|
Overclocking
Now
let's break some rules and see how fast this CPU will really go!
With a multiplier of 15x, I really didn't expect to see much of an
increase in bus speeds, however the ABIT AA8 DuraMAX has THE BEST bios
and bios settings that I have ever seen in a motherboard. The bios
allows the user to hard lock the bus speeds of the PCIE, DDR2, and PCI
bus. By hard locking the other bus speeds, this allows the user to
isolate the speed of the CPU and overclock without harming other
hardware. Overclocking has never been so easy!
Within just a few minutes, I was able to find the highest stable CPU bus
speed; 250MHz! This comes out to about 3.76GHz! The amazing thing is the
CPU is more stable at default voltage. I was able to go as high
as 3.9GHz, but the system was unstable in games and kept crashing during
benchmarks. I bet a little water cooling from Danger Den or Swiftech
would fix that... Anyway, for this round of tests I'll be running at
3.76GHz.
CPU Arithmetic
Benchmark
CPU Multi-Media
Benchmark
Memory Bandwidth
Benchmark
The
Sandra benchmark scores are very impressive! Let's see how the games
look...
-----------------------------------------------------------
Doom3
800x600 Average frame
rate=35.6fps
1024x768 Average frame rate=24.5fps
-----------------------------------------------------------
Halo: Combat Evolved
800x600 Average frame
rate=41.82fps
1024x768 Average frame rate=34.63fps
-----------------------------------------------------------
Painkiller
800x600 Average frame
rate=128.36fps
1024x768 Average frame rate=11.61fps
-----------------------------------------------------------
Quake III Arena
Demo name: four.dm_67
800x600 3.2 seconds: 440.4
fps
1024x768 3.9 seconds: 338.6 fps
-----------------------------------------------------------
3DMark01SE
1024 x 768: 14844 3DMarks
-----------------------------------------------------------
3DMark03
800 x 600 5663 3DMarks
1024 x 768 4270 3DMarks
-----------------------------------------------------------
With older games like Quake III, the faster CPU made a huge difference,
but with new games like Halo and Doom3 that rely almost purely on the
video card, the faster CPU made almost no difference at all.
Conclusion
The
3.0GHz LGA775 processor is definitely going into the Overclocking Hall
Of Fame, right along side with such classics at the Celeron 266 and the
P4 2.4C. This CPU is impressive all the way around, but don't expect
results like this on just any LGA775 motherboard. The ABIT AA8 DuraMAX
is a very special motherboard that is also destined to be one of the all
time greats. And let's not forget the
Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC2-5300 memory that made this all possible.
Club Overclocker
Recommended!
LGA775 Processors are
available at Computer Geeks!
|
Club
Overclocker Rating |
|
Innovation: |
9.5
out of 10 |
|
Performance: |
10 out of 10 |
|
Quality: |
10 out of 10 |
|
Stability: |
10 out of 10 |
|
Overclocking: |
10 out of 10 |
|
Software Pack: |
N/A |
|
Value: |
10 out of 10 |
|
Overall Rating 10 |
|
|
|
|
Skill Level |
|
Project Skill Level
(10 being hardest) |
4 out of 10 |
|
