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Overclocking

11-Way P45 Motherboard Shootout
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Gigabyte wins the FSB contest when all motherboards use the same settings. We’ve seen claims by another company to FSB clocks exceeding 700 MHz, but those records were set by professional overclockers using extreme cooling, and might have even required hardware modification.

Since every motherboard in today’s comparison was capable of pushing a higher FSB clock than our processor could withstand at its highest multiplier, CPU clock speed is instead restricted by other factors such as VRM stability. You’d expect the highest stable CPU clock to be reached using the 16-phase power regulator of Asus or Gigabyte, but instead we find MSI’s 6-phase products taking first and second place with our dual-core processor. We might have had a different winner had we used a Core 2 Quad, or perhaps not.

The MSI P45D3 Platinum was the only “true” DDR3 motherboard in today’s comparison, and it pushed our DDR3-1600 CAS 8 memory to very respectable CAS 7 speeds. The dual-compatibility motherboards couldn’t even reach the rated speed of these modules.

Asus leads the way among DDR2 motherboards, but Gigabyte, Jetway, and MSI aren’t far behind. The two Asus motherboards were also the only ones we’d trust to run four DDR2-1066 modules, although it’s better stay with a single pair whenever possible.

Summary
  1. Introduction
  2. ASRock P45R2000-WiFi
  3. P45R2000-WiFi Onboard Devices
  4. P45R2000-WiFi BIOS And Overclocking
  5. P45R2000-WiFi Software And Accessories
  6. ASRock P45TS-R
  7. P45TS-R Onboard Devices
  8. P45TS-R BIOS And Overclocking
  9. P45TS-R Software And Accessories
  10. Asus Maximus II Formula
  11. Maximus II Formula Onboard Devices
  12. Maximus II Formula BIOS And Overclocking
  13. Maximus II Formula Software And Accessories
  14. Asus P5Q Deluxe
  15. P5Q Deluxe Onboard Devices
  16. P5Q Deluxe BIOS And Overclocking
  17. P5Q Deluxe Software And Accessories
  18. Biostar TSeries TP45 HP
  19. TP45 HP Onboard Devices
  20. TP45 HP BIOS And Overclocking
  21. TP45 HP Software And Accessories
  22. Biostar TPower i45
  23. TPower i45 Onboard Devices
  24. TPower i45 BIOS And Overclocking
  25. TPower i45 Software And Accessories
  26. ECS Black Series P45T-A
  27. P45T-A Onboard Devices
  28. P45T-A BIOS And Overclocking
  29. P45T-A Software And Accessories
  30. Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6
  31. EP45-DQ6 Onboard Devices
  32. EP45-DQ6 BIOS And Overclocking
  33. EP45-DQ6 Software And Accessories
  34. Jetway HI04
  35. HI04 Onboard Devices
  36. HI04 BIOS And Overclocking
  37. HI04 Software And Accessories
  38. MSI P45 Platinum
  39. P45 Platinum Onboard Devices
  40. P45 Platinum BIOS And Overclocking
  41. P45 Platinum Software And Accessories
  42. MSI P45D3 Platinum
  43. P45 D3 Platinum BIOS And Overclocking
  44. P45D3 Platinum Software And Accessories
  45. Test Hardware
  46. Benchmark Configuration
  47. Benchmark Results: 3D Games
  48. Benchmark Results: Applications
  49. Benchmark Results: Video Encoding And Synthetics
  50. Performance Analysis
  51. Onboard Audio Quality
  52. Power Consumption And Temperature
  53. Overclocking
  54. Conclusion