 8RDA3G / XP3200+

2405.8MHz - DFI i865PE INFINITY with a 2.4GHz CPU

Issues

Much like the IC7-MAX3, the DFI had problems with running low latency memory at DDR320 speeds when the CPU's FSB was set to 200MHz+. The board steadfastly refused to boot each and every time. However, it did manage the DDR320 setting with higher memory latencies. Seems to be a common problem.

FSB Overclocking was fraught with some danger this time around. The board didn't like 250FSB+ with any combination of settings. Booting into Windows and using a Windows-based overclocking tool, SetFSB, highlighted the fact that the AGP and PCI speeds may not be necessarily locked, as on many boards.

Note the out-of-spec. AGP and PCI speeds shown. Most boards, when set to a fixed option in BIOS, do appear to lock those buses. SetFSB, for example, when run on the IC7-MAX3, would report locked PCI and AGP speeds. Indeed, the Radeon 9800 Pro did appear to freeze in gaming benchmarks, lending further weight to an unlocked set of buses. Various BIOS combinations were tried but there was very little stability over 250MHz FSB. The apparent non-locking of crucial buses is a serious omission in our eyes. At the time of writing, no other BIOSes were available.


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