Intel Rigs Up: P4 Series with FSB800

MSI 865 Neo 2: Automatic Overclocking Of Applications, Continued

Curious: the memory performance is relatively low.

We recorded these extraordinary scores despite the fact that the memory performance (in SiSoft Sandra 2003) was relatively low and the benchmark value beyond what was theoretically possible. To get to the bottom of this, THG used a developer's tool that was able to reliably and accurately read the frequencies of the FSB and CPU.

The result was astonishing: the MSI board increases the FSB speed from 200 MHz to 215.7 MHz when an application starts. This is the equivalent of boosting the speed of the CPU from 3014 MHz to 3236 MHz. (Bear in mind that we are dealing with a 3 GHz CPU here!) Proven utilities such as WCPUID, CPUZ, Intel Frequency Display and SiSoft Sandra 2003 all displayed the CPU speed incorrectly (3014 MHz). It is clear, therefore, that dynamic overclocking as implemented by MSI cannot be picked up by conventional benchmarking utilities. All kudos to the highly resourceful programmer!

Ingenious: dynamically boosting the FSB speed while an application is running.

All well-known utilities report the normal speed even though the CPU is running at 3236 MHz.