Anandtech reviews DFI LanParty UT P35-T2R motherboard
The last three months have seen the overclocking enthusiast sector bombarded with motherboards based around the Intel Bearlake (P35) chipset. While it has become an expectation for many to see boards from the main players up front and ready to go at product launch, early adopters have naturally expected DFI to be fashionably late to the ball with their own LANParty series offering. In terms of business, the enthusiast sector is an area of the retail market where being late does not earn the "money shot"; vital sales are lost in delays, no matter how good the product is - the delay is costly. So costly that many of the leading players in the once hot AMD S939 sector such as DFI, abit, MSI, Albatron, Chaintech, Shuttle, and EPoX have seen their market shares dwindle (sometimes drastically to the point of not being around anymore) since the introduction of the Core 2 Duo from Intel and the resulting market switch by the enthusiasts to the blue camp.
This time around DFI managed a reduced delay period of two months behind the official Intel Bearlake chipset rollout, greeted by applause from most tweakers who have been awaiting a killer product from the company since the "glorious" NF4 era. We thought the RD600 would fill that role last year, but it came up short in performance even though the BIOS options foretold the future about DFI's BIOS designs on Intel product. DFI managed to hit a home run with the Infinity 965-S Dark. Unfortunately, everyone had left the P965 ballpark to watch the P35 play in a new stadium by that time. Hopefully, their X38 product will be released in the coming weeks but until then (probably afterwards also based on early numbers), we think most people will be more than satisfied with the UT P35-T2R - provided you can afford it and do not have a need for multi-GPU benchmarking...
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