ASUS A8R32-MVP: Taking the Overclocking Route via the 0404
by Gary Key on April 20, 2006 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Performance Results
What good is an article without some actual performance numbers? If you dozed off during the last couple of pages, hopefully this information should be more enjoyable. While we are not providing numbers from the entire test suite there is enough information here to draw conclusions about what general settings work best in some of today's latest game engines.
In our tests it is clear a balanced setting between maximizing the CPU clock speed while maintaining a 1:1 memory ratio with the lowest latency possible will provide the best results. No surprises there but we really expected the 9x312HTT settings to perform better. This leads us to wonder if our issues with the 9X multiplier are creating lower than anticipated results. Our favorite and highly recommended setting with this CPU/Memory/Motherboard combination is the 12x256HTT setting as it performs within 1% of the 10x300HTT setting while allowing a larger variety of memory module options to be utilized. The system also requires lower memory and chipset voltages with the added benefit of better memory timings when using higher performance modules.
In essence, you are placing your system's performance capability primarily on the CPU's ability to overclock instead of the CPU and Memory overclocks when operating at the 10x300HTT setting. There is some additional overclocking headroom on this board at the 12x256HTT setting while we just barely eked by with the 10x300HTT setup. A 12x260HTT (or higher) setting should match or exceed the 10x300HTT setup in actual application and game benchmarks.
When comparing the top results generated by the 10x300HTT setting to the stock settings we see a CPU speed increase of 25%, memory clock speed of 50%, and Sandra memory benchmarks increasing by 34%. However, this does not directly translate into the same percentage improvements in the game benchmarks. We notice an increase of 23% in Q4, 12% in Half Life 2: Lost Coast, 5% in F.E.A.R., and 22% in Serious Sam II. It is obvious that F.E.A.R. is GPU constrained while the balance of games respond very well to increases in both CPU clocks and memory bandwidth. At the stock CPU/Memory settings we overclocked our EVGA 7900GTX from 650/800 to a safe 690/850 and were rewarded with 112fps compared to our top 114fps score in F.E.A.R.
What good is an article without some actual performance numbers? If you dozed off during the last couple of pages, hopefully this information should be more enjoyable. While we are not providing numbers from the entire test suite there is enough information here to draw conclusions about what general settings work best in some of today's latest game engines.
In our tests it is clear a balanced setting between maximizing the CPU clock speed while maintaining a 1:1 memory ratio with the lowest latency possible will provide the best results. No surprises there but we really expected the 9x312HTT settings to perform better. This leads us to wonder if our issues with the 9X multiplier are creating lower than anticipated results. Our favorite and highly recommended setting with this CPU/Memory/Motherboard combination is the 12x256HTT setting as it performs within 1% of the 10x300HTT setting while allowing a larger variety of memory module options to be utilized. The system also requires lower memory and chipset voltages with the added benefit of better memory timings when using higher performance modules.
In essence, you are placing your system's performance capability primarily on the CPU's ability to overclock instead of the CPU and Memory overclocks when operating at the 10x300HTT setting. There is some additional overclocking headroom on this board at the 12x256HTT setting while we just barely eked by with the 10x300HTT setup. A 12x260HTT (or higher) setting should match or exceed the 10x300HTT setup in actual application and game benchmarks.
When comparing the top results generated by the 10x300HTT setting to the stock settings we see a CPU speed increase of 25%, memory clock speed of 50%, and Sandra memory benchmarks increasing by 34%. However, this does not directly translate into the same percentage improvements in the game benchmarks. We notice an increase of 23% in Q4, 12% in Half Life 2: Lost Coast, 5% in F.E.A.R., and 22% in Serious Sam II. It is obvious that F.E.A.R. is GPU constrained while the balance of games respond very well to increases in both CPU clocks and memory bandwidth. At the stock CPU/Memory settings we overclocked our EVGA 7900GTX from 650/800 to a safe 690/850 and were rewarded with 112fps compared to our top 114fps score in F.E.A.R.
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gersson - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
The xpress 3200 definitely is very custimizeable. I had a hard time figuring out how to OC, too. Finally got a 800 mhz OC out of my Opteron 170, though :-)I'd get the DFI mobo that's just out instead. I need to sell my A8R32 quick!
Marlowe - Saturday, April 22, 2006 - link
I agree with you. I think I will be returning this Sapphire card.. Might be faboulus, but it suffers from extreme cold boot issues - I've used 30+ minutes every morning the past days to get the machine on. Also it's generally very hard to get around oc'ing.. The bios needs manually resetting all the time.. Needs steps of 20-30 in HTT to getting somewhere.. And a bunch of other stuff.. My general experience with the board can be summarized lik one consecutive week of troubleshooting. Not really what I excpected. Would any of you like this from your new very expensive motherboard?My choice is returning, or waiting 3-4 months on a good bios.. what would you do :P (PS, sorry for bad English)
Samus - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
Looks like an A8N-SLI all over again. You know, it only took a year or so in bioses (all the way up to 1013 or so before I had decent stability) before the board was desirable imho.I'll never buy another Asus board after that little fiasco.