DFI Infinity 975X/G

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] If you’re a computer enthusiast, more than likely you have heard of DFI. Long known in the industry as an overclockers best friend in the motherboard arena, DFI has produced some of the best performing motherboards to date. Their LanParty series has catapulted them to the top tier of enthusiast motherboard manufacturers by offering superb performance and an ungodly amount of extras bundled. While the LanParty has garnered all of the accolades and attention, the Infinity series of motherboards has been around for those of us with somewhat restricting budgets. With most of the attention going to the LanParty series, the Infinity can sometimes be looked over. While the Infinity series lacks the bundled extras that the LanParty offers, it still gets its fair share of attention from the DFI engineers. Now that 2006 is almost behind us, looking back, it’s obvious that the CPU market is nothing like it was this time last year. Intel has retaken the performance crown from AMD, dual core CPUs are a common place and more importantly, affordable and the emergence of quad core CPUs is happening as well. The DFI Infinity 975 X/G, which we are working with today, uses the same 975 Intel chipset that has been around for a while now. Using this chipset, the 975 X/G is Core 2 Duo ready and with a BIOS upgrade, quad core ready as well. With the following that DFI has developed, there is a lot riding on this motherboard and in working with the 975 X/G over the past 4 weeks, we have been working with it to find out if it’s truly a board that the Core 2 Duo crown has been waiting for as well as if it’s a value to the consumer as the Infinity name implies. About the 975 X/G LGA 775 socket for: Pentium D, Pentium 4, Celeron D, Core2 (Conroe family), Quad Core processor (Kentsfield) read. Supports Intel Enhanced Memory 64 Technology (EMT64T) Supports Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) Supports Intel Hyper-Threading Technology Supports 1066/800/533MHz FSB. Two PCI-Express x16 slots (either x16 and x1 or x8 and x8) with ATI Crossfire support. One PCI-Express x1 slot and one PCI-Express x4 slot (either x1 and x1 or one x4) 1 Legacy PCI Slot. Four SATA 3Gbps ports and a single IDE channel. 1 external Firewire port via the Firewire VT6307. Eight USB 2.0 ports, four internal and four on the rear I/O. Realtek RTL8111B PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet. Realtek ALC882 High Definition audio codec with 8 channel sound support and S/PDIF. Intel chipset supports: Four SATA ports. SATA speed up to 3Gb/s. RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5. JMB360 chip supports: One eSATA (external SATA) port. SATA speed up to 3Gb/s. Intel 975X Express Chipset. Northbridge : Intel 975X Express. Southbridge: Intel ICH7R. Packaging and Layout DFI clearly wants to distinguish their Infinity boards from the LanParty board that they have built their name on. As the box shows, its nothing like the LanParty boxes but still informative. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Packaging & Layout] Once open, we see that DFI has included a few essential cables and that’s it. DFI is clearly holding true to the Infinity “budget” labeling. This is not a big deal for most, knowing that an Infinity purchase isn’t going to net you an insane amount of extras. The Infinity is almost a polar opposite of the LanParty in this regard. This is actually nice to be honest. The no nonsense approach allows DFI to keep costs down a bit as well as give the end user all that they will need to get going, but that’s about it. Here we see the manual. For most, this is the first item that is thrown to the side. I personally keep mine around for various information in case I need it. Next we see the I/O plate, one IDE ribbon, a pair of SATA cables as well as one 4-pin molex to SATA power connector. As stated before, not a lot, but just enough to get your PC build off the ground. Finally we get to the driver disks. With the need for RAID drivers in XP, DFI has included a pair of 3.5” driver disks as well as a CD with all of the necessary Windows drivers on it. These drivers include the chipset drivers, ATI and NVIDIA video display drivers, Ethernet drivers and many more. Also included on the disk is Smart Guardian PC monitoring software. Moving past the packaging and included bundle, we move to the Infinity 975 X/G itself. With a rather bland looking green PCB, the 975 X/G certainly lacks the bling that other motherboard posses but is this really a problem? The first thing that we notice is the passive northbridge. Held down by a retention wire, the aluminum heatsink passively cools the northbridge with fairly tall fins. With 96 fins in all, there is certainly a lot of surface area to keep the northbridge cool and does so completely silent. If we move from there, just to the left of the northbridge, we see the power connectors. This, to me, is an odd place to put these connectors as the PSU cables will have to run either on top of the CPU cooler or just above or below. This also could effect the northbridge cooling as there won’t be an active fan cooling the chip and the PSU cables running so close to it could interfere with airflow. On other motherboards, the LanParty included, the power connections are in the upper right side of the board, allowing for the cables to run into the case, not across the board. For power, we have a standard 24-pin connector, an 8-pin auxiliary connector and a floppy power connector. While the placement is somewhat puzzling and far from ideal, the positioning is manageable and can be dealt with. Just below the power connections, we find the PCI slots. On top, there is an x1 slot. Obviously this isn’t the place for high end graphics cards but there are cards out there that could use this slot. Below the x1 slot, there is an x16 slot for video cards. There is also another x16 speed but they cannot be populated by two video cards and still operate at x16. It’s either x16 and x1 or x8 and x8. This isn’t a huge deal as the bandwidth used by PCI Express cards isn’t maxed out to begin with. In-between the 2 x16 slots is an x4 slot. Under the second PCI-E x16 slot, there are 2 legacy PCI slots for your sound card, TV Tuner card or whatever else you might use them for… perhaps even an Ageia PhysX card if your into that sort of thing. At the bottom of the board, there is an assortment of headers. These include one IEEE 1394 Firewire connection, a pair of USB 2.0 connections, headers for your on/off switch, HDD activity, reset and power LED. Directly above the USB headers, we see the CMOS battery and just above it and to the right, the clear CMOS jumper. While DFI kind of botched the placement of the power connections, they did well on the clear CMOS jumper. To the immediate right of the batter is the BIOS chip. DFI uses a Phoenix – Award BIOS for those of you keeping track at home. The Firewire is controlled by a dedicated VIA chip that is located directly above the Firewire headers themselves. To help monitor temps, there is an ITE chip. This is where the included monitoring software, Smart Guardian, will pull its information from. An addition to the LanParty series motherboards has made its way to the Infinity board. On the right side of the 975 X/G, near the bottom is a pair of on-board switches. The inclusion of an on/off and reset button is sure to keep the enthusiast crowd happy. Moving up a bit, the Southbridge is located directly above the clear CMOS jumper and the BIOS chip. Directly to the right of the Southbridge are 4 SATA II ports. Capable of up to 3Gb/s, SATA II has a distinct advantage over SATA I as test have shown but rest easy, you can use SATA I hard drives without a problem. As covered earlier, RAID 1 through 5 can be run on the 975 X/G through the 4 available SATA II ports. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Closer look at the layout] One thing to mention is the cooling that DFI choose to use on the Southbridge. On the chip, DFI has placed a square of ceramic material to keep the chip cool. As bad as it looks, it actually cools quite well. Ceramic is far denser than aluminum and can handle more heat. The one complaint I have of this is that the top of the ceramic plate is flat. While I did not measure the temps of the Southbridge, a few ripples or ridges would have greatly improved the surface area of the ceramic cooler, thus allowing it to cool better than it does now. Jut to the right of the Southbridge and the SATA ports, there is one IDE connector, rotated 90 degrees and facing away from the motherboard. IDE is something that is slowly being phased out and because of this, DFI only included one, presumably for an optical drive however, there are still many people who use IDE hard drives. The 975 X/G can take up to 8 GB of 240-pin DDR2 DIMMs. Color coded for aesthetics and use, the 975 X/G allows the user to run their matching RAM modules in dual channel. The 975 X/G only supports DDR2 553 / 667 / and 800. Some of the capacitors used around the DFI 975 X/G: Finally, placed where it should be is the CPU socket. Sporting a LGA 775 socket and supporting a FSB of 533, 800 and 1066, the 975 X/G can handle any socket 775 CPU out today. This includes the P4, Celeron, Pentium D and the new and beloved Core 2 Duo line of processors. Like any other Intel motherboard, the pins are on the motherboard itself and not on the CPU. You simply undo the retention bar, raise the socket lid, place the CPU in the socket, close the lid and redo the retention bar. Simple huh? Fitting snuggly in the socket, I have finally found a home for my E6600 “Conroe” Core 2 Duo. Once installed correctly, the socket lid should fit comfortably around the CPU’s raised heat spreader. On the outer edges of the motherboard, we have the I/O section. Included on the 975 X/G is: Keyboard and Mouse PS/2 ports. 1 Optical S/PDIF port. 1 RCA S/PDIF port. 1 Parallel port. 1 eSATA port. 1 IEEE 1394 Firewire port. 1 Gigabit...

DFI Infinity 975X/G

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