Performance during Overclocking

Numerous performance comparisons in our previous reviews showed that the performance of Intel P35 Express based mainboards is not very much different from that of the Intel P965 Express based ones in nominal work modes. The detailed performance analysis of the Asus P5K Deluxe mainboard in our recent review showed that this is true up until we overclock FSB to 400MHz. Of course, the performance would be about the same only if you compare Asus mainboards. Mainboards from other manufacturers may shift the balance in any direction.

However, we know that the performance of Asus mainboards on Intel P965 Express drops down dramatically starting with 401MHz. How will the situation change if we compare the systems overclocked to 490MHz FSB. Besides, it would be also interesting to find out how the drop in the memory subsystem performance affects the overall system speed when we get beyond the notorious 448MHz threshold on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard.

For our experiments we assembled a few test platforms using the following hardware components:

• Mainboards:
• MSI P35 Platinum (Intel P35 Express), MS-7345 v 1.1, BIOS 1.1;
• Asus Commando (Intel P965 Express), rev 1.00G, BIOS 1001;
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 CPU (1.86GHz, FSB 266MHz, Conroe-2M, rev. B2);
• 2x1024MB Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-9136C5D;
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB graphics card;
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 HDD, ST3320620AS, 7200rpm, 16MB, SATA 320GB;
• Zalman CNPS9700 LED CPU cooler;
• OCZ GameXStream GXS700 PSU (700W).

The tests were performed in Windows Vista OS. We overclocked the CPU to 490MHz FSB in two ways on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard: by setting the FSB frequency jumper to 266MHz and to 333MHz.

The memory was working in synchronous mode with the 1:1 divider. Since it is hard to adjust the memory timings on MSI P35 Platinum in a desired way, all of them were left at defaults. After that we set the memory timings on Asus Commando board to the same values.

MemSet utility doesn’t read the correct memory frequency on Asus Commando: it actually equals the same 490(980)MHz, as on MSI P35 Platinum.

The performance of a system with Asus Commando mainboard and Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor overclocked to 490MHz bus is marked as “Intel P965”. Even Asus mainboard on Intel P965 Express suffers a noticeable performance drop in this case. We tested MSI P35 Platinum with the CPU overclocked to the same 490MHz bus in two modes: with the jumper set to 266MHz and 333MHz marked as “P35 FSB 266” and “P35 FSB 333” respectively. In the first case performance dropped at 447MHz, while in the second case performance didn’t get any lower.