Intel Extreme Series DX48BT2 Mainboard

Intel has been in the limelight for quite some time now. Since stealing the performance crown from AMD over a year ago they have not looked back and, it would seem, have not slowed down. With faster and more efficient CPUs Intel seems to be back to its old ways, (the 10,000 pound rhino charging on).
But it is not just in the CPU market that Intel is busy, they have released quite a few new Chipsets as well. It seems that every time you turn around there is a new one launching promising improvements over the last one. It is hard to keep up. Today, with rumors of an X58 on the horizon, we are taking a look at Intel’s DX48BT2 mainboard. This board is part of the extreme lineup, but does it have the extreme performance and features that today’s enthusiasts demand?

Product: Intel DX48BT2 Extreme Series Mainbaord      
Author: Sean Kalinich
Reviewed on: May 14th 2008
Product cost: $249.99
Manufacturer: Intel
Spelling and Grammatical editor: Planetx64 Staff

{mospagebreak title=Packaging and Accessories}
Packaging and Accessories:
The DX48BT2 ships in a “sexy” black box with an interesting graphical design on it.
A logo proclaiming it as part of the Extreme Series is visible on the top.

Inside we find some rather nice loot, rounded cables (PATA and Floppy), large easy to read “quick” start guide and a few SATA cables (Data and Power).
Also in the box are a bracket to mount a small fan on the NorthBridge and a cap for the Southbridge.

{mospagebreak title=Board Layout}

Layout:
The DX48BT2 is not the best laid out board. As you can see there are many cases where slots will be overlapped if depending on the options you chose for GPU and sound. The two x16 PCI-e 2.0 ports are arranged in such a way that is Crossfire is used you will lose one of your two PCI ports. The final PCI-e 1.1 x4 port can also interfere with the remaining PCI port depending on the card. There are no x1 slots on this board from some reason although having one above the top x16 PCI-e slot would have been nice for a sound card.

The 6 on-board SATA ports are nicely spaced to avoid any longer video cards like the 9800 or 8800GTX.
The complete lack of PS/2 ports will be annoying for anyone that is using an older KVM, or does not have a USB Keyboard and mouse.  Dual e-SATA ports on the back I/O bank are a nice touch.
I was surprised that the NorthBrigde had only a simple heatsink. Intel did provide a way to mount a fan but did not provide a fan.

In all I found the DX48BT2 to be a little difficult to work with once mounted but nothing that would make it unusable by enthusiasts.

Additional images of the board layout can be found here

{mospagebreak title=BIOS}

BIOS:
The Intel BIOS leaves a lot to be desired for an “Extreme” system. There were many missing items and other items were not easy to use or understand.

All of the overclocking options can be found in the performance menu.
Here you have sections for CPU, Memory and Bus tweaking.

{mospagebreak title=Performance Applications}
Performance:
The DX48BT2 performed well running Vista x64 with 4GB of RAM. I did run into a few issues with using a 9800GTX but Intel was quick with a BIOS patch to fix this issue.

For testing I broke everything down into a three parts Subsystems (Audio, HDD performance, Memory performance etc), Application and Gaming.
While I do use some synthetic testing I tend to keep to real world (and reproducible) tests.
Games are always tested using FRAPS while playing a predetermined level. Due to the impossibility of playing a level the same way twice I run each game through three times and take the average of Minimum, Maximum and Average for the game.
Test system:
Intel Core2 Extreme QX9770
Intel DX48BT2
4GB (4x1GB) Kingston KHX13000D3LLK2 DDR3
74GB Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptor HDD
Foxconn FV-N88XMAD2-ON GeForce 8800GTX 768MB
Sony Generic 16x DVD-ROM
PC Power and Cooling 1KW PSU.
HSPC Tech Station
Corsair Nautilus 500 was used for cooling.

Subsystems:
Memory:
The DX48BT2 Supports DDR3 running at speeds of up to 1600MHz. When combined with a 1600MHz FSB CPU this improves basic performance by removing the memory bottleneck from the system.

Hard Drive:
Sporting the ICHR9 (same as the X38) the DX48BT2 has pretty good I/O bandwidth to move your data.
The only problems I ran into with the ICHR9 was when I setup RAID and during overclocking, I was not able to pin down the exact issue with RAID but it seemed to bog down when I used RAID sets larger than two drives. This left RAID 5 performance in the gutter (a problem I have seen on other Intel SATA controllers). The issue surrounding overclocking was simple. The ICHR9 was not able to keep up. The majority of my lock-ups, reboots, and BSODs during overclocking all stemmed from this controller.

Sound CODEC:
For audio the X48 uses the Intel High Definition Audio Interface, the brains of this is the IDT STAC9274D Audio codec. This supports 7.1 and 2 channel audio reproduction.  Both Analog and Digital 7.1 sound is supported on the I/O back plane.

Application:
Our application testing is a combination of synthetic and real world applications. Each one is designed to highlight different aspects of performance.

PCMark Vantage:
The DX48BT2 scores pretty well on PCMark Vantage, this is primarily due to the extra memory bandwidth and the higher FSB range.

32-Bit	64-Bit

LightWave 9.3 x64:
LightWave was a good performer on the X48, again I feel this is due to the increased memory bandwidth available from the DDR3 1600 I was using.

Cinebench R-10:
Cinebench R-10 is a synthetic render test that breaks out CPU and GPU performance, the DX48BT2 performed very well in on this test.

HyperPi 0.99b:
HyperPi scores were very good. I was surprised as HDD performance was a little under what I am used to from other boards.

Divx Encoding with AutoGK 2.4.5:
Again another solid performance by the DX48BT2 If you are going to consider this as an encoding system I would think about setting up a RAID 0 array for the destination to keep up with the memory and CPU. I felt that HDD write speeds were a bottle neck in this test.

{mospagebreak title=Performance Gaming}

Gaming:
All of our gaming tests run on the DX48BT2 were done “in-game” with maximum settings enabled. Sound was also set to 5.1 surround. I used the analog outputs to force the maximum codec usage.
Frame rates were captured using FRAPS each game was run through the same level three times with an average of these runs for the final score.

The DX48BT2 running at stock speed with DDR3-1600 and an 8800GTX was a formidable gaming system.
Even with all of the games maxed out the 8800GTX/ DX48BT2 combo did not falter. Every title we tested had Frame rates over 40 FPS. Bioshock came in over 60 and Call of Duty 4 was over 80. Settings and actual results for each game are shown below.

Min	Max	Ave
16	89	42.08

Bioshock:

Min	Max	Ave
34	119	65.967

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare:

Min	Max	Ave
52	113	84.399

Grid (Demo):

Min	Max	Ave
33	52	44.025

{mospagebreak title=Overclocking}
Overclocking:
Overclocking the DX48BT2, like any other board, was an exercise in patience. I ran into many interesting issues, from the RAM dropping down to odd dividers to issues with the ICHR9 controller.
In the end I was able to pull out a decent overclock at 440×10 for a 4.4GHz OC this was (unfortunately) at 1.5v so it would not be something you would run 24/7, even though it was fairly stable. Memory was set to run at 880MHz timings were set to 8-8-8-22 at 1.98v.
Interestingly enough CPU temps stayed around 50c. The NorthBridge became hot very quickly, I would recommend getting a fan for this if you plan to OC the DX48BT2, or even better get water cooling.

{mospagebreak title=Value}
Value:
Price :
The DX48BT2, as part of the extreme series, does not carry an extreme price. With a price tag of around $250 the DX48BT2 from Intel was one of the more moderately priced x48 offerings I was able to find on the internet.

Warranty:
I had a tough time finding out exactly how long the warranty is on the DX48BT2. I checked Intel’s site and found that it could be one or three years but nothing to tell me which. In the end I contacted them and asked directly. Intel responded the same day and explained to me that all Intel Desktop boards have a three year warranty if purchased from an Intel Distributor and One year if purchased OEM.

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
After using the DX48BT2 for a few days I felt that it was more stable than the X38 boards I have used even with the IHCR9 issues that I encountered. It did not OC as well as I would have liked, but that may have been due to the CPU I was using (Quads still do not OC very well). The lack of an included fan for the Northbridge was also a minus for this board. I was not fond of the layout and it presented me with problems when I went to setup the board (with my configuration). However, even with these issues stock performance was great. I had no problems running any of the apps I wanted to throw at the DX48BT2. Gaming was smooth and responsive, once the issue with the 8800 and 9800GTXs were resolved by the techs at Intel.  Sound was crisp for an onboard Codec and did not seem to hinder gaming performance. Heat was an issue though, as I mentioned the Northbridge gets very hot, and Intel did not provide a in the box, I would recommend that you go and grab one even if you have no plans to overclock. I can recommend the X48 for users looking to upgrade to DDR3 from older DDR2 systems but, with the X58 and P45 around the corner it might be best to sit tight and wait to see what the gang at Intel will have in a couple of months.