AOpen AX4PE Max (845PE)

AOpen AX4PE Max: Stress Testing

Due to the limited amount of stress testing potential with the AOpen AX4PE Max, we were only able to run a handful of stress tests on this motherboard. But we still managed to test this board in several different areas and configurations, including:

1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing was conducted by running the FSB at 161MHz.
2. Memory stress testing was conducted by running RAM at 333MHz with one bank filled as well as as many as was possible from that point on with the most aggressive timings possible.

During the FSB stress tests, the AOpen AX4PE Max was able to withstand a number of tests running at 161MHz FSB (645MHz quad pumped FSB). At this overclocked speed, the AOpen AX4PE Max was capable of running Prime95 torture tests for exactly 24 hours. As we usually do, we reran our entire benchmark suite several times over at this FSB speed to check for any other possible instability. The AX4PE Max seamlessly completed all our stress tests successfully at 161MHz FSB using our standard overclocking testbed.

The AOpen AX4PE Max had very limited memory options, so we were only able to run some fairly conservative memory stress tests. Here were our results in a conservative DDR333 situation; one installed Corsair DIMM running at 333MHz with the most aggressive timings possible:

Of course, these are the best settings you can achieve in the Advanced Chipset Features section of the AX4PE Max's BIOS. You will obviously have to be running some high quality memory to achieve these timings, although it shouldn't be too difficult considering there is only one DIMM installed in this scenario.

After completing a very simple DDR333 run with one DIMM installed, we moved on to the most strenuous situation possible at stock memory speeds, which was all banks filled with memory running at 333MHz. We were able to achieve the following DRAM settings with all banks filled:

These are the best DDR333 timing possible via the Award BIOS of the AOpen AX4PE Max. Obviously the most impressive aspect of this type of memory performance is the fact that it's able to run at these settings with all banks filled with memory. It's worth noting that we did not have to back off of the timings in order to utilize all three memory banks, a big plus in our book.

As you are already aware of, we couldn't run memory at 400MHz because of the extremely limited memory options available in the BIOS, which didn't allow us to overclock memory whatsoever. However, that didn't stop us from running stress tests in the toughest memory situation possible with this particular motherboard. To ensure all these memory settings were stable, we ran Prime95 torture tests around the clock (all timings ended up being CAS 2-2-2-5). The AOpen AX4PE Max was able to sustain 24 hours of Prime95 torture tests, which was certainly very impressive. In fact, the AX4PE Max was able to do this while the FSB was clocked at 161MHz, which is even more impressive. Our Super Pi tests didn't disappoint us either, as the AX4PE Max ran right through the most strenuous Super Pi settings.

For this particular 845PE motherboard, we decided to install multiple types of memory from different manufacturers. Samsung, Kingston, Twinmos, Mushkin, and Corsair memory were all tested at the frequency of 333MHz on the AOpen AX4PE Max. Due to the massive amount of different memory modules used, we were only able to run Prime95 for several hours at a time. Still, we're happy to report that after multiple hours of testing, all memory modules passed our Prime95 torture tests.

Looking at our memory stress testing results, it's clear that the AOpen AX4PE Max is a solid DDR333 motherboard.