865PE/875P Motherboard Roundup June 2003 - Part 1: 20-way Shootout

DFI PRO875: Basic Features

A nice touch to the PRO875 is its HighPoint HPT372 controller for onboard IDE RAID, capable of RAID 0, 1, and 0 + 1 support. This ATA133 complaint controller is capable of supporting up to two IDE drives via the two orange IDE connectors located at the bottom of the motherboard. In combination with the Primary and Secondary IDE connectors, two Serial ATA connectors, and the two HighPoint RAID connectors the PRO875 is capable of supporting up to a total of ten IDE drives.

What truly separates the PRO875 from most other P4 motherboards is its bundle of accessories. The most interesting accessory included with the PRO875 is the PC Transpo, which is essentially a light backpack for carrying your tower around, mostly to LAN parties (hence the reason DFI is marketing the PRO875 as a "LAN Party" motherboard). This backpack is a very nice feature to have if you're someone who travels a lot and doesn't want to sacrifice any performance like you would have to by carrying a laptop around. This is truer for gamers more than any other audience, especially when you consider the fact that there isn't a single laptop in existence that is powered by a DX9 GPU. Of course, if you're not really a hardcore gamer and can't stand lugging around your tower in a backpack, the PC Transpo probably isn't for you.
Another accessory included with the PRO875 is a FrontX panel which includes two USB 2.0 ports and two audio ports for sound. DFI also includes a two-port USB 2.0 bracket to round out the eight possible USB 2.0 ports you can use with the PRO875. FrontX is an excellent addition to the PRO875's accessory package as it is convenient for those that don't like to hook up their USB and/or audio devices to the back of their tower.

Another interesting "feature" the PRO875 brings to the table is its UV sensitive components, such as the PCI slots and IDE connectors. Install this motherboard into a good see-through computer case and place a black light inside and you've got a glow-in-the-dark machine lighting up your room. This glow-in-the-dark feature is especially handy if you're afraid of the dark.

The most notable BIOS options the PRO875 contains is Vcore, which is available up to 1.85V in 0.050V increments. Though the increments in which you are able to adjust Vcore aren't as fine as most motherboard's BIOSes (usually 0.0250V, sometimes lower), 1.85V is still an excellent Vcore maximum for this type of motherboard. It doesn't matter that the PRO875 undervolts to 1.48V or so with the 2.4C processor we used, as you'll still be able to get well over 1.80V anyway. This high of a Vcore is not at all necessary unless you're simply going for an overclocking/performance record in 3DMark or something like that, so we suggest you stray no higher than a 1.70V maximum if you want to push your CPU and motherboard to the limit without scrapping them within a matter or weeks or a couple of months.

There are only a few negative things worth pointing out about the PRO875. Firstly the odd positioning of the Floppy connector will cause problems for users that intend to use the onboard IDE RAID. Reducing case clutter will be difficult with a Floppy drive installed along with any drives attached to the IDE RAID connectors at the bottom of the PCB. It would have been nice to have added some IEEE 1394 FireWire to the mix as well, but since USB is much more widely used (even among enthusiasts and gamers) we can understand DFI's decision. Only a niche segment of the market will be disappointed that the PRO875 lacks any PCI FireWire.