DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R Mainboard

DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R
(Differences)

Get Ready to Play:

Mainboards on Intel X48 Express chipset spread all over the place slowly but surely. Slowly, because the only significant difference between the new chipset and its predecessor is high price, although even Intel X38 Express already cost quite a bit. So, the customers are not really rushing to stores to get their hands on the new mainboards and there is no buying frenzy of any kind. However, the mainboards and the buyers are there alright. The manufacturers, just like fortune tellers, realized a while ago that the magic of numbers has serious effect on people. From the customers’ standpoint, X48 core logic is indisputably better than X38, just because it is a higher number. The graphics card developers have taken advantage of this human perception peculiarity for a while: just change the working frequencies a little bit and give the card a new name and it will immediately become more valuable from the consumer’s prospective. Although you may even leave the frequencies untouched: just change the name and it will do the trick.

Now it’s the mainboard manufacturers’ turn. Launching a new product has never been easier. Just replace X38 chip with X48 on the old mainboard and you will get a new product right there. So, we see a lot of new boards being dead ringers for the old ones around. And today we are going to take a closer look at DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R, which is practically identical to DFI LANPARTY LT X38-T2R, which we have already reviewed before. It is really bring to talk and read about exact same things all over again, so to spice things up I suggest playing a game. We will be looking for differences between the two mainboards. What if in the end they turn out pretty significant despite the seeming similarity?

Package and Accessories (Difference 1):

Even if you can’t read you will immediately notice that the package design of the new DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R board is different. Although they used the same style and design principles, the front of the box only bears the series name, while the list of main mainboard features is on the back of the box.

I agree that it is a small difference and under other circumstances we may not have even mentioned it. However, the two mainboards have so few differences that we will be counting in even the smallest ones.
As for the accessories bundle, it remained exactly the same. All accessories are packed into a separate box. DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R still comes with FDD and IDE cables, four Serial ATA cables and SATA power adapters, I/O Shield for the case rear panel, user’s manual, CD disk with drivers and utilities, a floppy disk with RAID drivers, colorful installation guide for LGA 775 processors, four replacement jumpers with convenient long “tails”.

These are standard accessories that you may find bundled with any other mainboard. However, there is also something unique in the bundle. The chipset North Bridge cooler is too tall to be shipped preinstalled, so it comes separately with an additional installation manual, a syringe with the thermal compound and even a special card for even spreading of the compound on the chipset heat-spreader. According to DFI web-site, this cooler was designed y Thermalright that is why its superb efficiency pointed out in our previous articles comes as no surprise to us.
One of the comments we have about this cooling system is its huge size. Some large processor coolers may simply not fit next to it. However, this time we can name one more drawback. These cooling systems used to be fastened to DFI mainboards with secure steel brackets at four spots. For example, the cooler on DFI LANPARTY UT NF680i LT SLI-T2R.

Some time ago four secure steel hooks have been replaced with two weak plastic “spindles”:

No wonder that when we completed testing and took the system apart, one of these plastic clips broke.

PCB Design and Functionality (Difference 2):

The two mainboards we are comparing today look absolutely identical that is why everything we have already said about DFI LANPARTY LT X38-T2R may be repeated again about the new DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R.

As for minor drawbacks, we could mention not the best location for the FDD connector and the fact that the graphics card installed into the first PCI Express x16 slot will block the DIMM slot clips. We could also wish the board had a few external eSATA ports: all eight ports including those six that are provided by the ICH9R South Bridge and the other two from JMicron JMB363 chip are internal ones.

All other features of the DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R mainboard are indisputable advantages. It boasts eight-phase digital processor voltage regulator, very conveniently located 24-pin power connector and 8-pin ATX12V connector, solid-state capacitors, two second generation PCI Express x16 and an additional PCI-E x16 slot working at x4 speed, three PCI and one PCI-E x1 slots, six fan connectors (a four-pin one for the CPU fan), 12 USB 2.0 ports (six on the rear panel, two gigabit RJ45 connectors (Marvell 88E8052 and Marvell 88E8053), two-section POST indicator, Power On and Reset buttons on the PCB, color coded connectors and small additional heatsinks on all heating components.
We usually consider numerous jumpers, especially those that serve to change the FSB frequency, a drawback, but in this case they are necessary. Moreover, while many mainboard manufacturers usually forget about a jumper that allows disabling the integrated PC-speaker, DFI did implement it. Even such a minor thing as a Clear CMOS jumper, which is marked red adds another point to the company’s good name. By the way, you don’t have to use this jumper at all: all settings may be cleared by pressing and holding Power On and Reset buttons simultaneously.
Speaking of the accessories we forgot to mention one more important thing: Bernstein audio module:

It is based on an eight-channel Realtek ALC885 codec. And the peculiarity of this solution is that it is not installed into a special slot on the mainboard PCB, but is connected with a flexible cable, which means that you can move it around the back panel of your system case as far as the cable allows.
As for the differences from the previous model, the only one is the new chipset North Bridge: X48.

The most attention readers may have already noticed that “X48” is not written on the PCB, but on the sticker:


It may be hiding the old “X38” beneath it. Let’s try taking a peak under the sticker now:
Hm, nothing there. Ok… To prove that both mainboards have identical electrical CB layout we suggest taking a look at the components schematics, where the only difference is the chipset North Bridge chip:

Specifications (Difference 3):

Summing up our exterior examination of the DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R mainboard we would like to offer you a complete list of the mainboard specifications, where the only difference would be official support of 400 (1600) MHz FSB.

In reality it is not a factual difference, but a pure formality. BIOS already had dividers that allowed setting the memory at 800 or 1066MHz at 400MHz FSB, and they are still there. However, we are going to talk more about BIOS in the next part of our article.

BIOS Setup (Differences 4 and 5):

DFI LANPARTY LT X48-T2R mainboard BIOS is based on AMI code and looks exactly as before. However, a few changes have been made to it and unfortunately, not all of them are for the best.

Let’s start with the good things. Now there is an option to disable the additional IEEE1394 controller if it is not used. For some strange reason it was absent before.

PC Health Status section remained the same. The mainboard’s distinguishing feature is Adjust CPU Temp option that allows adjusting the processor temperature. The option to adjust the rotation speed of three fans out of six that can be connected to the mainboard can be regarded as a drawback and as an advantage at the same time. However, the board’s inability to control the rotation speed of a three-pin processor fan is a definite low. Moreover, the mainboard allows controlling a wide range of voltages, three temperatures including the temperature of the processor voltage regulator area and rotation speeds of three fans.

Genie BIOS Setting section contains all overclocking related options including adjustment of frequencies, timings and voltages.

I was very inclined to list new CPU N/2 Ratio parameter as one of the advantages. It allows setting fractional clock frequency multipliers for the processor. However, you get access to this parameter only if there is a 45nm CPU from Penryn family supporting multipliers like that. If you use a 65nm Conroe, this parameter disappears from the BIOS Setup.

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