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By Kelly Lu (kellylu@onepc.net) - August 20, 2001

Infobox

What? WT70-EC Who? DFI Inc. Home Page How much? ~$125 USD (Pricewatch - average)

For the fourth part of our Road to the Pentium 4 series of reviews, OnePC.NET brings you the DFI WT70-EC motherboard. Since DFI has never really made any breakthroughs in the enthusiast's community, many of you might not have even heard of them. It certainly was surprising, then, when I found out that they are actually one of the world's top 10 motherboard makers! After working with their WT70-EC Pentium 4 motherboard, which is, at about $150 USD on Pricewatch (average price), one of the cheapest Pentium 4 motherboards around, I realized that they are very capable of producing some decent, although not breakthrough, products.

Before I continue, let me just brush up on what the purpose of our Road to the Pentium 4 series of reviews aims to do: to educate you on the technical aspects of the Pentium 4 processor, to give you an idea of the products required to set up a Pentium 4-based system and to give you an idea of what to expect, performance-wise, of the Pentium 4 processor. If you have not read any of our previous parts of this series, I suggest you do--especially the first part.

Specifications

Chipset Intel 850/ICH2 CPU Socket Socket 423 Intel Pentium 4 processor (Supports 400MHz system data bus) Memory 4 x RIMM sockets max. 2GB Support PC600 or PC800 RDRAM and ECC PCI IDE PIO mode 4 EIDE channels up to 4 IDE devices UltraDMA/100 transfer rate up to 100MB/sec Super I/O 2 x NS16C550A compatible UARTs 1 x SPP/ECP/EPP parallel port External Connectors 2 x USB, 2 x DB-9, 1 x DB-25, 1 x PS/2 keyboard, 1 x PS/2 mouse, 1 x game/MIDI, 3 x Audio jacks Internal Connectors 1 x connector for 2 additional external USB 1x IrDA 2 x IDE 1x Floppy 3 x ATX power 2 x fan 1 x WOR 1 x opened chassis alarm 3 x internal audio connectors

Power Management ACPI and OS direct power management Wake-on event: RTC/USB Keyboard/Modem/LAN/Keyboard/Mouse Hardware Monitor System, processor temperature, voltage and fan speed Expansion Slots 1 AGP slot (Supports 1.5V AGP 4x) 5 PCI slots 1 CNR slot Audio On Board AC`97 Audio codec Other features ATX 12V power design on board to supports future CPU speed beyond 1.5GHz BIOS Award / 4Mbit Form Factors ATX, 6 layers 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm 12.05 inch. x 9.6 inch.

The DFI WT70-EC utilizes the Intel 850 chipset, along with a Socket 423 to provide support for the first "wave" of Pentium 4's that are on the market today and not any of the newer Socket 478 mini-PGA Pentium 4's that Intel is planning to release on August 27, 2001. Thus, when the newer Pentium 4's arrive, users of the WT70-EC and other Socket 423 motherboards can only use the older Socket 423 Pentium 4's, which will go to a speed of 2.0GHz only. This is a shame, but cannot be blamed on any of the motherboard manufacturers such as DFI.

As mentioned in the first part of this series, the i850 chipset is the only chipset available as of this moment for the Pentium 4 and utilizes only the more expensive RDRAM and only in pairs, because of its dual-channel memory controller design. Through the chipset, the WT70-EC supports up to 2GB of PC600 or PC800 RDRAM with its 4 RIMM sockets. It also supports ECC RDRAM for those mission-critical applications. This portion of the specification seems to be normal for all Pentium 4 boards.

Through the i850 chipset, the WT70-EC supports all types of consumer AGP cards found today with its AGP 4X slot. The WT70-EC also supports 1.5V AGP 4X cards, but there are very few, if any, consumer-level cards that utilize the extra power that the 1.5V AGP 4X provides.

The i850 chipset is also utilizing Intel's Hub architecture, which is explained in-depth in one of our other reviews here. Through the Hub architecture, the i850 is using the same ICH2 as their Pentium III/Celeron counterparts, the i820E, i815E and the i810E. Therefore, the i850 provides the WT70-EC with support for ATA-100, dual-controller USB, CNR as well as built-in AC97 audio much like all other motherboards based on the ICH2 does. The AC97 audio that is built-into the WT70-EC which is good for casual users, but, when it comes to a system as powerful as a Pentium 4, it would simply go to waste since most users would opt for a better sound card such as the SoundBlaster Live! Platinum 5.1.

Specification-wise, the WT70-EC seems to quite average between all the other Pentium 4 motherboards.

For those of you with smaller cases, you'll be disappointed to find that the DFI WT70-EC is unnecessarily huge. I say unnecessarily because of the appearance on the top layer of the board that there seems to be a lot of wasted space on the PCB, especially in the lower-front region and the area around the CPU. Other than not being able to fit into certain smaller cases,--our AMK 18" LED had no trouble with it--the larger PCB size should not be too much of a problem for the majority of the people.

For support for the Pentium 4, the WT70-EC bears the i850 chipset along with a Socket 423 socket for the actual CPU. The i850 is located under a large, black heatsink, which is apparent that there is a thermal pad to provide for better heat transfer. Many people, however, would prefer to use thermal paste instead of thermal pad, but, nevertheless, it's quite clear that the thermal pad can still do its job. The CPU connector is of the usual ZIF-type, except for the new heatsink retention clips that are built around the socket. DFI opted to use the newer and easier to use built-in clips that many other motherboard manufacturers have also taken the liberty of implementing instead of the more complicated Intel reference design. For installation into a Pentium 4 motherboard, these clips should be screwed directly into the appropriate holes in the back plate of the case, but if you don't have a Pentium 4 case, it is also fine just to leave them as-is.

If you read my review of the Thermaltake Indigo Orb review, you'll recall that these are the exact same clips that prevented the Orb from being installed onto this motherboard, as well as other motherboards such as the Abit TH7. This problem can only be blamed on the Indigo Orb, since almost all other Pentium 4 heatsinks have had no reported problems with these clips.

The design of the PCB seemed to be pretty standard when it comes to an ATX motherboard. There are 5 PCI expansion slots, which seems to be pretty standard these days, an AGP 4X slot, which also supports 1.5V AGP 4X cards, and a CNR slot, for those seldom-seen CNR cards. Because of the Pentium 4's ATX 2.02 specification requirement, the WT70-EC carries 3 ATX power connectors instead of the usual 1 found on all other non-Pentium 4 ATX motherboards. The standard ATX connector and the extra AT-style power connector are located together near the front of the motherboard, sandwiching the 4 RIMM slots in between the CPU Socket. Having these connectors on the "other" side of the memory slots might pose a problem for cooling, since the power cables have to be pulled across the CPU and memory, which prevents some air circulation, but it shouldn't be too big of a problem. The third, smaller ATX connector is located near the middle-back of the board, way out of the way of major components.

There are also IDE and Floppy disk connectors beside the memory connectors, near the middle-front of the board. The IDE connectors, care of the i850's ICH2, are capable of running up to ATA-100 specification. Finally, the WT70-EC carries 3 fan headers, the CPU connector being right beside the CPU connector along the top edge of the board, and the two other case fan headers along the front and bottom edge of the board. My only complaint with these connectors is that one of the case fan headers are not labeled; although, all three fan connectors have the same red color, this could still be a little confusing.

The rear end of the WT70-EC brings us the standard ATX connectors, with 2 USB ports, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports and 2 serial and 1 parallel port as well as the standard audio jacks and game port that the AC97 codec on the motherboard utilizes for its audio.

The WT70-EC also supports the connection of a seperate USB daughter board to provide extra USB ports on top of the 2 at the rear end of the motherboard. Unfortunately, DFI did not include the necessary accessories to add these ports.

One part that I especially like with this board are the case connectors at the bottom front of the WT70-EC. Usually, these connectors (for case power, case LED, hard drive LED, etc.) would be clumped up into two rows with teeny-tiny labels that can never be seen at first glance. With the WT70-EC, DFI took these connectors and placed them in a neat row, bent down sideways, with large clear labels printed onto a big open area of the PCB (care of the aforementioned "unnecessarily large PCB"). This makes putting together a computer with this motherboard much easier.

To further simplify the installation of these case connectors, DFI went another step forward by actually including a PC speaker right onto the motherboard! This saves the user the effort of installing one of their own--of course, one can still do so if they wish.

Aside from the actual motherboard, the WT70-EC comes with an 80-conductor, 40-pin IDE cable, a floppy cable, 2 continuity RIMM's, which leaves the other 2 on the motherboard for your own memory, a driver CD and a manual. There's nothing to comment on these accessories, except for the manual, which I found to be quite lacking in detail. I'm sure there are bound to be quite a few people who will find the information in the manual to be inadequate, especially when it comes to the Pentium 4-specific installation instructions.

Powering Up
There does not seem to be anything very special about the BIOS of the WT70-EC. It has the usual configuration settings such as Power Management and PC Health monitoring, as well as some RDRAM-specific settings such as memory speed and the option of turning on or off ECC support. My only complaint is the BIOS's complete lack of CPU settings. Overclockers, if you're looking to overclock your Pentium 4 processor, I can already tell you that the WT70-EC is not for you. The BIOS has only a multiplier setting, which is actually locked on the CPU itself. Plus, since this is a jumper-free motherboard, like most other boards around today, users will not be able to run their Pentium 4 processor other than its specified speed.

Stability-wise, the WT70-EC is your average Joe. After running loops of Unreal Tournament with the most stable components available in our test lab, the WT70-EC locked up after about 14 hours, which is not bad at all.

Finally, since I already mentioned that I will include benchmarks in the final part of this series, I decided not to include them here. In a qualitative perspective, I can tell you that the WT70-EC exhibited no extremities when it comes to performance, meaning that it performed as it should perform.

Being the first Pentium 4 motherboard that I've reviewed, the WT70-EC by DFI seems to be a minimum as to what a Pentium 4 motherboard should be. Although it does not have any fancy features such as built-in 6-channel 3D audio or RAID, the WT70-EC is still a solid motherboard with no apparent operational problems and with average stability. Still, overclockers will be disappointed to know that the WT70-EC lacks any means of changing the CPU speed-something that should not be of a concern for most casual users, however. Although there does seem to be a lot of wasted space on the PCB of the motherboard, some of that space is put to good use, such as placing larger labels for the ATX case button/LED connectors, which makes the job of putting together a system much easier. In conclusion, the WT70-EC is a decent choice for users who wish to get started on the Pentium 4 platform--especially with a low price of only $150 USD.

Pros Support for the Pentium 4 processor Good case LED/button connector labels CPU heatsink retention mechanism; newer type for easier installation of "most" heatsinks. Low price Built-in PC speaker Cons Board is unnecessarily too large; components seem to be too spaced out (-0.5) Complete lack of CPU frequency and voltage control (-1.5)

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