X-bit labs

ASUS A7V880 Mainboard Review. First Look at VIA KT880 Chipset (page 7)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 04/19/2004 | 09:05 AM ]

So, the BIOS Setup of ASUS A7V880 offers overclockers the following tool kit:

• Allows changing the FSB frequency within 100-227MHz interval with 1MHz increment;
• Allows changing the CPU clock frequency multiplier within the interval from 5x to 22.5x;
• Allows clocking the AGP/PCI buses asynchronously, that is when the frequency of these buses remains at the nominal value, i.e. 66/33Mhz independent of the FSB frequency at the given moment. Otherwise, AGP/PCI frequency is connected with the FSB frequency linearly and increases every time the FSB frequency goes beyond the nominal values;
• Allows adjusting processor Vcore. The voltage can be set from 1.65V to 1.85V with 0.05V increment;
• Allows changing the Vdimm voltage. The available range starts at 2.55V and finishes at 2.85V with 0.1V increment.
• Allows adjusting the AGP bus frequency within the interval from 1.5V to 1.8V with 0.1V increment.

Formally, one of the biggest advantages of ASUS A7V880 from the overclocking point of view is the possibility to change the CPU clock frequency multiplier within a very wide range and the opportunity to lock AGP/PCI bus frequencies during overclocking. However, ASUS A7V880 is not ideal and also has some drawbacks. In particular, the ranges for voltages (especially the processor Vcore) are very narrow, and the top FSB value is too low for serious overclocking attempts, especially since the BIOS Setup allows asynchronous clocking of the AGP/PCI buses.

To check out how ASUS A7V880 behaves during overclocking, we decided to check how the things will work if the FSB frequency exceeds 200MHz. for this experiment we took an Athlon XP 3200+ processor, tried to increase the FSB frequency to the maximum at the same time having reduced the CPU clock frequency multiplier to 9.5x. In this test all the voltages were set to their nominal values, and asynchronous AGP/PCI clocking was enabled, of course. The memory frequency was set synchronous with FSB, i.e. we selected the DDR400 SDRAM setting for this CPU. Overclocking appeared absolutely no problem for PC4200 Enhanced Latency SDRAM from OCZ Technologies.

I should say that these experiments didn’t take us too long. When we set the FSB to the maximum value supported by ASUS A7V880 – 227MHz, the system took off perfectly smoothly and didn’t reveal any stability problems throughout the entire test session.

In fact it means that ASUS A7V880 features a much higher overclocking potential. However, the user cannot take full advantage of it because of the limited opportunities offered by the BIOS Setup. At the same time, I have to stress that this problem can be completely eliminated after the new BIOS versions come out. The clock frequency generator used on this mainboard, ICS94228, is truly capable of generating much higher FSB frequencies than the notorious 227MHz.