by Doors4ever
02/15/2007 | 09:38 AM
Have you noticed that it is becoming more and more difficult to overclock CPUs? And the CPUs are not the ones to blame for it: the manufacturing process is improving, new models are coming out, new core steppings are released. The overclocking potential of the CPUs is doing just fine, but our overclocking attempts are hindered by… mainboards!
Long time ago overclocking was really hard to do. In order to change the clock frequency multiplier, adjust bus or memory frequency, set the correct voltage, you had to reset a lot of jumpers. Moreover, the increment was very big and the supported value range – very small. For example, you could only set FSB to 60, 66, 83 or 100MHz, and later the maximum was shifted to 133MHz. The mainboards that features more convenient DIP-switches were considered good. And any even smallest mistake would require you to get back inside the system case to clear CMOS and reset a few additional jumpers.
The revolution in the overclocking world was performed by Abit Company, when they introduced their Soft Menu – the tool that allowed adjusting all the major parameters right from the BIOS. They couldn’t give up the jumpers completely, even today you can still see them on the boards, but the most important thing had been done. As time went on more and more manufacturers followed into Abit’s footsteps, so today BIOS Setup is a complicated software complex with huge potential and rich features, which are getting even more and more numerous with the time. Adjustable frequency with 1MHz increment, adjustable voltage with 0.0125V increment, BIOS reflashing options directly from the BIOS Setup, saving of user preset profiles for different usage models – now these are very common everyday features, but a few years ago they were so fantastic, that no one even thought about implementing them.
Good times have come. The curtain of mystery has been raised, all obstacles have been eliminated. The today’s overclocker is not a restless young man with a soldering iron in his hand, who is humping over the system case performing some weird manipulations. Today every one of you may become an overclocker: increase the bus frequency, reduce the memory frequency, raise the voltage if necessary and then check the system stability – that’s all. There are three stages: frequency adjustment, voltage increase and stability test. And your computer has been overclocked!
The situation has been like that until recently, but things started changing for the worst lately. We were applauding to every new feature that appeared in the BIOS Setup, but most quantitative improvements are gradually turning into qualitative changes. Namely, it is becoming more and more difficult to find your way among all those settings. Can anyone explain the meaning of over a dozen timing settings and the connection between them right on the spot?
The best example here would be the DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G mainboard we have recently reviewed on our site. The richness of the available BIOS features impresses you at first glance, but then it starts scaring you a little. How can one find his way here? Now you cannot overclock your computer in three easy stages, because each stage is split into a bunch of sub-stages, but the most frustrating thing is that changing one single parameter will immediately require you to adjust all the other ones. This is a dead-end. Overclocking is no longer simple and efficient with pleasing result to follow. It has turned into an exhausting search for ideal parameters combination. So, what is different from the time-consuming jumper resetting of the days past? The form is, but not the essence.
At the same time, no one will deny that sometimes process of achieving certain result is more important than the result itself. It is so much fun to share all the hardships you had to overcome on the way to successful overclocking, and to enjoy the respect and admiration in your friends’ eyes, as you were the only one who managed to achieve this. But this is a totally different experience, it is a hobby already. There are special clubs where enthusiasts restore old automobiles, or build their own models, but the majority of people need the car as a means of transportation. And what will you say if you get a perfectly fine car that can run, but in order to make it go fast, you will have to spend a few days in the body shop first? Would you like a car, where the changing angle of the driver seat requires you to reinstall the front wipers and reset the radio? If you replace the CPU or the system memory, you will have to reset all the individual parameters, i.e. you will have to move your car to the body shop each time you get a new passenger in. I don’t feel very excited about it.
Luckily, DFI manufactures not that many mainboards and ATI RD600 chipsets will not become widely spread for some objective reasons. However, it doesn’t mean that a different manufacturer will not decide to try launch something like that tomorrow, or if we do not discover any additional “surprises” from Nvidia chipset.
However, today we are going to talk about a completely different mainboard on a different chipset. Asus Commando is remarkable not only for its own unique name instead of the lettered-numeric marking. The mainboard is based on Intel 965 chipset for LGA775 processors and belongs to the new Republic of Gamers series. This mere fact implies that the board is very feature-rich and was manufactured using the latest and greatest technologies. Let’s take a closer look at this product to find out what really hides under this attractive name.
Asus Commando mainboard is shipped in a not very big vertical box with a carrying handle:
Abit used to be the only one to pack all the mainboard accessories in individual boxes. In one of our recent reviews we have also mentioned that EPoX started doing the same thing, and now Asus seems to have joined them, too. Very nice:
The accessories bundle includes the following items:
The mainboard also comes with a DVD disk (not a CD disk) with the drivers, brand name utilities, a licensed version of Futuremark 3DMark06 Advanced Edition, and Kaspersky antivirus software. The funny thing is that the disk is marked with the following” Commando motherboard – NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Support DVD”. It is either a typo, or looks like Asus Striker Extreme mainboards was initially intended to have a different name :)
Asus Commando mainboard is packed into a hard transparent plastic casing that protects it against physical damage and at the same time allows enjoying a nice view of the board fragments through the cut spots in the box.
Now let’s take a look at the board itself.
At first glance the board seems to be stuffed with all sorts of components. But take a look at the layout scheme: in fact, there are quite a few empty spots on the PCB. The mainboard is designed in such a way that all the connectors and ports are placed around the mainboard perimeter, which ensures easy and convenient access.
As usual, let’s start our detailed discussion of the mainboard functionality and layout with the processor socket. The eight-phase voltage regulator circuitry doesn’t contain any traditional capacitors, which makes it extremely reliable and flexible, and at the same time frees enough room for massive processor cooling solutions.
Asus Commando mainboard uses fanless chipset cooling system with three heatpipes. The first heatpipe removes the heat from the small South bridge heatsink and transfers it to the large heatsink of the chipset North Bridge, and two other heatpipes then move the heat to the third heatsink.
You can install a fan bundled with the mainboard on top of this heatsink, if necessary:
You can connect up to 8 fans to Asus Commando mainboard:
The fan works pretty quietly, you don’t need to reduce its rotation speed at all and it can receive power from the PWR_FAN connector without the rotation speed control option. The rotation speed of the processor cooler and three other fans connected to CHA_FAN1, 2 and 3 can be managed using Q-Fan function. The remaining three OPT_FAN connectors are also sophisticated enough:
Next to each of them there are connectors for thermal sensors (that should be purchased separately). You may even make the fan rotation speed vary depending on the reading from the corresponding thermal sensors.
Now that we have move down to the lower edge of the PCB let’s take a closer look at the area around the chipset South Bridge. The first thing that catches your eye is the three convenient buttons intended for Powering On, Resetting and Clearing CMOS. The latter is protected against accidental hitting with a jumper. All three buttons are lit when the system is running. As you can see, these are real buttons, and not some barely noticeable dots or pins, which we have often seen on other mainboards.
However, we didn’t have to use the Clear CMOS button even once, because the C.P.R. (CPU Parameter Recall) technology works ideally activating immediately after the first failure and restarting the system with guaranteed operational parameter settings.
All Serial ATA connectors are placed into a single vertical stand, which saves a lot of space on the PCB and makes connection real easy. I would also like to stress the pretty traditional location of the FDD connector, 24-pin power supply connector and the IDE connector positioned “sideways”, which, however, are extremely convenient for the contemporary mainboards.
On the back panel of the mainboard there are no COM or LPT ports, however, there is a LED indicator reporting the POST codes on system boot-up and later displaying time.
The mainboard back panel also carries the following connectors and ports:
All other audio connectors have been moved to a separate SupremeFX daughter card that fits into a special slot on the mainboard PCB.
Since we mentioned the expansion slots, we should say that there are four (!) PCI slots and two PCI-E x16 slots on this mainboard, one of which working in x4 mode.
Now that we have mentioned all the most important features of the Asus Commando mainboard, let’s sum things up in a table for your convenience:
Asus Commando | |
CPU | LGA775 socket for Intel Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / |
Chipset | Intel P965 / ICH8R |
Front Side Bus | 1066 / 800 / 533 MHz |
Memory | 4 x DIMM, max. 8GB, DDR2 800 / 667 / 533 MHz, non-ECC, |
Expansion Slots | 2 x PCI-E x16 (@ x16 and x4 mode) |
Storage | Southbridge |
LAN | Dual Gigabit LAN controllers, both featuring AI NET2 |
Audio | SupremeFX Audio card featuring ADI 1988B Codec |
IEEE 1394 | 2 x IEEE 1394a ports (one at midboard; one at back panel) |
USB | 10 x USB 2.0 ports (6 ports at mid-board, 4 ports at back panel) |
Overclocking | Extreme Tweaker |
Asus Features | LCD Poster |
Back Panel I/O | 1 x PS/2 Keyboard |
Internal I/O | 3 x USB connectors support additional 6 USB ports |
BIOS | 8 Mb Flash ROM, AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, |
Manageability | WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL by PME, PXE |
Accessories | UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable |
Support DVD | Drivers |
Form Factor | ATX Form Factor, 30.5cm x 24.5cm |
The specifications are taken from the official manufacturer’s website.
Asus Commando BIOS is based on AMI code and looks very familiar for those of you who have worked with Asus mainboards before.
In the past all the settings of the Asus BIOS Setup used to be spread over numerous sections, some of which were not always so obvious. For example, memory timings could be on the CPU configuration page. But now this drawback has been eliminated. All major overclocking parameters have been moved from the JumperFree Configuration page into a separate Extreme Tweaker section. Although in the Auto mode, there are not that many settings available anyway.
But things will change dramatically if you dare dig deeper into this section. If you give up the Auto setting for the memory timings, you will get the chance to adjust not only the primary timings, but also the secondary timings. It is extremely important for achieving higher working frequencies.
If you switch AI Tuning into Manual mode, you will get full access to all frequencies and voltages.
The mainboard supports the following ranges for the available parameters:
Parameter | Range | Increment |
CPU Frequency | 100-650 MHz | 1 MHz |
DRAM Frequency | DDR2-533, 667, 800, 889, 1067 | - |
PCI Express Frequency | 90-150 MHz | 1 MHz |
CPU VCore Voltage | 1.1 – 1.85 V | 0.0125 V |
FSB Termination Voltage | 1.2 – 1.55 V | 0.05 V |
NB VCore | 1.25 – 2.025 V | 0.025 V |
Memory Voltage | 1.8 – 3.375 V | 0.025 V |
DDRII Channel A REF Voltage | -30...+30 mV | 10 mV |
DDRII Channel B REF Voltage | -30...+30 mV | 10 mV |
DDRII Controller REF Voltage | -30...+30 mV | 10 mV |
SB VCore (SATA, PCIE) | 1.5 – 1.85 V | 0.05 V |
SB Chipset Voltage | 1.05 – 1.225 V | 0.025 V |
The top voltages on the chipset North Bridge and memory look the most impressive here. Far not every mainboard supporting DDR memory could allow over 3V of power, and here we have DDR2 and 3.375V! You should be very careful with this setting…
FSB frequency can be changed using “+” and “-“ keys, and in most other cases you can simply select a value from the drop-down list.
In the Advanced section there is a very useful CPU Configuration page where you can check the information about your CPU, reduce the frequency multiplier, adjust some processor technologies.
Power is the next useful section for overclocking fans. You should pay special attention to the Hardware Monitor page over there.
It leads to the list of settings for optional fans and thermal sensors.
It is great to also have detailed information about voltages. The Extreme Tweaker section offers very rich options for voltages adjustment, but far not every one can remember what the default voltages for the chipset bridges are.
Practical tests of the overclocking potential were performed on an open testbed built with Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor, Zalman CNPS9700 LED cooler, Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 and of course Asus Commando mainboard revision 1.00G. We started with the very first BIOS version 0601 that was later updated to 0702 using EX Flash utility. We didn’t detect any significant differences between the two BIOS versions.
Our previous experience with mainboards for Intel Core processors reminded us of some difficulties we had at certain speeds, so we decided to start with 430MHz FSB. However, our concerns never came true, as Asus Commando started and loaded the OS without any problems up to 500MHz FSB. It even passed some tests, but of course, no guaranteed stability at this speed. Even when we reduced the processor frequency multiplier to 6x, the mainboard didn’t prove very reliable even at 495MHz FSB. Since the clock multiplier was reduced, the CPU couldn’t be the limiting factor here. I believe that the memory was also not the one to blame, because it worked just fine at this frequency even with 4-4-4-12 timings, although during the tests we increased them to 5-5-5-15. Moreover, when we replaced the memory with Corsair TWIN2X1024-8000UL of half the capacity, the results didn’t get any better. The mainboard regained stability at 490MHz FSB without reducing the clock frequency multiplier.
At 3.43GHz CPU speed the system would pass any tests including even the heavy Intel Thermal Analysis Tool.
The preliminary reports about the Asus Commando mainboard promised us extremely easy overclocking up to 570MHz FSB. Why couldn’t we achieve the same result? We have a few suppositions regarding this matter. Let’s start with the most pessimistic ones and move to the more hopeful:
However, I have to admit that most reports about unprecedented overclocking potential of the Asus Commando mainboard were based on forum postings. Now that the first reviews of this mainboard are coming out, the results turn out to be very close to what we’ve got in our lab. Anyway, we can hardly call stable work at 490MHz FSB unsuccessful result. There are much more examples of considerably lower results, including those obtained on Intel P965 based mainboards. This high frequency is not enough only for overclocking of one single processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300, and this CPU is known to be not the best overclocker’s choice.
We are well familiar with the potential of this CPU, it is exactly around 490MHz FSB. This is why during our test session we increased the processor Vcore, Vmem and Vchipset, manually adjusted the memory timings… In other words, w did everything the usual way. But still performed one additional experiment in the end. Absolutely all parameters affecting the operational stability of our system were set to Auto. The only thing we adjusted manually was the FSB speed: we set it to 490MHz. And the mainboard didn’t disappoint us: it started fine and worked stably. Luckily, Asus Commando mainboard is nothing like any of the mainboard we mentioned in the introduction to this article. It is extremely user-friendly.
There is no absolute ideal, you can always find things that can be improved. However, Asus Commando mainboard seems to closer than anyone else to the “ideal mainboard’ title. Rich settings, high-quality design, outstanding functionality – all these parameters meet the highest criteria and give us every right to call this mainboard one of the best. There are a lot of good mainboards out there, but the remarkable thing about Asus Commando is that it is universal! Extreme overclocking fans will receive a lot of fine-tuning options, so that they could fight for each additional megahertz, for each timing. However, even commencing overclockers will be able to achieve impressive results in automatic mode.
It is hard for me to find drawbacks in Asus Commando mainboard. Maybe it could be the absence of the COM and LPT ports? Yes, it is drawback, but not a dramatic one for a contemporary mainboard. Then, maybe, it is high price? Of course, it should be high, but can we really say that this price is unjustified? So much effort and hard work has been put into this mainboard that it simply cannot be cheap. If price is a crucial factor for you, there is a plenty of other Asus mainboards or solutions from different makers that would be within your budget. Continuing our car analogies: can we say that McLaren F1 is a bad car because it is expensive? They no longer make these cars, it was and is nearly impossible to buy, it belongs to that type of vehicles that you can only dream of. But unlike McLaren F1, anyone can purchase an Asus Commando dream-board. All you need is desire and money.
In conclusion to our discussion of performance and features of the new ASUS Commando mainboard, we decided to award it with the prestigious Editor’s Choice Title as the Today’s Best Mainboard on Intel P965 Сhipset:
