X-bit labs

Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R Mainboard with Universal Memory Controller (page 12)

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 08/02/2007 | 05:18 PM ]

Performance in Overclocked Mode

Besides the performance tests in nominal work mode, we will also check out the results of overclocked systems. The thing is that relative performance of overclocked platforms is usually very much different from the mainboard performance in nominal mode.

For our tests we decided to use the same Core 2 Duo E6750 processor, but overclocked to its maximum (with air-cooling), which in our case equaled 3.72GHz. We set this frequency as 8 x 465MHz. For maximum stability the processor Vcore was increased to 1.45V.

During CPU overclocking and preparation of our test platforms for performance tests we once again stumbled upon the fact that Gigabyte P35C-DS3R didn’t overclock the memory as good as its competitors. So, looks like the universal memory controller supporting DDR2 and DDR3 at the same time still has had some negative effect on the mainboard performance, even though indirectly. Therefore, our testbeds were configured a little bit differently this time.

Asus P5K Deluxe with DDR2 SDRAM:

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Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5D memory we used with Asus P5K Deluxe worked at 1116MHz with 5-5-5-15 timings. The FSB:Mem divider was set to 4:5, and all other timings (except the main ones) were set to Auto in the BIOS Setup.

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R with DDR2 SDRAM:

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As we have already said before, the maximum frequency we could get our DDR2 SDRAM to work at on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R equaled 1110MHz. that is why we had to clock Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5D with 1:1 divider at 930MHz frequency. However, this allowed us to reduce the major timings to 4-4-4-12. All secondary timings were set to defaults.

Asus P5K3 Deluxe with DDR3 SDRAM:

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The nominal speed of Kingston KHX11000D3LLK2/2G memory is 1375MHz, so no wonder that we could push it a little higher, to 1397MHz, with 7-7-7-20 timings on Asus P5K3 Deluxe mainboard.

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R with DDR3 SDRAM:

Click to enlarge

And on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R the 2:3 FSB:Mem divider turned into a problem. We couldn’t get the board to run stably at 1395MHz memory frequency, so we had to use the next coefficient: 5:6. As a result, the memory frequency on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R dropped to 1116MHz, which, however, allowed us to slightly improve the primary timings to 7-6-6-18.