Squeezing More Out of the 650i SLI Chipset: Asus P5N-E SLI Motherboard Review- Page 3/5
April 27, 2007
By
Thomas Soderstrom
BIOS and Overclocking
Asus' overclock settings are spread across many submenus, so rather than provide several pages of near-empty photos, a description is probably easier. The automated AI Overclocking feature provides simple settings of 5-20 percent CPU overclock in 5 percent increments, but what's really interesting is what one can do manually.
PCI Express can be set from 100-131MHz, but higher settings rarely yield a noticeable increase in performance. More importantly, the CPU FSB data rate can be set from 533-3000MHz, corresponding to FSB clock rates of 133-750MHz. The best anyone typically hopes to reach is 500MHz, so Asus provides plenty of room for people to try advanced overclocking methods to achieve new records.
Memory data rate can also be set from 400-2600MHz, corresponding to clock speeds of 200-13000MHz, which is about twice as far as the best overclocking memory can run. Like most nVidia chipsets, the memory bus can be unlocked from the FSB to run a semi-independent speed (within a few MHz of the desired speed) or set to a fixed ratio to CPU FSB. Though "SLI Memory" (also known as "EPP," or Enhanced Performance Profiles) are officially unsupported by nVidia for this chipset, Asus saw fit to make this automatic "best overclock setting" detection method work for its P5N-E SLI motherboard.
CPU core voltage can be adjusted from 0.83125V to 1.60000V in ultra-fine 0.00625V increments, memory voltage from 1.920V to 2.517V in nine haphazard steps, and Northbridge voltage from 1.208V to 1.745V in four relatively random steps. Asus even allows a VCore offset voltage adjustment, though its only options are "auto" or "+100mv". A final treat to for serial overclockers, Asus allows two favorite settings to be stored as overclocking profiles in its Asus O.C. Profile menu.
These settings are all well and good, and offer exceptional range for pushing parts beyond their limits, but what did these do for us when put to the test?
Your eyes aren't fooling you. It's a bit hard to type with my jaw lying on the keyboard, but this is simply an awesome overclock given the problems we've had with this particular CPU in the past. Certainly, several of our readers have reached these speeds easily using better core revisions, but our ancient pre-retail S5 B1 stepping has rarely seen the high side of 3GHz!
Also, consider that this overclock was achieved using nothing more than the Cooler Master Hyper TX air cooler and a relatively-conservative 1.45V core, and the speed shown is actually the stable speed at which our system was able to complete every benchmark!
The maximum speed for loading Windows actually reached FSB1988, but there's no reason to brag about higher speeds if they aren't perfectly stable.
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