hi there ........
i have heard a lot about DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS motherboard and thus wanted to kow about few details regarding this motherboard.......so if anyone can provide me few details regarding it?
your views will be appreciated...........
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hi there ........
i have heard a lot about DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS motherboard and thus wanted to kow about few details regarding this motherboard.......so if anyone can provide me few details regarding it?
your views will be appreciated...........
The JR series from DFI has come along. The P45 T2RS has had quite a bit of interest from our community as a tiny board with CrossFire support and technically you could install quad CrossFireX into the space the size of a shoebox.
DFI dropped some other nifty features too, like its Auto Boost System, or ABS, and a removable northbridge heatsink that allows other coolers to be strapped to the heatpipe instead.
The Box consists of:
- One rounded floppy cable
- One rounded IDE cable
- Two SATA cables
- Smart Connectors for USB and front panel pin-outs
- One Molex to two SATA power connector, adapter
- Metal Rear I/O shield
- Manuals, Driver CD and floppy disk with ICH10R drivers/
The IDE and floppy ports has been removed on the mainstream products including a floppy cable and even floppy disk with drivers is a bit. With only two SATA cables for the six sockets, the bundle is skewed to legacy components instead of new ones. The "Smart Connectors" shows what we find in bundles from Asus and MSI, and they're always a welcome addition because they're very useful.
DFI LANParty JR P45 T2RS Features:
- Support for Intel LGA755 CPUs including 65m, and 45m Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Pentium dual-core, Celeron dual-core and Celeron with 800-1,600MHz front side bus.
- Intel P45 northbridge
- Intel ICH10R southbridge
- Four DDR2 memory sockets supporting up to 8GB of memory at 667-1,066MHz.
- Two PCI-Express x16 slots (fixed x8/x8 function) with support for ATI
- CrossFire graphics
- Realtek ALC885 Premium 7.1 channel High-Definition audio codec
- One PCI-Express x1 slot
- One PCI slot
- Six SATA 3Gbps ports with Intel Matrix RAID 0, 1, 10 and 5.
- JMicron JMB368 chipset supplying the one IDE socket
- One Marvell 88E8053 Gigabit Ethernet
- Twelve USB 2.0 ports (six via pin-outs, six via rear I/O)
Board Layout
The layout understandably appears quite compact, but fits everything just fine - even large CPU coolers and a pair of HD4870s physically fit fine, although, the top one will probably end up overheating sat so close to the other. The board with a pair of HD 3870s that are a little smaller and worked just fine - a pair of HD 4850s will work well too.
The cooling is a little basic, but all that's needed; the northbridge can technically be removed but since DFI used the cheapest screws imaginable combined with bolts that appear to be covered in wax, means removing them simply sheds the Philips head. As you can see in the picture below after considerable effort and plenty of swearing we couldn't even get the second one off.
Underneath a single heatpipe is sandwiched into place, and it goes to the fins cooling the simple four phase CPU power regulation. Like Abit used on the awesome IP35-Pro, DFI uses a 2:1 MOSFET standard with environmentally sealed ferrite cored chokes and solid aluminium capacitors from Nippon Chemicon across the entire board.
In addition to this the board features and additional phase of power regulation for the PCI-Express, memory and "one phase" for the northbridge as well.
The Lanparty JR P45-T2RS features quad core Yorkfield and dual core Wolfdale processor support out of the box without a BIOS upgrade and PCIE 2.0 CrossFire support. In addition to CrossFire support, DFI provides high definition audio with the Realtek ALC885 Codec. The benefit to this is users can experience gaming on their micro ATX system in full surround sound. Placed against other micro ATX options, few even compare to the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS in terms of BIOS options and tweaking ability. This is DFI’s plan to make a board perfect for an enthusiast who wants to get every drop of performance out of his micro ATX build.
Another point worth mentioning is the famous BIOS designed by BIOS engineer and legend Oskar Wu. This name has been held in high regard by enthusiasts for many years and is part of the reason many users stay loyal to DFI. The Lanparty JR P45-T2RS has more BIOS tweaking options than you can imagine and features such as CMOS Reloaded are just icing on the cake. One other fairly new feature for DFI is the Auto Boost System (ABS).
Specifications:
CPU:
- LGA 775 socket for: - Intel® Core2 Quad and Intel® Core2 Duo
- Supports Intel Enhanced Memory 64 Technology (EMT64T)
- Supports Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST)
- Supports Intel Hyper-Threading Technology
- Supports 1333/1066/800MHz FSB
Chipset:
- Northbridge: Intel® P45 Express chipset Intel® Fast Memory Access technology
- Southbridge: Intel® ICH10R
System Memory:
- Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM sockets
- Supports DDR2 667/800/1066 MHz
- Delivers up to 12.8Gb/s bandwidth
- Supports dual channel (128-bit wide) memory interface
- Supports up to 8GB system memory
- Supports unbuffered x8 and x16 DIMMs
Expansion Slot:
- 2 PCI Express Gen 2 x16 slots - 2-way CrossFire
- 1 PCI Express x1 slot
- 1 PCI slot
Audio:
- Realtek ALC885 High Definition audio CODEC
- 8-channel audio output
- DAC SNR/ADC SNR of 106dB/101dB
- Full-rate lossless content protection technology
- Optical S/PDIF-out and coaxial RCA S/PDIF-out interfaces
LAN:
- Marvell 88E8053 PCIE Gigabit LAN controller
- Fully compliant to IEEE 802.3 (10BASE-T), 802.3u (100BASE-TX) and 802.3ab(1000BASE-T) standards
Storage and IDE:
- Intel Matrix Storage technology
- Supports up to 6 SATA devices
- SATA speed up to 3Gb/s
- RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5
- JMicron JMB368 PCI Express to PATA host controller
- Supports up to 2 UltraDMA 33/66/100Mbps IDE devices
Rear Panel I/O:
- 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 mouse port
- 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port
- 1 optical S/PDIF-out port
- 1 coaxial RCA S/PDIF-out port
- 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 1 RJ45 LAN port
- Center/subwoofer, rear R/L and side R/L jacks
- Line-in, line-out (front R/L) and mic-in jacks
Connectors:
- 6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID, NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug functions
- 2 x eSATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors
- 1 x ATA133 IDE connector
- 1 x Floppy connector
- 1 x DeskExpress Hot Plug Detection header
- 1 x COM port header
- 1 x HDMI_SPDIF header
- 1 x IEEE 1394 header
- CPU/Chassis FAN connector:
- 24 pin ATX power connector
- 8 pin 12V power connector
- CD in header
- Front panel audio connector
- 2 x USB 2.0 headers
- 1 x WiFi/E header
BIOS Features:
- Award BIOS
- 8Mbit SPI flash BIOS
- CMOS Reloaded
Internal I/O:
- 3 connectors for 6 additional external USB 2.0 ports
- 1 connector for an external COM port
- 1 front audio connector
- 1 CD-in connector
- 1 IrDA connector
- 6 Serial ATA connectors
- 1 40-pin IDE connector
- 1 floppy connector
- 1 24-pin ATX power connector
- 1 8-pin 12V power connector
- 1 front panel connector
- 3 fan connectors
- 1 download flash BIOS connector
- EZ touch switches
Power Management:
- ACPI and OS Directed Power Management
- ACPI STR (Suspend to RAM) function
- Wake-On-PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse
- Wake-On-USB Keyboard/Mouse
- Wake-On-LAN
- Wake-On-Ring
- RTC timer to power-on the system
- AC power failure recovery
Hardware Monitor:
- Monitors CPU/system/Northbridge temperature and overheat alarm
- Monitors Vcore/Vdimm/Vnb/VCC5/12V/V5sb/Vbat voltages
- Monitors the speed of the cooling fans
- CPU Overheat Protection
PCB:
- 4 layers, microATX form factor
- 24.5cm x 24.5cm
My Review on Chipset DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS Motherboard Features:
The new P45 chipset by Intel supports a variety of features including new Intel 1600 MHz Front Side Bus processors, high speed DDR2 and DDR3, Extreme Memory Profiles (Intel XMP), next-generation dual PCI Express 2.0 lanes, and Intel Extreme Tuning, allowing for maximum platform performance.
The Intel P45 Express Chipset is driving PCI-E 2.0 to mainstream users, delivering up to 16 GB/s bandwidth, twice the bandwidth of PCI Express 1.0. The Intel P45 Express Chipset supports either a 1 x 16 or 2 x 8 PCI-E 2.0 configuration for expandable discrete graphics capability. PCI-E 2.0 also provides greater flexibility and reliability in design because it is backward compatible with PCI-E 1.0 and can dynamically manage power and performance through software controls. The greatly improved 16 GB/s of graphics bandwidth capability enables much higher levels of performance on graphics-intensive applications such as high-end gaming and video rendering.
A few notable features on the DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS include 8.1 Channel HD Audio, All Solid Capacitors, Yorkfield and Wolfdale CPU support, CrossFire support, CMOS Reloaded, and ABS capabilities.
Packaging and Accessories
DFI comes to market with a colourful, eye-catching box for the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS. The box is a contemporary navy blue design, includes DFI’s always familiar Lanparty logo, bold yellow text and many feature-describing images which all amounts to a nice contrast.Included on the front of the box are a few stickers calling attention to some notable features. The auto boost system has its own logo which we will probably see on many upcoming DFI boards and smart connectors are also mentioned. Another round sticker addresses an “Intel power off issue”.
The reverse of the box includes many explanations of yet more features as well as heavy use of the Lanparty brand. Features marketed on the back of the box include 8 channel audio, digital PWM, duo and quad support, P45 and ICH10R chipsets, heat pipe cooling, solid caps, gigabit LAN and smart connectors.The blue box for the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS is actually a thinner covering for the actual motherboard box. The thicker white box is quite plain but still includes the Lanparty logo once again. Looking inside, the accessories are packed similarly to most motherboards: everything is individually packaged in plastic, resting on a cardboard divider on top of the board itself. The motherboard is wrapped in the standard anti-static bag to avoid damage to components from static charges while beneath the board there is a thick foam sheet to prevent shipping damage.
The variety of accessories included with the board. In typical DFI style, the colors of the cables run quite nicely with the general color scheme of the board itself and the auto boost system comes with a dedicated manual.
Specific Package Contents Include:
- Package Contents
- DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS motherboard (micro ATX form factor)
- Motherboard user manual
- Auto Boost System installation guide
- One IDE cable
- One FDD cable
- Two Serial ATA data cables
- One power cable with 2 Serial ATA power connectors
- One RAID floppy diskette
- One I/O shield
- One “Mainboard Utility” CD
Software Included:
The DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS motherboard comes with an installation disk containing drivers needed for the board as well as a few additional programs and tools. Navigating the disk, users will find chipset, audio, LAN, storage, graphics, and RAID drivers. Extra software is found under the tools page and includes Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.05, the Auto Boost program, and DFI’s hardware monitoring program – Smart Guardian.
The Auto Boost System technology provides the convenience of saving and loading several overclocking settings. It even allows users to swap profiles with other users by sending a small .abs file and makes tweaking on such a complex board a little less overwhelming. This is also a great program for tech support as DFI can request your .abs file to help users with settings or just send a pre-tested profile. The ABS program also comes pre-loaded with upgrade options for different processors. For example, users with a 1066 FSB CPU could select the 1066 upgrade to 1333 option and enjoy extra performance with little to no overclocking experience. In testing we wanted to get the max out of the board not just a small boost so the stock profiles were overwritten with custom settings.
Overall, the features of ABS worked flawlessly and it really saves time when overclocking since CMOS Reloaded can load your previously saved BIOS settings upon a failed boot. You simply press F1 on POST to access the ABS utility and the screen will show CPU upgrade information.
Please note to use extreme caution when playing with these settings as hardware damage and operating system corruption is possible if the user goes too far with an instable overclock.
Let have a look at BIOS Settings:
Any overclocker or enthusiast knows that the components and features of a motherboard are only part of the puzzle. The BIOS is what can make or break a board’s performance for both long-term and short-term benching. First we will run through DFI’s complex BIOS and briefly explain some settings and then take a closer look at the overclockability of the board in the overclocking section.The Lanparty JR P45-T2RS features an Award BIOS with 8Mbit SPI flash as well as the CMOS Reloaded feature. CMOS Reloaded allows users to use BIOS presets by pressing user defined hotkeys upon POST. To enter the BIOS initially, the delete key is used when the POST screen comes up.
By default, The Lanparty JR P45-T2RS displays a branded splash screen consistent with the marketing on the box. The BIOS also has an option to disable the splash screen to allow viewing of POST messages. Disabling of splash screens is recommended when overclocking in order to see what speed the system is booting at from the POST screen.Starting with the main BIOS page we have many options to look at. First off there is Hard Disk priority, which is where you change to a USB drive for BIOS flashing. There is also boot device priority and some other boot options. The bottom of the screen is where the option to disable the POST screen is located.
Next up we have USB and power management screens. Users can enable usb keyboard, mouse, and storage as well as customize power management functions.The PC Health Status page is rather advanced compared to some boards we have seen, likely because of a higher-end monitoring chip. CPU, chipset, and PWM temperatures are shown as well as a number of voltages. Voltages monitored include: Vcore, vmem, vNB, VTT, as well as al PSU rails. As mentioned above, the CMOS Reloaded feature in the BIOS allows users to save and quickly reload BIOS settings, great for overclocking.
Now for the page overclockers will spend 99% of their time on: Genie BIOS Settings. This page contains basically everything you need to bring your system to the maximum overclock; from FSB clocks to RAM timings to all voltages, it is all there. CPU Clock Ratio (multiplier) and CPU clock (FSB) are the settings used to change the FSB and multi of the system. Boot UP Clock allows for booting at a different clock. This is helpful when you run high FSB, you can boot at a lower clock and then move up to your desired FSB.
CPU Clock Amplitude settings are essentially clock output strengths and tweaking these settings helps with higher FSB.
CPU Clock Skews are the skew clocks for the Northbridge, also useful for achieving higher FSB. Next up we have DRAM Speed which is essentially strap settings. There are seven settings available which allow for different straps and RAM speeds. We will go through the sub-pages in detail below.
Right at the top of the DRAM timing page we find the Enhance Data transmitting options. These are for fine tuning data transmitting performance based on the system FSB. Fast is used for highest performance and normal for more stability.
Below this is T2 Dispatch. These are DRAM performance parameters; disabling relaxes memory timings for higher frequencies. Midway down the timing page another important setting is found, Performance Level or Read Delay. This is the tRD parameter for your RAM. Related to tRD, the first sub-page of the DRAM timings is Clock Setting fine Delay. Here DLL and RCOMP tables are located. The DRAM DLL table is a base for calculating clock delays and the RCOMP values are impedence ratings of chipset registers. In plain English, DLL and RCOMP control signals between CPU, NB, and RAM and are essential for successful overclocking. Recommended profiles for DRAM and RCOMP are 3/3/1, 5/5/1, and 0/0/
Further down the page there is another useful sub-page – Read Delay Phase Adjust. This is also related to tRD and here you can see what Read Delay phase settings will be used.Now to move on to the Voltage Setting sub-page of the Genie BIOS page. This page is where you find all the adjustable voltages you need for overclocking. At the top is CPU Special VID Add. This is for adjusting vcore and up to +.787.5mv but remember that this is enough to easily kill any CPU, just the way we like it.Next up we have DRAM and PLL voltages. An unheard of 3.28v is available for memory and 2.15v for PLL. Again, this is for extreme overclocking and if you set anywhere over 2.5ish volts on your memory (for high voltage Micron D9) it will be dead as a doornail faster than you can imagine. It is also not recommended to exceed 1.75v on PLL.
One last setting to go over is FSB Ref voltage. This is a tweak to MCH parameter registers and is sometimes useful for breaking a perceived FSB wall. Recommended settings to test are 23/24/25/2A/2B.
All in all, an enthusiast or hard core overclocker should be thrilled with the options available in the BIOS. On the same note however ,a novice user could be overwhelmed to the point of never entering a BIOS again! There are enough voltage options to easily fry your RAM, motherboard, and CPU easily if care is not taken. We recommend a lot of background reading and overclocking experience in general before increasing voltages and trying for that extreme overclock.
This is what My Impressions & Conclusion:
Overall, the long-term impressions of the DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS are largely positive. Solid capacitors and overall build quality are quite strong, the chipset very runs cool, and voltage is rock solid. On the negative side, long-term overclock stability is quite shaky and running high voltages over time can lead to stability issues.
Chipset and MOSFET temperatures remain very low, even after adding higher voltages and running orthos to produce heat. Cool parts are generally durable parts and we have no long-term worries whatsoever seeing a chipset running under 40C.
From reading other users’ experiences with the board in general, it seems like the consistency in quality is just not there. One point to add is it appears DFI is willing to constantly work on BIOS versions for all of their boards, as several have been released since the board became available. Hopefully, in the future DFI will add some auto settings for GTLs, RCOMPs, and skews so users without a degree in computer engineering can overclock the JR P45-T2RS and achieve a standard overclock that will be stable in the long-term.
ATX board DFI managed to squeeze most things you need into a smaller package. In terms of motherboard features, the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS has almost all of the options of a full-sized board including CrossFire, 8 channel HD audio, heatpipe cooling, CMOS Reloaded and a solid design with all solid capacitors. The only thing really lacking compared to a standard board is a Firewire port.
For motherboard layout, DFI did a good job in squeezing everything possible onto a smaller board. The layout is actually great; connectors are in the most convenient places, the 24 pin ATX connector is out of the way on the right edge and there are two CMOS jumpers which is good because you will need them. The PCI-E slots leave enough space to use full-sized water blocks on GPUs or even dual slot coolers although the second card covers one of the CMOS jumpers. One thing in the build that may limit the top end use for enthusiasts is 4 layer pcb and 4 phase PWM.
One plus on the BIOS side is DFI frequently releases BIOS updates so this board will only improve in the future.
Crossfire results did make the JR P45-T2RS shine with huge gains in benchmarks and games when moving to two cards. But we should mention the max 8x PCI-E slot speed.