Page 13 - Overclocking and Tweaking

Overclocking
Tweaking can be done at BIOS level (Phoenix BIOS). I must state that Albatron managed to do a good job here. Overclocking is easy and flexible. It lacks a few options for the hardcore overclocker yet it has convenient OC options are definitely available:

• CPU Voltage up to 1.6 Volts (too low IMO)

• CPU Host Frequency (FSB) up to 333 MHz (quad bus thus 4x333)

• CPU:AGP clock ratios fixable in any configuration

• DDR:CPU Ratio (1.33, 1.60, 2.00x, 2.50x, 2.66x(turbo mode) and default)

• AGP port voltage (1.5 towards 1.8 Volts)

• DDR Voltage (2.55, 2.65, 2.75 and 2.85 Volts)

If you would have an unlocked (engineering sample processor) you'll be able to change the multiplier also.

As you can see there is plenty of room to play around with. Still, the Pentium 4 CPU in general has a reputation of being a good overclocker when pumping the FSB and it did just that.

We where able to push the CPU towards a 250 MHz FSB frequency rather easily (x4 is 1000 MHZ) with a 1,60 CPU core voltage and where able to get into windows to do our stuff perfectly fine even benchmarks like RTCW ran flawless. Unfortunately it halted at 3D Mark 2001, perhaps with a little additional cooling it would have remained stable. I'll settle for 3.4 GHz though ;) We settled for that 240 MHz FSB. As our CPU was now running at 3.36 GHz, memory performance was about 4800 MB/sec while the CPU reported back roughly 8900/9000 MIPS in Sandra. (was at 7400 at standard and a 3.22 GHz Pentium 4 B series does ~8500 MIPS).

After this result I wanted to see if the system would remain stable and ran 3D Mark 2001. At default settings this software will return at 15751 3D Marks. When overclocked it returned 16488 points ar 3.2 GHz already. We also did some numbers with Return to Castle Wolvenstein as we always have believed it was very CPU dependant. And as you can see it is:

A pretty nice feature of this mainboard is that is has been equipped with WatchDog Technology. If you overclock too far and your system can not boot anymore then the mainboard's WatchDog technology will take over. It will basically detect if the system can POST or not, if not it will clear CMOS automatically and you can boot up again. Overclocking made easy ;)

The BIOS is very configurable and more than sufficient for the average tweaker/overclocker. While overclocked the CPU temperature in idle was ~ 44 degrees C which of course is nothing to be ashamed about, it never went over 59 degrees C with 100% utilization.

This is what the Phoenix BIOS options look like at default