Performance during Overclocking

Besides the tests in nominal mode, we would also like to compare the mainboards’ performance in overclocked systems. The thing is that relative performance of overclocker platforms is very often different from what we see in nominal mode.

For the second round of tests we decided to set the FSB frequency at 450MHz. We used the same Core 2 Duo X8500 processor overclocked to 4.275GHz set as 9.5 x 450MHz. The processor Vcore was increased to 1.4V to ensure better stability.

DDR3 memory was running at 1800MHz and the timings were set at 8-7-7-20.

During our overclocking experiments with Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 we discovered one very interesting thing. In the above described test mode, this mainboard automatically sets Performance Level to 7 while ASUS P5E3 Deluxe uses default Performance Level = 8.

This could be the shaky advantage of Intel X48 over Intel X38: newer chipset can work with lower Performance Level settings. However, you can make ASUS P5E3 Deluxe work with Performance Level = 7, although you will have to increase the NB voltage quite noticeably in this case to ensure stability: from the default 1.25V to 1.7V. Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 supports Performance Level 7 at 450MHz FSB and default NB voltage.

Unfortunately, even increased NB voltage didn’t help get Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 to work with Performance Level 6. Therefore, we compared the performance of our testing participants’ with FSB overclocked to 450MHz in two modes for ASUS P5E3 Deluxe and only in one mode for Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6.

Let’s start with synthetics:

As we see, Performance Level parameter is not a determinative here although it does indeed have a serious effect on the results. As you can see, ASUS P5E3 Deluxe outperforms Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 in read speed and latencies even with higher Performance Level setting. However, despite this fact we can’t help pointing out significant improvement: unlike previous Gigabyte’s solutions, GA-X48T-DQ6 doesn’t increase Performance Level during overclocking and demonstrates quite acceptable results.

Let’s check out the results obtained in complex tests and real applications:

The numbers speak for themselves. Overclocked Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 shows very good speed in real applications. From the performance prospective, it can compete successfully against ASUS P5E3 Deluxe even with manually lowered Performance Level.