DFI LANPARTY LGA775 Showcase: The 925X-T2 & 875P-T
Introduction & The Chipsets
Over the past year, DFI has made a name for itself with a crowd that is traditionally very hard to please. A company that once built parts strictly for the OEM / white box folks, is now catering to the enthusiast and overclocking communities with a bold, feature laden line of motherboards. DFI's "LANPARTY" products build upon their already solid reputation of producing reliable and stable motherboards, by incorporating a full compliment of overclocking and performance tweaking tools on motherboards that are designed to turn some heads. With dark PCBs and UV reactive orange and yellow connectors, DFI's LANPARTY motherboards don't look like any others. Sure, just about every company that targets enthusiasts are now building flashy motherboards, but you can spot a DFI LANPARTY board from across the room. You can't say that about motherboards built by some other popular brands.
Today on HotHardware, we're going to take a look at DFI's flagship LANPARTY boards designed for Intel's LGA775 Pentium 4 processors, the 925X-T2 and the 875P-T. As you'll see on the following pages, both of these boards are built with hardcore PC enthusiasts in mind. But before we get into the specifics, let's take a look at the major features of the chipsets powering the LANPARTY 925X-T2 and 875P-T...
 |
|
| •_800-MHz FSB enables support for today's highest-performing Intel Pentium 4 processors. •_Optimized for the Intel Pentium 4 Processor supporting HT Technology to enable improved system performance and responsiveness. •_Enhanced performance architecture, with 800-MHz system bus processors and DDR2 memory, optimizes data transfers between the processor and system memory. •_Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel EM64T) provides workstation application flexibility for future 64-bit code and access to large amounts of memory while running existing 32-bit applications. |
•_Flexible memory support, with dual-channel DDR2 533/DDR2 400 memory, providing up to 8.53 GB/s memory bandwidth, in configurations up to a maximum of 4 GB of Random Access Memory (RAM). •_PCI Express delivers up to 4 GB/s per direction for graphics bandwidth and up to 500 MB/s concurrent data transfers for I/O to support the most demanding applications. •_Intel Matrix Storage Technology, with integrated Raid 0 and Raid 1 capabilities using the latest SATA interface, for accelerated disk I/O performance. •_Intel HD Audio technology's eight independent DMA audio engines can enable multiple separate, simultaneous audio streams. |
Intel's 925X chipset was introduced back in June, to coincide with the launch of the first batch of LGA775 processors. It incorporated many new technologies, like PCI Express, a DDR2 memory controller, Intel's High-Definition "Azalia" audio, and Intel's Matrix storage technology. The 925X has since been usurped by the 925XE,which has official support for a 1066MHz front side bus, but other than that their feature sets are identical. As its name implies, the 925X Northbridge and ICH6RW Southbridge are used on the LANPARTY 925X-T2.
|
|
| •_800/533MHz System Bus Supports platform longevity for the fastest Intel Pentium 4 processor frequencies and delivers greater system bandwidth. •_Intel Hyper-Threading Technology Support Delivers increased system responsiveness and performance. •_Intel Performance Acceleration Technology Increases memory and system-level performance by optimizing internal data paths. •_478-pin Processor Package Compatibility Supports the highest performance Intel Pentium 4 processors plus, the flexibility to support other 478-pin Intel processors. (Also compatible with Socket-T) •_Intel Hub Architecture Dedicated data paths deliver maximum bandwidth for I/O-intensive applications. •_Dual-Channel DDR 400/333 SDRAM Memory with ECC Support. Flexible memory technology allows a full spectrum of DDR usage from highest performance to more cost-effective systems. ECC ensure data reliability and integrity. •_AGP8X Interface enables upgradability to the latest graphics cards. |
•_Integrated Hi-Speed USB 2.0. Eight ports offer up to 40x greater bandwidth over USB 1.1 for a variety of today's demanding high-speed I/O peripherals. •_Dual Independent Serial ATA Controllers Facilitates high-speed storage transfers and easy hard drive upgrades. •_Integrated Intel RAID Technology. Additional storage performance for Serial ATA hard disk drives(HDD), without the added cost of an external RAID controller. •_Ultra ATA/100 Takes advantage of the existing industry HDD and optical drive interfaces. •_AC '97 Controller Supports Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound(1), delivering six channels of enhanced sound quality. •_Intel Communication Streaming Architecture. Wire-speed GbE with the Dedicated Network Bus for performance network connectivity. •_Low-Power Sleep Mode Saves Energy. |
Although the i875P has been around since April of 2003, and Intel has released a whole series of chipsets to replace it, the i875P is still very popular. The i875P has proven to be fast, stable, and very "overclocker friendly" over its lifetime. The i875P works with standard AGP graphics cards and DDR memory, and was originally designed for socket 478 Pentium 4 processors. DFI, however, built the LANPARTY 875P-T for LGA775 processors.
