Intel DX38BT/DX48BT2 (Bone Trail)

[TQ]

Originally Posted by Sandog

Yes the board has been discontinued but support will be ongoing for a while. The board has very stable drivers and BIOS after almost 2yrs.

Except for the last BIOS I'd agree. I'm still regretting installing 2836 on my system and hope Intel releases a new, improved BIOS soon.

[Sandog]

I haven't installed the last BIOS, what is it doing wrong?

[TQ]

See post 3524 on this page...

[Sandog]

I had a problem in Explorer where cutting/pasting a file caused Explorer to crash with a memory error. Checked out the memory settings (good.) Ended up uninstalling FireFox from the day before and I still have the issue. Strange.

[ATINUT]

I'm glad I didn't update to the latest bios for my board then, cause I would be having problems now. My board is staying at bios 2831.

[TQ]

Originally Posted by Sandog

I had a problem in Explorer where cutting/pasting a file caused Explorer to crash with a memory error. Checked out the memory settings (good.) Ended up uninstalling FireFox from the day before and I still have the issue. Strange.

That's exactly the kind of weird stuff that's been happening on my BX2 since I installed BIOS 2836.

[Sandog]

I am pretty sure I haven't installed the latest BIOS, I will have to check later. All I care about now is when is the DP45SG board coming out lol.

[Scarpia]

Hi there,

As a very satisfied user of the BX2 I was planning to use another Intel mainboard for my pending upgrade to a Q9550 in a DX48BT2 with 4Gb DD3. However, having read a number of unenthusiastic and luke warm reviews for the DX48BT2 I'm beginning to have doubts about it. This thread seems equally discouraging, particularly about the stability of this board. I would have hoped that by now Intel would have sorted out the teething problems of the Bonetrail.

I'd welcome comments.

Thanks for your attention.

[Sandog]

I have not owned one but came close. I have read it is a very stable board at defaults and everyone who didn't OC was pleased. It should be able to at least OC to 400FSB though. It is a good board and a very good chipset. The board has been out a year and is up to rev. 207 I believe.

[Scarpia]

Thanks for the reply Sandog. I've been out of the loop for a while as my BX2 has been running at 3.2 Ghz at default voltages for ages without even a minor hiccup. I've been thinking of upgrading as I occasionally play with Flight Simulator X with very high settings. This brings my current set up to it's knees. My GFX is a very serviceable 8800GTX and FSX is very processor dependant. Hence my proposed upgrade to a Q9550 and the DX48BT2. Although I'm by no means an enthusiastic overclocker, I had hoped to run the Q9550 at around 4Ghz. From my reading this should be achievable without water or daft cooling systems.

As far as I can tell, there are no X48 chipset boards that are completely bug free, but it does seem that the Intel board has more problems than most.

Not being a bling fan and based on experience I feel slightly reluctant to go for an Asus, MSI type board. Abit's gone bust and the Foxconn board has got some lousy reviews. Given that most of these reviews are written by fans rather than critics, this is very discouraging. I was hoping to get the grief of rebuilding my system and moving to Vista 64 well before God's birthday celebrations this year.

Thanks again for your reply and your continued enthusiasm which has kept this and the BX2 threads lively and informative for so long.

[falcon26]

Anyone having trouble with the new intel matrix 32 bit floppy drivers? My system has been rock solid, then I formatted and used the new matrix drivers and now when I play any game, after about 5-10 minutes my system reboots. And I know its not the video drivers because with the older matrix drivers my system was fine. The game in question is BF2. Anyone else have this problem? I'm using an Ati 4870, and I tired the 8.9 and the 8.10 and the 8.10 hotfix drivers they all do it.

[traveler]

Originally Posted by Scarpia

Thanks for the reply Sandog. I've been out of the loop for a while as my BX2 has been running at 3.2 Ghz at default voltages for ages without even a minor hiccup. I've been thinking of upgrading as I occasionally play with Flight Simulator X with very high settings. This brings my current set up to it's knees. My GFX is a very serviceable 8800GTX and FSX is very processor dependant. Hence my proposed upgrade to a Q9550 and the DX48BT2. Although I'm by no means an enthusiastic overclocker, I had hoped to run the Q9550 at around 4Ghz. From my reading this should be achievable without water or daft cooling systems.

As far as I can tell, there are no X48 chipset boards that are completely bug free, but it does seem that the Intel board has more problems than most.

Not being a bling fan and based on experience I feel slightly reluctant to go for an Asus, MSI type board. Abit's gone bust and the Foxconn board has got some lousy reviews. Given that most of these reviews are written by fans rather than critics, this is very discouraging. I was hoping to get the grief of rebuilding my system and moving to Vista 64 well before God's birthday celebrations this year.

Thanks again for your reply and your continued enthusiasm which has kept this and the BX2 threads lively and informative for so long.

Hey Scarpia! Good to see you posting!

My X48 Rampage Formula is running great. Flight Simulator X has all settings maxed and/or at high and runs great. ATM it's OCed to 3.2 on air and I have plans to go to 3.4 when I have some more time to play with the settings. Tons of settings in the Rampage Formula BIOS BTW. One day I might water cool it but it's good now.

Read the Rampage Formula threads and see what you think.

Intel on the other hand does NOT really want the owners of their MBs to OC. They want you to buy a more expensive CPU.



__________________
Asus X48 Rampage Formula / Intel Q9450 2.66 @ 3.2 / 2 x 2GB OCZ Reaper HPC PC2 8500 / VisionTek Radeon HD3870X2 OverClocked Edition /
Western Digital Raptor X Hard Drive / Two Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5001ABYS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives /
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 / Creative Gigaworks S750 7.1 Speaker System /
Lian Li 343B cube case / PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Crossfire Edition

[Scarpia]

Thanks for the warm greetings traveler. As I mentioned in my earlier post I'm by no means an enthusiast computer user. I build my own simply because I am a bit of a control freak and don't relish the idea of being dependent on retail "engineers" to keep my system running. Having now spent four whole evenings reading reviews and user forums I've decided I've had enough for now and have resolved to delay my upgrade until the i7 CPU and mainboards have been released and in use for a while.

I recently added Flight Environment X Europe, London City X and a weather programe to FSX. Before the weather and sky add on I could divebomb orphanages, churches, etc., with ease in FSX at high settings at 1920x1200, now if I try to take off from London City in my add on ME109 my framerates drop to between 5 and 11fps. However, my son's games which include Crisis and Far Cry2 run perfectly maxed out. The most satisfying aspect of the BX2 is that I have'nt open my case for over a year and I can't remember when I last suffered a crash. I stopped bothering about monitoring my temps etc., ages ago. I was hoping to reproduce this happy situation with an upgrade but on my reading of the current state of play with the X48 boards, this would involve too much hassle for me as I'm not too interested in the fascinating art of trial and error with my settings.

I did consider the other recent Intel mobo that Sandog has, but reading that thread is as discouraging to me as this one has been. So for now, I'm going to be a little less ambitious with my FSX settings until earlyish next year. In the meantime I may add another 24" screen to my setup and lurk on these and similar threads to see when the time is right for me to yank my box from under my desk and to begin another game of electronic Lego of upgrading.

Not being an enthusiast myself, I learn a great deal from these enthusiasts threads. If computer hardware is able to survive the efforts of enthusiasts to improve on its original design, then to me thats a strong selling point.

[traveler]

I wish you well on the long wait. I know; I waited for X48 for my upgrade from my P4P800.

I know what you mean about the retail off-the-shelf computers. Besides, it is more fun to build.

Regarding the Rampage Extreme, mine ran well for me when all BIOS settings were at default stock and set to auto. So there was no hit and miss or trial and error here. Then when I OCed it, I only changed 4 or 5 straight forward settings in the BIOS to acheive the overclock. Very simple and easy. So I have no idea what you were reading. BTW I will be cranking the overclock up even more. This board has not yet even approached the maximum settings.

The new boards do run hotter than the old generation so one does need to be careful setting up fans and cooling. I imagine the next generation will be even hotter and will still need good cooling.

Q9550 ... nice chioce for a processer.

Good luck on the wait.



__________________
Asus X48 Rampage Formula / Intel Q9450 2.66 @ 3.2 / 2 x 2GB OCZ Reaper HPC PC2 8500 / VisionTek Radeon HD3870X2 OverClocked Edition /
Western Digital Raptor X Hard Drive / Two Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5001ABYS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives /
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 / Creative Gigaworks S750 7.1 Speaker System /
Lian Li 343B cube case / PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Crossfire Edition

[falcon26]

Since installing the new Intel Matrix Driver on a fresh install of windows Xp my computer after playing a game for 5 minutes or an hour sometimes will reboot. The minidump file says something about "Iastor.sys" error. What the heck does that mean? I'm assuming that the new driver is not as good as the old one since the old one never rebooted my system. This driver is loaded when I hit F6 on a fresh install I think it loads the AHCI driver. Has this problem happen to anyone else using the intel matrix thing?