DFI LanParty Pro875B (Intel 875P Canterwood) Motherboard Review
Overclocking and stability
At overclocking, DFI motherboards have never been a "smashing hit". However, such features were present in full. Running ahead, I must admit the board DFI Pro875B LanParty keeps on with this tradition.
All the overclocking options are gathered in the "Genie Bios Setting" section.
Here they are in brief. First, the board allows adjusting the system bus speed within 100/200 MHz (for Celeron) to 400 MHz in 1 MHz increments.
Very convenient is that as the FSB speed varies, a new processor clock speed is displayed in the special box. The same occurs when adjusting the multiplier, however this feature is accessible for merely a small number of Pentium 4 engineering samples (on other processors, the multiplier is locked).
Secondly, the user can adjust the processor voltage (Vcore) within a very wide range: - within 1.3625V (nominal for the Prescott core) to 1.9750V in 0.0025V/0.025V/0.05V increments.
The next item is about adjusting the memory voltage (Vmem). The advanced user can raise the Vmem from the nominal 2.6V up to 2.9V (in 0.1V increments).
Besides, we get a useful function of raising the AGP bus voltage, which comes in handy.
The variation range is between 1.5V (nominal) and 1.8V in 0.1V increments.
At increased speeds, it is important that the PCI and AGP bus speeds not depart from the standard 33 and 66 MHz, respectively, if possible. It is primarily important for correct HDD operation (and much more important for motherboards having support for RAID). The DFI LanParty Pro875B board is able setting a fixed clock speed on the PCI and AGP buses. This parameter is adjustable within 33/66 to 48/96 MHz, respectively.
Another feature is the fixing of SerialATA frequency at 100 MHz. It is important since the bus is very sensitive to frequency variations. Hard disks with such interface are often an obstacle to further overclocking.
We are now moving on to the most exciting part - the factual overclocking. At that, the board ranked a bit higher than the average: stable operation was fixed at FSB=275 MHz.
Remember that in the overclocking tests we use a very successful P4 2.4C specimen able to run at FSB>300 MHz and at Vcore =1.65V (see the review on Abit IC7-MAX3)
The power converter uses a 3-phase power scheme, in which there are eight 2200 mkF and four 1500 mkF capacitors.
Note the radiators on the MOSFETS, which improves cooling at increased loads. By the "increased load" we can safely imply "using Prescott", because the existing processor revisions with this core impose high requirements to the power converter. In any case, DFI LanParty Pro875B meets the VRM 10.0 and Prescott FMB1.5 specifications (for details of these specifications, see the review on Gigabyte S655TX Ultra), which allows using Prescott processors of clock speeds up to 3.4 GHz.
Resume: the board offers a quite good set of overclocking tools. But anyway it is unable to make the most - for hardcore overclocking, look for a motherboard of other manufacturers.
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