DFI LanParty LT X38-T2R

Better late than never, Josh Collins checks out whether this mobo is worth the wait.

Another board to add to the LANParty LT series, the X38-T2R brings to the table an X38 offering from DFI – albeit a little behind the pack.

Sporting many of the same features as its little brother, the P35-T2R, with components such as solid state capacitors, two gigabit Ethernet connections and support for 333MHz (1333MHz quad pumped) processors, the X38-T2R conforms further to its predecessor by even following the same component layout and expansion slot configuration – also featuring three PCIe 16x slots instead of two like most other X38 based boards. Additionally the placement of these PCIe 16x slots has been given a lot of thought and due to this allows for three cards utilising dual slot cooling solutions to be used with this motherboard.

The BIOS is the typical DFI LANParty series madness with enough settings to upset a Spartan. It is for this reason that the board could be considered a tweaker’s delight, with hours of trial and error ahead for that ever so perfect system configuration… and a reason for others to run around in circles pulling their hair out. Depending on where you sit within that spectrum and how much time you spend in the BIOS tinkering, this fact alone could become a deal maker or a deal breaker.

It is certainly an interesting board and pulls on many of the features and strengths that stood strong in the P35-T2R that came before it. However, given the time it has taken to get to market and the lack of anything that is particularly new or additional to the P35-T2R with the exception of the X38 chipset, it’s hard to help but to feel this board is ‘just another board’ and doesn’t have any unique or outstanding features.

When compared clock for clock, the X38-T2R is faster than the P35-T2R – if only by a couple hundredths of a second here and one or two megabytes there, it is none the less faster. The P35-T2R was originally faster than the hordes of boards available from the likes of GIGABYTE, ASUS, Abit and MSI and this was mainly due to faster MCH (chipset) latencies. The problem now though is that the X38-T2R takes more effort to overclock compared to the P35-T2R and we can only suspect this is due to even further tightening of the MCH latencies; this was reflected within the results being that slight bit faster.

As a negative side effect of this, while maintaining the same parameters as tested on the P35-T2R and other motheboards based on P35 and X38 chipsets, the X38-T2R turned up some ordinary FSB headroom. Topping out at 540MHz FSB after scaling using SetFSB, the board could only manage to complete the full suite of benchmarks at the boot-in maximum FSB of 525MHz

During test we also discovered an apparent conflict between Everest Ultimate Edition 4.0 and the motherboard, effectively forcing a restart. This, we discovered, was a motherboard specific issue as the same image and install is used for testing of all the P35 and X38 boards. For this reason results for Everest read, write and latency are not included in the table.

Layout-wise the board is almost identical to the P35-T2R, with one minor yet strongly defining difference – the north bridge cooling solution. It is a well known fact among the enthusiast crowd that the X38 northbridge runs much hotter than the P35 northbridge and as such not only does it have its own IHS akin to a CPU’s but also demands further attention in the cooling department. For this reason, the X38-T2R motherboard is packed with a separate northbridge cooling solution that the end user is to attach to the motherboard and northbridge. This type of solution is great to see within the enthusiast market and allows for those wishing to implement other third party cooling options to much easier attach these to the motherboard due to the sheer lack of a heat pipe jungle – thank you DFI!

The board is well built, well laid out and carries on from a successful predecessor. Unfortunately though, it does not build upon this solid foundation, more so appearing to just have a kick around and game on it instead. Here’s hoping to a strong X48 offering, but we won’t be holding our breaths after consistently delayed releases.