For our overclocking test we took an Intel Pentium 3.4GHz on the Northwood core with an unlocked multiplier. We reduced the multiplier to 12x and boosted the FSB frequency. The memory divisor was set as 3:2 to avoid any interference on the part of the memory. This way we managed to overclock the board to 300MHz FSB (or 1200MHz in the terms of the Quad Pumped Bus). Further overclocking was limited by the CPU, not the mainboard. The P4P800-E Deluxe was perfectly stable at so high a FSB frequency – an excellent result!

The Hardware Monitor page of the BIOS of the P4P800-E Deluxe contains a lot of useful info about the system:

Particularly, you can see the temperatures of the CPU and system, the rotational speeds of the fans, the CPU voltage and voltages on all the power rails of the PSU. Moreover, it’s here that you enable the Q-Fan technology, which reduces the speed of the CPU fan to muffle its noise. If the CPU starts getting too hot, the cooler automatically spins up to the maximum speed, saving the system from overheat.

ASUS also ships two curious utilities with its mainboard:

• ASUS Probe is a hardware monitoring tool, working in Windows;

• ASUS AI Booster serves for overclocking from inside Windows.

Winding up this section of the review, I’d like to mention a couple more of exclusive technologies from ASUS, implemented in the P4P800-E Deluxe. Firstly, the mainboard supports CrashFree BIOS 2 technology to restore the contents of the flash memory from the CD you receive with the mainboard. This operation is only possible, however, if the Boot Block hasn’t been damaged. Secondly, the mainboard supports a simplest voice diagnostics system called POST Reporter that informs you about boot-up problems. The messages are stored in flash memory, so you can replace them with your own ones.