1. What warranty/support do you get with this board from OcUK, as my previous DFI/Asus RMAs with OcUK have been a PITA ?
The RMA is with OcUK, as the agents for J&W. I had to RMA my P35 board and the replacement came back within a week.
2. How often are there bios updates from J&A ? What is the method for updating the bios, hopefully not floppy/windows, does it support USB stick ?
There has already been one BIOS update, but if you look at the P35 thread you will see that they reacted within a week to the initial criticism, so I think the answer to that is that BIOS updates come out very quicly after issues are raised. J&W are represented on here by Ken Wong (kenofstephen) who is their Product Marketing Manager, and he has direct access to the Techies and if you ask him a question you usually get an answer back very quickly indeed. As far as I know, none of the other motherboard manufacturers offer the kind of support Ken does on here, and if they do have a representative, they're not dedicated to the UK market in the way that Ken is.
As regards updates, the board will boot from a USB stick formatted as a DOS drive
a la Abit, or they offer a windows or DOS based flash utility. The board features a very neat dual BIOS where, if you mess up the BIOS flash, you move a jumper on the board and the system boots from the previous BIOS, which is then automatically flashed across to the original BIOS chip, allowing you to try again. The primary BIOS chip is also socketed, rather than soldered.
The external CMOS reset switch is also much neater than the DFI's hold down the reset, then hold down the reset and power together, then release the reset button method of resetting the CMOS.
3. What do you think this board offer over the Rampage/LT X48-T2R as they are similar prices ?
I can't talk about the Rampage, as I haven't got one, but I do have an LT X48-T2R and it's a fabulous board, but the extra options in the BIOS actually make it quite harder to overclock safely. Some of the options in there will quite happily fry a 45nm CPU if the user doesn't know what (s)he's doing. J&W have colour coded their BIOS options red/yellow/green for dangerous/risky/safe. That may or may not be something that concerns you, but for novice overclockers with 45nm CPUs, I think it's useful. The other issue with the DFI is the heat generated by the Northbridge. Although DFI supply a 'Thermalright designed' northbridge cooler, the Northbridge and PWM run very hot indeed. I actually have mine water-cooled to get it stable at big overclocks. The design of the chipset cooling on the J&W looks daft, I'll grant you, but it's much more effective than the DFI cooler.
