![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Sunday , July 18, 2004
- Author:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Overclocking the 2.8GHz LGA775 Pentium 4
Not only does this give a enthusiast view of what power is tucked into the new Pentium 4, it gives us an idea at what the upcoming Intel 1066MHz bus speed will bring. Our testing also provides information cutting edge enthusiasts want to know about DDR2 RAM and PCI-Express video card power needs.
ABIT AA8 Motherboard
For our overclocking today we have picked a 925X motherboard from ABIT, it is the AA8 DuraMAX that we reviewed here a couple weeks ago.
This 925X platform is of course very new to us and we are learning much about it as we go, so you will be learning along with us as well. You will see here that we had much better overclocking results than what we had in our initial review. We think that our CPU made the difference. All the equipment we used in this experiment is retail equipment. The difference here is that our CPU this time is direct from NewEgg and not an engineering sample like used in the ABIT AA8 review. Keep in mind that we try our best to always use retail parts, but at the time, we could not find retail CPUs to purchase. At the time of writing this, only the 3.0GHz LGA775 Pentium 4s showed to be in stock at NewEgg.
What we have come to find out is that the AA8 is a very stable and highly capable overclocker's motherboard. We had wondered before if the FSB and other board functions such at PCI/AGP/PCI-Express were being handled properly by the motherboard and locked at spec levels of operations while scaling the FSB. As of this time we are very sure this is happening as most enthusiasts would want. Seeing as we have confirmed all of what is happening with this motherboard, we are going back and giving it the "HardOCP Must Have Hardware" award.
ABIT AA8 Motherboard
At the time, we did not give it an award as there were some things we were unsure of, but our testing has now shown that the issues we were having were not the fault of the ABIT AA8 motherboard. We will cover these issues here as well.
ABIT Corsair DDR2 Memory
We are using Corsair XMS2 Pro series DDR2 memory modules.
The Corsair XMS2 performed better than we could have asked for. The 533MHz rated DDR2 Ram operated perfectly at 680MHz for days and days. While the latencies we are seeing on DDR2 seem to be high from what we are normally used to, we are seeing that low latencies are becoming much less of a performance factor as DDR2 memories scale in MHz. We started seeing this trend as DDR moved past 400MHz as well and it is only being magnified now.
Talking to Corsair about the great quality of their Ram, they explained that they were seeing many individual memory chips operating up to 800MHz on their own and that the PCB design seemed to be currently holding back the memory from operating at its full potential. That said, we are very likely to see a very easily supplied market of enthusiast Ram now and in the future.
While we are not in the habit of handing out awards for memory, the Corsair so much impressed us that we feel it is more than worthy of our Must Have award. If you are going to be overclocking a new i925X or i915 board with DDR2, you had best add Corsair's XMS2 Pro Series Memory to your short list, as it looks as if it will scale to upcoming bus speeds and easily satisfy the cutting edge enthusiast of today.
Corsair XMS2 Pro Series DDR2 RAM