Dual Graphics Platforms, Part II

Overclocking nForce4 SLI X16: Asus A8N32 SLI

Given the experience that motherboard manufactures were able to collect with NVIDIA's nForce4 chipset family until now, we would expect nothing below 300 MHz system clock speed for a premium motherboard such as the A8N32 SLI from Asus.

The selectable system clock range is 200-1,600 MHz, with the latter figure is rather over-optimistic. We were able to run the A8N32 at up to 346 MHz system clock speed with a HyperTransport link of x4, resulting in almost 1,400 MHz. While this level used to typically lead to instability, the A8N32 did not seem to have a problem with it.

Leaving the memory speed settings on auto mode caused the clock speed to automatically settle in the area of 200 MHz, no matter how fast the system was running. Changing the 1T timing setting to Auto, however, will cause the memory divider to align with the processor multiplier.

We found that it is possible to achieve approximately 300 MHz memory clock speed (DDR600) with 1T timings. Anything faster will have to use 2T.