Gigabyte K8NNXP-940: Built on Athlon64 FX51 Strengths
by Wesley Fink on October 9, 2003 11:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
FSB Overclocking Results
With the very complete selection of overclocking options on the Gigabyte, we had very high expectations for the overclocking performance of the board. What we didn't know, and still don't know, however, is what kind of total overclocking range will be available to FX users.| Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed | ||
| Default Voltage | Maximum Overclock | |
| Processor: | Athlon64 FX51 2.2GHz |
Athlon64 FX51 2.2Ghz |
| CPU Voltage: | 1.5V (default) | 1.6V |
| Cooling: | AMD Stock Athlon64 FX51 Heatsink/Fan | AMD Stock Athlon64 FX51 Heatsink/Fan |
| Power Supply: | Enermax 465W | Enermax 465W |
| Maximum OC: | 2409MHz (+10%) 219FSB |
? |
The above overclocking setup at DEFAULT voltage allowed us to reach a stable FSB of 219MHz. Running our standard Quake3 bench at 2.4GHz yielded Q3 test scores right at 500fps. The maximum overclock, unfortunately, remains a mystery. As you will see in the benchmark suite, the standard test performance with the new F1 BIOS is outstanding. However, there are still problems with multipliers and FSB settings on this motherboard. 11.5X worked until we hit 215FSB; then, mysteriously reset itself to 210, no matter what we set. The 12.0X multiplier worked at 200, and would start generating mysterious FSB and multiplier values above this setting. We even tried downclocking the multiplier, but could not set higher FSB settings that would be retained. We suspect Gigabyte will quickly fix this because this is a very promising board, but for now the Maximum overclock simply cannot be reported. We will revisit this in the near future when we receive a BIOS update.
For a quick comparison, we ran the FX51 in our nVidia Reference board. In that board, by setting the memory to 333, we were able to boot our FX at a CPU setting of 230 at 1.6V. We suspect it may do even better, but with multiplier and FSB settings not completely working, it would be unrealistic to report a maximum overclock at this time. We still believe that with this Gigabyte board, it will be possible to reach the maximum overclock our FX51 chip can achieve. The Gigabyte is remarkably stable in all we can do with it so far, and hopefully a BIOS update will fix the overclocking issues that have surfaced.
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Anonymous User - Saturday, October 11, 2003 - link
Hmm.. something just occured to me. (This is #24 again.) Anyone else remember the days of the Pentium and Pentium Pro? Well, it seems like we may be reentering the whole "high-end CPUs are different from midrange ones in ways other than clock speed" thing.. except this time around, the Macs aren't faster (the G5 and its super-deep pipeline can kiss my ass, thanks.. and probably the Hammer's while it's at it), and there are two companies in the game. This is going to be fun.Anonymous User - Saturday, October 11, 2003 - link
Hey, why isn't the Nehalem in this review? So what if it doesn't exist? They've got like 80% of it planned out now anyway, it's unfair to have this review biased towards AMD.Well, SOMEONE had to be ignorant and stupid, and hell if I'm going to say a thing about the Pentium 4 Xeon MP Edition.
Uh. Anyway. The Athlon FX may just be a rebranded Opteron, but it's cheaper than the rebranded Xeon MP and much better at its job, so who cares what's a rebranded what? Not that I'd ever buy an Athlon 64 at these prices, but it seems the only market sector Intel has left is the low high end :D
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Excellent review! I'll be reading all of your writings from now on. :Dsandorski - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Sweet motherboard, makes me think that as Athlon 64/FX motherboards mature, more performance will be acheived.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Haha, good point #20!Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#12, perhaps because P4EE does not exist...Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
When will this board be released?Reflex - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#11: I am not reffering to Quad-Channel DDR as I think you believe. I am reffering to Quad-Data Rate SDRAM. It uses the same pin count as DDR but sends information four times per clock, resulting in twice the bandwidth as DDR. If AMD supported it in their on board controller it would not require a higher pin count.However there must be some technical reason for QDR not appearing by now since its been 'just around the corner' for over two years now...
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Mostly I meant that running hand-compiled 64-bit apps would be irrelevant. I'd love to see another article in a few months, when Linux apps start actually arriving in 64-bit versions. But until then, it would be akin to Tom's OC'ing the P4EE. It may be interesting to a few people, but it would appear biased to almost everyone else.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#15, 64-bit tests running linux would not be relevant? what about those of us who are running linux right now? I for one would love to see a 64-bit set of linux benchmarks included.