System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| ABIT AX8 System | ASUS nForce4 SLI (AMD) System | EPoX 5LWA+ System | |
| Processor(s) | AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 | AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 | Intel Pentium 4 660 |
| Mainboard | ABIT AX8 K8T890 | ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe | EPoX 5LWA+ 925XE |
| Memory | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Crucial Ballistix DDR2-667 | Memory timings | 2-2-2-5 1T | 2-2-2-5 1T | 4-4-4-12 |
| Graphics Card | ATI RADEON X850 XT PE - PEG16X - CATALYST 5.3 | Disk Drive | 160GB WD IDE & 36GB SATA Raptor |
| BIOS Version | BIOS 10 - 25th February 2005 | 1003 | 23 February 2005 |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, SP2 | ||
| Mainboard Software | VIA Hyperion Pro v4.55 | Intel INF Update Utility 6.3.0.1007 | nForce4 platform driver 7.02 |
Benchmark Software
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
Realstorm 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1.9
Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1
USB2.0 transfer test
DOOM 3 Timedemo 1
3DMark2001SE b330
UT2003 Bot Match
Notes
It's becoming a common and satisfying theme that there was nothing untoward to report during installation and testing. ABIT's VIA K8T890-powered motherboard was tested against an ASUS nForce4 SLI (with single ATI RADEON X850 XT PE PCI-E card), and an Intel Pentium 4 660 and i925XE motherboard combination.
Clock speeds were as follows:
3630.8MHz - EPoX 5LWA+ (i925XE) - Intel Pentium 4 660
2405.4MHz -ABIT AX8 (VIA K8T890) - AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
2404.7MHz -ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4 SLI) - AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
Note that if default settings are chosen from the BIOS, the AX8 boots up at an inflated 204.3MHz FSB. It's effectively performance for free, but the FSB was manually adjusted to 200MHz when testing.
Overclocking
Front-side bus overclocking tests were undertaken by dropping the FX-53's multiplier to 8x, reducing the HyperTransport link to 3x, locking both PCI and PCI-Express buses to their respective default levels, reducing the RAM setting to DDR266, and, finally, increasing northbridge voltage to the maximum permissible limit of 1.65v. It was disappointing to note that the maximum stable FSB speed was a mere 232MHz, or 32MHz above stock. Any higher and a couple of problems were immediately appparent; Windows XP failed to load correctly at all times and sporadic PC freezing and rebooting occured.
Of course, one sample's poor FSB ceiling doesn't automatically infer that all retail models will have the same fate. If web reports are anything to go by, 250MHz+ FSB is attainable for most. Alas, here, it wasn't.