Performance Summary
It's the same old story on the performance front; all P55 boards perform about the same during fixed frequency tests.
For the next test we measured AC power consumption from the wall while using the same set of components on all boards. All power saving features were turned on, with OS software installed where necessary to give maximum power saving at stock operating frequency on our i7 870 CPU. Real power consumption will probably be a few percent lower than what the AC wall meter reports but as we're going apples to apples here, the percentage of change is the important factor.
DFI's MI-T36 produces respectable power consumption figures during idle and full load scenarios, bettered only slightly by MSI, who are the class leaders when it comes to power saving features and software.
As part of the performance summary, we also include a DPC latency screenshot for the audio aficionado's out there;
Overclocking
DFI offers plenty of overclocking features within the current BIOS. However, the VRM for processor VCore is limited to 150w max (110w in the near future). Although we managed to pass our gaming tests at 4GHz, 860/870 CPUs are best left near stock operating frequency to avoid catastrophic board failure during heavy load tests.
We overclocked our 750 CPU to 3.6GHz with a 1800MHz memory speed at 7-8-7-20 timings (180BCLK x 20). Voltages were 1.25V CPU VCore, 1.25VTT and 1.65VDIMM. All other voltages were left at stock. On the DRAM side, we only needed to set the primary timings; the board defaults were perfectly adequate for this speed. We must add that we were using an open test bed and pointing a high speed fan directly over the PWM area. Within a PC case, we think you're going to be limited to stock operating frequencies on the CPU. S3 Sleep mode recovery is limited to around 150 BCLK on the current BIOS too, anything higher and the board gets caught in a reboot loop.
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michal1980 - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Wrong.Why can't you reviewers, hold these manufactures feet to the flames.
Any one in the review business actually have a backbone?
I for one, am tired of what appear to be half hearted efforts on the part of Mobo manufactures to provide products that WORK.
Bios settings not working? Harddrives disappearing? Endless loops? Usb issues, with ding ding din, USB devices? WTF?
I've bought 'cheap' boards, i've bought higher end boards, i've bought everything in the middle, I've got boards with awesome reviews, boards with few reviews.
But just about each one has issues, needs various firmware updates, etc etc, just to hit a stable medium, and have all its features work. (well almost all).
And yet, no one, no one, in the review business seems to care. The slap (loosey using the word, since yes all the tests are alot of, at the end of the day, boring work) a few tests, or a battery they run. Post some benchmarkers, and basically call it a day. Not only that, but the bigger the reviewer, the more likely they have, and get access to actual support teams/ engineers, that get them around issues.
A regular cosumter? phhff, go on some forum and hope others have found the solution, because the CS you'll get is likely some idiot csr reading of a script, who's only goal in life is to churn support calls/emails to get a bonus, actually fixing a problem? HA.
BTW, problems which should have been caught by the manufacture INITIALY.
How hard is it to see if your bios settings actually do something? How hard is it to check how much power your board can supply without killing it self?
Which leads me back to review sites. Do you even care? You slap some winning stickers on some mobo's. and then go on to the next project you have to test. meanwhile your readers are stuck working with a product that in reality is half arsed garabage, they spent hunderds on, then countless hours patching, setting up, refining, etc etc, just to get it working... Doing the real testing, the testing companies should be doing, and reviewers should be checking.
Shame on all of you.
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Hi Michael,All of the info is up on the first page - bold enough for all to see. The only poitive spin here is that we're glad someone is working with the M-ITX form factor because we genuinely want to see more vendors offer such products. That's what we're trying to promote.
DFI's mistake was openeing up overclocking functions on the shipping BIOS that the board is not realy designed to make use of. Keep the board a stock or below 160 BCLK and 99% of the issues I mentioned dissappear. Its not perfect, but the info is there and you decide if the issues mentioned are worthy of purchase or not. If not, then at least you got a heads up of what we found and the fact we asked for fixes. Having all of this on the front page is not an attempt to hide it or a cover angle. We give vendors 2 chances during the test period to respond with fixes, if they're not forthcoming we won't delay the review.
regards
Raja
Zebo - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Appreciate some reviews like this tech but no conclusions?Zebo - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
This board needs wireless to be complete. Wireless N preferred. With only one slot, and no OB video you're left in cold with regard to wireless unless you want dongles hanging off the back of case. DFI needs to consider wireless.Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Hi Zebo,The 'conclusion' is on the first page. We changed the layout of motherboard articles few months ago just to provide you guys with all the info in one place.
regards
Raja
Mr Perfect - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Heh. It's supposed to e like that? I thought something broke.Still, are some of the pages out of order? The benchmarks are four pages before the specs of what's being tested, so all through the graphs I was thinking "This tells me nothing. What was tested?".
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Hi2nd page is performance summary, for a quick overview (main tests) of how the board compares to others. After that, features/layout followed by the complete test resuslts.
regards
Raja
notposting - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Do you mean watts? I would love to see 90 (or 110) amps go through that thing.Rajinder Gill - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Hi,It's amps. Stock TDP of some CPU's is more than 90 watts, so you'd be somewhat concerned if that were the max power limit of the board. 1.40 VID max with 90amps gives you a max wattage of 126w.
later
Raja
piasabird - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
If DFI is marketing a motherboard for HTPC/DVR use then why use a chipset that basically supports mostly Quad Processors. May be overkill for HTPC. Might be nice to see more processor support for this socket.