Socket 939 Roundup: Battle at the Top
by Wesley Fink on July 30, 2004 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Asus A8V Deluxe: Overclocking and Stress Testing
FSB Overclocking Results
| Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed | ||
| Processor: | Athlon 64 FX53 Socket 939 2.4GHz |
|
| CPU Voltage: | 1.5V (default) | |
| Cooling: | Thermaltake Silent Boost K8 | |
| Power Supply: | Antec TruePower 430W | |
| Maximum OC: (Standard Ratios) |
204 x 13 2652MHz (+10.5%) |
|
| Maximum FSB: (Lower Ratio) |
289x9 (2601) at 1:1 Memory | |
The A8V Deluxe Revision 2 has come a long way from the first revision that didn't even have an AGP/PCI lock. Revision 2 is in a virtual dead heat with our top-performing MSI K8N Neo2 at 289 x9 with our Shikatronics DDR550 memory. The A8V also matched the highest OC with this FX53 at 204x13 at default voltage. This overclocking performance is as good as we are accustomed to seeing on the best nForce3 Ultra boards, and can only be called superb when achieved with the VIA K8T800 PRO, which is not always the best overclocker. To achieve this overclock level, we needed to reduce the base Hyper Transport frequency to 800.
Memory Stress Test Results:
The memory stress test measures the ability of the the Asus A8V Deluxe to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the best performing memory timings our Mushkin PC3500 Level 2 or OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd Modules will support. Memory stress testing was conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with 2 DIMM slots operating in Dual-Channel mode. The memory configuration of the Asus is the more standard setup with slots 1 and 3 are the first Dual Channel.| Stable DDR400 Timings - 2 DIMMs (2/4 DIMMs - 1 Dual-Channel Bank) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | Enabled |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 10T* |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
The Asus K8V Deluxe Rev.2 was completely stable with 2 dimms in Dual-Channel at the settings of 2-2-3-10 at 2.6V default voltage with 1T command rate. This is very slightly slower than the timings than worked on other Socket 939 boards. While we could run the majority of benchmarks at 2-2-2 timings, there were a few that were not completely stable until we increased Ras-to-Cas delay to 3. It should be noted that the BH5 memory modules we used for testing are no longer available for purchase, but we have not yet established our standard memory for future testing. We will be using a new standard memory in future motherboard tests.
As we first found in our latest Socket 754 roundup, the Command Rate is very important for top performance on a VIA chipset motherboard. The best performance is at a Command Rate of 1T, and the Asus A8V was completely stable at a 1T setting with 2 dimms. We set 'Bank Interleave' to 'Enabled' in the BIOS, and Sandra 2004 SP2 reported a 2-way Bank Interleave was being used by the memory controller. With an on-CPU memory controller with Athlon 64, this is not as important a setting as it is on with chipset-based memory controllers.
Filling all four available memory slots is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 2 DIMMs on a motherboard.
| Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs (4/4 DIMMs - 2 Dual-Channel Banks) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | Enabled |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 10T* |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 2T |
We see a very interesting result with all 4 dimm banks filled. The Asus A8V was able to run with all 4 dimm slots at more aggressive 2-2-2-10 settings than the 2-2-3-10 required for 2 dimms. Please keep in mind, though, that the Command Rate must be reduced to 2T when filling both Dual Channels, and the memory is actually a bit slower even though the other timings are slightly faster. The A8V Deluxe is also very picky about the settings that are used with 4 dimms in the 'Enable 2T' option in BIOS. If an Auto setting is used with 4 dimms the board tries to set 1T and single channel memory at a lower memory speed. If 'Auto' is selected and memory timings are forced to DDR400 the board would not boot. With 4 dimms, you will need to set the 2T option to 'Enable 2T' for proper Dual-Channel operation at DDR400.
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thebluesgnr - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
"Our FX53 topped out at about 3.59 GHz on the ECS KV2, which is slightly below the 3.6+ achieved on the top 939 boards."Is this ECS a P4 board? :P
This was a great article. I agree with other readers, CnQ should definately have been tested, as well as audio and IDE subsystems.
btw Wesley, will there be reviews of KT880 socket A mobos in the future?
TrogdorJW - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Just a few comments. It's a little (*little* mind you) unfair to compare FX-53 to P4 560, given the price advantage of the P4. Then again, comparing it to the P4EE is a little unfair in the other direction. It might have been nice to include one or two other systems in the benchmarks, though, like a 3400+. Sure, we can cross-reference other articles, but if you have all the data already it would be a lot cleaner. I'm especially interested in seeing AutoGK benchmarks with the "lesser" Athlon 64 processors (3500+ and 3400+ would be good, or maybe even 3200+ - not everyone has $400+ to spend on a CPU!)Of course, while it might be less fair to Intel, I would like to get AutoGK numbers using Xvid as well. That's how I use it, as I feel the quality is a little better than DivX. Oh, and while you state that you used 2-pass encoding, what was the target resolution? 640x360, or 720x408, or something else? And did you specify a target size, or was it on unlimited quality? All those are important questions, I think.
One final request: I truly appreciate the memory stress testing benchmarks. However, I would like it taken a little further. All of the boards claim that they can support up to 4 GB of RAM. I would love to see some tests showing this configuration. After all, 64-bits is really about breaking that memory barrier. Even if the boards need to run 4x1GB at DDR266 or DDR333, it would be good to know. (Too bad there simply aren't many good 1 GB DIMMs available yet.)
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
#14 & #20 - Perhaps tests with the X800 XT on nF3 compared to the 6800 Ultra will at least shed a little light on where the efficiencies lie - in the nF3/nV Video combo or in the nF3 itself.#16 - We will make an effort to talk a bit more about Cool'n'Quiet in individual board reviews, but in a roundup like this it is difficult to explore that level of detail, and still hold the article length to anthing you might want to read. We try to do more with features in individual reviews.
#19 - We report the full range of vCore in our board charts for people like you who are interested in umdervolting. If you notice some boards begin vCore at default, while others make a wide undervolt range available as well as overvolt. We try to report this range as accurately as possible for this reason.
Pete - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Wesley, very interesting numbers. Halo is supposedly limited by some inefficient DX9 layers/commands, so I at first thought maybe nV had somehow optimized or bypassed some DX9 calls. The office and Content Creation benchmarks advantage is more puzzling, though. Could nV's performance edge be the result of some intelligent caching or either the HD or the CPU?Testing an X800 for reference is a good idea for Halo. Just be sure to retest the office and Content Creation suites, too, as the performance boost there is equally curious, IMO.
I found one typo, on the system specs page. It's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, not Wolfenstein: Enemy Within. :)
JKing76 - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Sure there's Cool'n'Quiet, but how about adding manual undervolting capabilities to the review? A lot of mobos only allow upping the vcore, but undervolting is a great tool for creating a truely cool and quiet system without losing performance.XRaider - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Love that FX53 and the MSI K8N Neo2 together. Sure is purdy nice!! ;) But must...hold...out...until...price..drops...some..more.. ;o)Great article BTW!
XRaider - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Love that FX53 and the MSI K8N Neo2 together. Sure is purdy nice!! ;) But must...hold...out...until...price..drops...some..more.. ;o)Great article BTW!
jojo4u - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
I miss information about Cool'n'Quiet. It's a shame that anandtech.com only is insterested in overclocking and speed.esSJae - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Nice, another article touting the non-existent MSI K8N Neo2.Sure, you can go to MSI's Taiwan site and download the manual and BIOS, but doesn't seem to be much point in that.
DAPUNISHER - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
"We never expected the nVidia nForce3-250 Ultra to be a better performer in Winstone benchmarks than the VIA K8T800 PRO. However, both the nF3-250 boards are outperforming the VIA boards by a significant percentage. Since the nVidia 6800 Ultra video card was used for all benchmarking in the roundup, we plan to verify these results with an ATI X800 XT as soon as that board is available to the Motherboard Lab for testing"Is this to determine if it's a result of forceware opts that is responsible for the difference observed?