3-Way i875P "Canterwood" Shoot-Out
 MSI, DFI & Chaintech Square Off...

By, Marco Chiappetta
June 18, 2003

        

        

  

The DFI LANPARTY Pro875 was also a well laid out motherboard.  The only thing we didn't like with regards to its layout was the floppy connector placement.  It is mounted very close to the ATA RAID connectors at the lower edge of the board, which could make routing cables difficult in some cases.  All of the other drive and power connectors are mounted in excellent locations, which should make it very easy to keep the inside of your case nice and tidy.  The DIMM slots are located far enough away from the AGP slot, and all of the headers are clearly labeled.  Feature wise, we thought DFI hit the nail on the head.  The Pro875 was the only board in the round-up that didn't have IEEE-1394, but we don't think this is a huge issue.  Many newer sound cards, like the Audigy 2 for example, have integrated IEEE-1394 controllers.  What the DFI board does have that the others don't is ATA RAID (powered by the excellent HPT372N controller) and SATA RAID (ICH5R).  The MSI and Chaintech boards only offer SATA RAID.  The Pro875 also has power and reset switches mounted directly to the board.  Simply plug in your ATX power cables and press the on-board power button to fire up the system.  This is a nice feature if you're constantly tinkering with your system and have to test different configurations.  Case modders will like the UV sensitive plastic.  All of the orange parts on the board glow under UV lighting.  It's something you've really got to see live to appreciate...

Specifications & Features of The DFI "LANPARTY" Pro875
DFI Targets The Enthusiasts...Finally...

CPU

  • Intel Pentium 4 Processor with Hyper-Threading Technology

  • Intel P4 Northwood and Prescott processor (478-pin)

  • Supports 800MHz, 533MHz or 400MHz FSB

CPU SOCKET

  • Socket 478

CHIPSET

  • Intel 82875P Memory Controller Hub (MCH)

  • Intel 82801ER I/O Controller Hub (ICH5R)

SYSTEM MEMORY

  • Supports dual channel (128-bit wide) memory interface

  • Each channel supports 2 DIMM sockets

  • Supports up to 4GB system memory

  • Supports Dynamic mode to optimize system performance

  • Synchronous operation with processor system bus

  • PC2100/PC2700/PC3200 (DDR266/DDR333/DDR400) with 800MHz FSB CPU (supports PAT mode). DDR333 will run at 320MHz memory frequency when used with 800MHz FSB CPU.

  • PC2100/PC2700 (DDR266/DDR333) with 533MHz FSB CPU

  • PC2100 (DDR266) with 400MHz FSB CPU

  • Supports ECC/non-ECC DIMMs

  • Supports unbuffered DIMMs

BIOS

  • Award BIOS, Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP Plug and Play compatible

  • Genie BIOS provides:

  • CPU/DRAM overclocking in 1MHz stepping

  • AGP/PCI/SATA overclocking

  • CPU/DIMM/AGP overvoltage

  • Flash EPROM for easy BIOS upgrades

  • 4Mbit flash memory

POWER MANAGEMENT

  • Supports ACPI specification and OS Directed Power Management

  • Supports ACPI STR (Suspend to RAM) function

  • Wake-On-Events include:

  • Wake-On-Keyboard/Mouse

  • Wake-On-USB Keyboard

  • Wake-On-Ring (external modem)

  • Wake-On-LAN

  • RTC timer to power-on the system

HARDWARE MONITOR

  • Monitors CPU/system temperature and overheat alarm

  • Monitors CPU/1.5V/5VSB/VBAT/3.3V/5V/12V voltages and failure alarm

  • Monitors CPU/chassis/second fan speed and failure alarm

  • Automatic chassis/second fans on/off control

  • Read back capability that displays temperature, voltage and fan speed

  • CPU Fan Protection function monitors the CPU fan during system boot-up

  • CPU Temperature Protection function monitors CPU temperature during system boot-up

AUDIO FEATURES

  • 20-bit stereo full-duplex codec with independent variable sampling rate

  • High quality differential CD input

  • True stereo line level outputs

  • S/PDIF-in/out interface / 6-channel audio output

ONBOARD CSA GIGABIT LAN

  • Uses 82547EI Gigabit LAN CSA interface

  • Integrated power management functions

  • Full duplex support at both 10, 100 and 1000 Mbps

  • Supports IEEE 802.3u auto-negotiation

  • Supports wire for management

ATA RAID

  • Uses HighPoint 372N RAID controller

  • RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 1.5

  • Two independent IDE channels support 4 hard disk drives (ATA/33, ATA/66, ATA/100, ATA/133 or EIDE)

  • Supports PIO modes 0/1/2/3/4, DMA modes 0/1/2 and UDMA modes 0/1/2/3/4/5/6

PCI IDE INTERFACE

  • Supports ATA/33, ATA/66 and ATA/100 hard drives

  • PIO Mode 4 Enhanced IDE (data transfer rate up to 14MB/sec.)

  • Bus mastering reduces CPU utilization during disk transfer

  • Supports ATAPI CD-ROM, LS-120 and ZIP

ICH5R SATA IDE/RAID0 INTERFACE

  • Supports two SATA (Serial ATA) interfaces which are compliant with SATA 1.0 specification (1.5Gbps interface)

  • Supports RAID 0

ACCELERATED GRAPHICS PORT (A.G.P.)

  • Supports 1.5V AGP 8x (2.13GB/sec.) and AGP 4x (1066MB/sec.) for 3D graphics applications

  •  (AGP 2x and 3.3V AGP card are not supported)

  • Supports AGP 3.0 and AGP 2.0 spec.

REAR PANEL I/O PORTS

  • 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports

  • 1 RJ45 LAN port

  • 2 DB-9 serial ports

  • 1 DB-25 parallel port

  • 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 mouse port

  • 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port

  • 3 audio jacks: line-out, line-in and Mic-in

I/O CONNECTORS

  • 2 connectors for 4 additional external USB 2.0/1.1 ports

  • 1 front audio connector for external line-out and Mic-in jacks

  • 1 connector for an external game/MIDI port

  • 2 internal audio connectors (CD-in and AUX-in)

  • 1 4-channel audio output connector

  • 1 S/PDIF-in/out connector

  • 1 connector for IrDA interface

  • 2 RAID IDE connectors

  • 2 Serial ATA connectors

  • 2 IDE connectors

  • 1 floppy connector

  • 2 ATX power supply connectors

  • 1 Wake-On-LAN connector

  • 3 fan connectors for CPU fan, chassis fan and second fan

EXPANSION SLOTS

  • 1 AGP slot

  • 5 PCI slots

COMPATIBILITY

  • PCI 2.2

  • AC 97 compliant

  • Intel AGP version 3.0

PCB

  • 4 layers, ATX form factor

  • 30.5cm (12.05") x 24.4cm (9.6")

The BIOS:

        

        

The DFI LANPARTY Pro875 is outfitted with an Award BIOS, that we're sure nearly all of you will be familiar with.  Most of the motherboards currently available ship with some form of Award's BIOS.  DFI did a good job with the Pro875's BIOS.  Like the MSI board, users can control all of the on-board features and can tweak memory timings AGP settings as well.  The "Genie BIOS Settings" menu is what you'll all want to take a closer look at...

         

  

As we browsed through the "Genie BIOS Settings" menu, which is very much like Abit's ever popular SoftMenu III, it was clear DFI had the serious overclocker in mind when they were designing the LANPARTY Pro875.  In the "Genie BIOS settings" section, users have the ability to adjust the CPU core voltage from 1.5 to 1.85 volts, in .05 volt increments.  Users are also able to adjust the Front Side Bus from 100MHz. to a relatively low 255MHz (depending on what type of CPU is installed), in 1MHz. increments.  DDR and AGP voltages can also be changed, but not to extreme levels.  The DDR memory voltage can be raised up to 2.7v and the AGP voltage can be raised up to 1.7v.  We did encounter one strange issue with the BIOS revision that shipped with this board, but DFI somewhat remedied the situation.  With the initial BIOS, if we overclocked the system too far, we had to remove the CMOS battery to reset the FSB.  The Clear CMOS jumper didn't restore the board to default speeds.  With the most recent BIOS release, should you overclock the board too aggressively, upon re-booting the processor's default FSB will be used.

Overclocking: DFI LANPARTY Pro875
Surprising Performance

STOCK CPU SPEED
CPU OVERCLOCKED TO
3.5GHZ (15 X 233MHZ)
CPU OVERCLOCKED TO
3.5GHZ (15 X 233MHZ)

We were pleasantly surprised by the DFI LANPARTY Pro875's overclocking prowess.  Given DFI's history, we were a bit skeptical that they would be able to deliver a solid overclocking motherboard, on what is essentially their first attempt.  We also thought the passively cooled Northbridge might hinder our efforts a bit.  After benchmarking at FSB speeds in excess of 210MHz, the Northbridge heatsink got fairly hot to the touch.  Even though we had a positive overclocking experience, it probably wouldn't hurt to add a small fan the Pro875's Northbridge heatsink.  When all was said and done, the DFI LANPARTY Pro875 hit the highest clock speed of the bunch!  With the same settings and supporting hardware as the other boards, we were able increase the FSB on the Pro875 all the way up to 233MHz (16.5% increase), for a top speed of 3.5GHz.

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