nForce2 6-way Motherboard Roundup - December 2002

ASUS A7N8X: Stress Testing

Since there is a good deal of dividers available in the A7N8X BIOS, we managed to test this board in several different areas and configurations, including:

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:

The ASUS A7N8X ran like a charm at 185MHz FSB (370MHz DDR). We were able to make this assessment through 24 hours straight of Prime95 torture tests at this overclocked FSB speed. During the course of time Prime95 was running in the background, we also ran various DX8 games (JKII, etc.), light apps like Word and Excel, and data compression here and there, all with great success. In the past, rerunning benchmarks has shown to be an effective way of weeding out any minor stability bugs at a given overclocked frequency. In this case we reran SPECviewperf 7.0, Sciencemark and XMPEG. In all circumstances, running the FSB upwards of 370MHz DDR was very easy for the A7N8X. We were able to get even higher than 370MHz DDR, but two minor crashes left us unsatisfied.

Memory Stress Test Results:

In this first memory timings test we see how well the ASUS A7N8X is able to handle three memory modules installed and running at 333MHz DDR. Here were the timings we were able to achieve:

These are great timings. There won't be a single user out there that isn't satisfied with these aggressive timings. We must again note the lower Precharge to Active setting, which other motherboards (not based on nForce2) either cannot achieve or simply don't have the option of running at 4T. Also, remember that these timings were achieved with the CPU Interface enabled, which boosts performance a little.

Our final memory stress test shows how well the A7N8X is able to handle three memory modules running at 400MHz. Here were the timings we were able to achieve:

Again, we see absolutely stellar timings. It's important to note that these timings are hard to achieve if you aren't using the right type of memory. In our A7N8X tests, we used Corsair DDR400 CAS2 memory, which has always been able to handle aggressive timings such as these. Corsair is one of the few memory brands that able to achieve these timings at such a high memory frequency as 400MHz.

The A7N8X ended up being the best memory overclocker of the bunch, though only by 2MHz. Here were our memory overclocking results:

Naturally, we ran a large array of stress tests to ensure all the timings and memory frequencies we were able to reach were stable and fully operational in general. This meant running many hours of Prime95 torture tests, 24 hours of which was completed successfully. We also successfully completed Super Pi stress tests as well as Sciencemark and XMPEG benchmark runs a second time. All in all, all our memory testing results listed in the above charts ran successfully and without issue during our stress tests.

1. Jedi Knight II: Passed
2. Quake 3 Arena: Passed
3. Unreal Tournament 2003: Passed
4. Comanche 4: Passed
5. Serious Sam: Passed