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Published: January 29, 2009 | Source: DFI | Author: Rich Weatherstone

DFI X58 T3eH8 Ultra Motherboard

Test Setup
 

To ensure that all reviews on Overclock3D are fair, consistent and unbiased, a standard set of hardware and software is used whenever possible during the comparative testing of two or more products. The configuration used in this review can be seen below: 

 
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 (2.66Ghz)

Motherboard: DFI X58 T3eH8 Ultra

Memory: Corsair Dominator @ 8-8-8-24 1600Mhz

Graphics Card: NVidia GTX280

Power Supply: Gigabyte Odin 1200W

CPU Cooling: Stock Intel Cooling

Hard Disk: Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 7200rpm 80GB

Graphics Drivers: Geforce 180.60 CUDA

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1

 

During the testing of the setup above, special care was taken to ensure that the BIOS settings used matched whenever possible. A fresh install of Windows Vista was also used before the benchmarking began, with a full defrag of the hard drive once all the drivers and software were installed, preventing any possible performance issues due to leftover drivers from the previous motherboard installations. For the 3DMark and gaming tests a single card configuration was used.

To guarantee a broad range of results, the following benchmark utilities were used:


Synthetic CPU Test
• Sisoft Sandra 2009
• PassMark CPU test
• SuperPI 1m, 8m, 32m

Memory Test
• Sisoft Sandra 2009
• Everest 4.60

File Compression & Encoding
• Sisoft Sandra 2009
• 7-Zip File Compression
• River Past ViMark

Disk I/O Performance
• HDTach 3.0.4.0
• Sisoft Sandra 2009

3D / Rendering Benchmarks
• Cinebench 10
• 3DMark 05
• 3DMark 06
• 3DMark Vantage

3D Games
• Crysis
• Far Cry 2
• Company of Heroes

Overall System Performance
• PCMark Vantage

Power Consumption

Power consumption is an aspect often forgotten when it comes to enthusiast motherboards but in todays climate, with rising utility bills special consideration needs to be taken when choosing you components as over a period of time, one components can prove to be much more expensive than another over its lifetime.

Power consumption was measured at the socket using a plug-in mains power and energy monitor. Idle readings were taken after 5 minutes in Windows. Load readings were taken during a run of 3DMark Vantage.

Overclocking

Using a respectable Vcore of 1.40v, the remainder of BIOS voltage settings were left in their stock state to ensure equality throughout the testing.

Overclock
They say a picture says a thousand words and the above screenshot does just that. The overclocking on the DFI board is sublime, plain and simple. While many of the BIOS settings are confusing and perhaps daunting to some, NONE of the ‘expert’ settings were used to achieve this overclock. I just dialled in the CPU Vcore (1.4v), set the Bclk to 202 and the memory divider was adjusted to Bclkx8 (1616mhz). That’s it. You really do not have to be an overclocking guru to get a lot out of this motherboard. However, with more time to familiarise myself with the settings and indeed time to experiment with the vast array of options available, this massive overclock could be increased even further.

DFI have once again proven themselves to be the no.1 choice for overclockers and with an exceptional package all that remains is to see how this board performs in our range of benchmarks. So returning the settings back to their stock state and disabling the Turbotech setting we started our suite of benchmarks…