PEG-Fashion At Asus: Hidden Graphic Overclocking Ex Works
So far, the PEG Link fashion has been an announced, but undocumented feature that can automatically overclock the ATI graphics cards by a small percent (not standard). Consequently, graphic-based benchmark results are better than those achieved by competitors.
Numerous publications have carried out their Socket 775 comparative test with ATI's Radeon X600, as there was virtually no other card available at the time of the test in mid June. The ATI X800 is scarcely available now, and even NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 series is a rarity. However, the choice of graphic card used was important if one of the two Asus boards (P5AD2 or P5GD2) was used:
Asus equipped the new motherboards with an additional menu item in the BIOS, namely "PEG Link Mode". PEG stands for PCI Express Graphics, which is mentioned nowhere in the otherwise so detailed handbook. However, in order to make a fair comparison with the motherboards of other manufacturers, it is imperative for the user to know that the possible settings lead to a noticeable overclocking of ATI graphic cards in some cases:
| PEG-Mode | ATI X600 Core Clock | ATI X600 Memory Clock |
|---|---|---|
| Slow | 499 MHz | 364 MHz |
| Normal | 513 MHz | 378 MHz |
| Fast | 513 MHz | 378 MHz |
| Faster | 554 MHz | 385 MHz |
| Auto | 513 MHz | 378 MHz |
| Sollwert | 500 MHz | 370 MHz (740 MHz DDR) |
With the aid of Powerstrip, the chip or memory clock speeds of virtually all modern graphics cards can be changed - or just simply scrutinized.
