Extremely Intel X48

My older computer finally bit the dust, and I'd upgraded this weekend. This board (DX48BT2) was the motherboard I selected as I'd also wanted to try out DDR3 memory.

First thing I'd done is upgrade the BIOS. Several of the reviews that had not liked the board as much, primarily quibbled over the 1521 BIOS that shipped with the board. Now I'm using it with the 1554 version of the BIOS and in my short term testing has been very stable.

I'm pretty happy with it thus far!

Just now noticed I need to update my sig! My AMD X2 3800+ doesn't run on that iron. :)
 
rickcfer said:
Has this review been scrapped? I'm curious if you tried playing with the UEFI option.
Click to expand...

I would like to also know the status of this review. I can understand if you can't review every product that gets thrown at you, but to tease us is just downright inhumane :p
 
If they do the review right, they'll download and use the new 1554 BIOS (5/2008 release). As there are extensive tests to truely evaluate, this could be adding to the time.

Xbit labs and others had released reviews, some of which are not favorable, but in the conclusion noted it was the BIOS they had complaints about and not so much the board itself. If HardOCP reviews with the newer BIOS, they'll also need to show reasons why they "may" be showing it in a better light. Takes time to do it right.

However, I can give an informal review and my findings if you'd like. However, other than a forum user that's the length of my reviewing clout.

I've been using it for about 5 days now and am pretty pleased. However, it takes time to discover the tweaks and issues. Let's just say that the WAF improved when I resetup my system with this board and have for the first time a real stable Vista SP1 64bit edition Home Premium setup. I'd performed clean installs several times with my previous AMD x2 3800+ solution in combination with an MSI K8N Platinum SLI, but I couldn't get it solid under Vista SP1 64bit. Random stuff all the time.

In any cause the spouse approved a whole new setup to get better performance and hopefully resolve the stability issues for good. Granted, perhaps a patch Tuesday fixed it all and it's not related to the new build, but I'm doubting that.
 
For those wondering about UEFI boot option, I have a Gateway GT5628 with an Intel DG33SXG2 motherboard and it has that option in its BIOS. I've had it enabled for some time now and it's made no difference whatsoever in the ability to install Windows for me. I think all that option does is tell the BIOS to look for a EFI module to boot from before it does the standard MBR or El Torito boot sequences. Hope that sheds some light on the topic.

I am doing some GPT stuff on a spare hard drive and seeing if I can get my copy of Server 2008 installed on it. Since booting from a GPT drive requires an EFI system, hopefullly that UEFI option will work for what I'm trying.
 
Here's a great site to provide information about UEFI :)

http://www.uefi.org/about/

Here's a Microsoft Brief and the relationship to Vista:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/efibrief.mspx

Essentially from what I understand, it's a new extensible firmware interface that is not yet utilized beyond the EFI 1.10 specification by anything outside of Windows Server 2008. Microsoft, back in 2006 that is, is talking about supporting UEFI in a future Vista release. Does that mean a future service pack, or the next version of Windows? Time will only tell.

So it's a new feature that really isn't utilized yet. I've enabled it and it's not causing problems, it's just not being utilized at this time.
 
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