ASUS A7N8X nForce2 Mainboard Review (8)
Overclocker 27 Oct 2002

Overclocking*

As requested by users, we have included this section for this particular review on overclocking. Before that, I want to thank my friend Jason for giving me permission to void the warranty and meddle with his newly bought Tbred 2400+.

Ok. The unlocking procedure has already been discussed in the forums and other sites so I won't go into too much details here. Two ways you can uncover the lower multipliers, one is to connect the the last bridge on L3, secondly you can short the Vcc and NC pins beneath the processor.

As I know you crazy people out there wants to max out the FSB, so we decided to use our Corsair XMS3500 C2 stick 1x512M for this overclocking test.

The first thing we did as requested is to run it in SYNC mode (as suggested by nVIDIA, we already know running Async is slower other than VIA KT333 which is "designed" to do that well) and fixing the AGP clk to 66Mhz. Next we set the ram timings to CAS 2, 2-2-5 since Corsair XMS3500 should be able to take this.

We went ahead and chose the lowest multiplier 6.5x and FSB of 200Mhz. Yes it POST, SuperPI ran well at the same score of 1min6secs. Next we increase the FSB to the other available selections 204, 207, 211, at CAS 2,2-3-5, everything seems ok and they include SuperPI, Quake3, SIsoft Sandra. They went through but the system doesn't seem too stable.

We decided to lower the FSB to the next highest which is 207Mhz FSB x 6.5 = 1340XP

Here are the results :

Quake 3 Demo001 (1024x768x32) : 233.2fps

SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmark : 3011 / 2585

SuperPI  : 1 min 6 secs

Comanche 4 demo : 38.64fps

CodeCreatures BenchmarkPro : 24.1 fps

3DMark2001 : 11211

* overclocking a system voids warranty. To maximise FSB by lowering the multiplier, you would probably end up with similar scores except for a better reading on Sisoft Sandra Memory Benchmarks. Stability is also compromised. In our tests, we assure maximum overclockability by lowering the multiplier and use aggressive ram timings for max FSB. It might be possible to attain stability at 211Mhz if you would lower the ram timings to CAS 3. 4-4-8 or so. Unless you o/c without changing multiplier, this Tbred can reach 145Mhz easily.

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