System setup and benchmarking notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.
- Intel Pentium4 1600MHz S478 Northwood CPU Northwood at 2133MHz / 133FSB
- ABIT SR7-8X SiS648 motherboard in both DDR-333 and DDR-400 modes
- ABIT IT7-MAX I845E run in DDR354 mode
Common components
- ASUS GeForce4 Ti 4400 128MB at stock speeds (275/550)
- 256MB Corsair XMS3200 C2 run at 2-2-2-2 at DDR333 and 2-3-3-3 at DDR400
- 120GB Western Digital 120JB 7200rpm hard drive with 8MB cache.
- Liteon 16x DVD
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- 21" Sony G500 FD monitor
- Thermaltake S478 cooler
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- SiS v1.10.03 AGP and IDE drivers
- Detonator XP 29.42 drivers
- Sisoft Sandra 2002 Professional
- Pifast v41
- Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end
- XMpeg 4.2A DVD encoding, DivX 5.02 CODEC
- 3DMark 2001SE
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
I'll be using a 1.6GHz Northwood A running at 2133MHz / 133FSB for these tests. This processor is also useful as it has seen 165FSB in other motherboards. This should, in theory, help us find out just how far we can push the SR7-8X.
I'll be running the SR7-8X in both the officially supported DDR-333 and unsupported but offered DDR-400 memory modes. The Pentium 4 loves bandwidth, so let's see what difference faster RAM makes in our benchmarks. I have to note that I was able to use the very strictest timings at DDR-333 but had relax them slightly when running at DDR-400. It seems as if the SR7-8X is not as partial to the Corsair XMS3200 C2 as its stablemate, the i845E IT7-MAX.
Overclocking the FSB of the SR7-8X was something that I was interested in. I've been accustomed to the sky-high FSBs of the i845E / i850 motherboards, so I was interested to see how high this motherboard could go. As I've mentioned, the test CPU, a 1.6A NW, has been up to 165FSB in other motherboards. Imagine my considerable disappointment when the highest FSB I could boot-in was 146FSB. I raised the CPU voltage to the maximum permitted about but couldn't gain any kind of stability above 146FSB. I used the fixed AGP/PCI option but it didn't solve my overclocking headroom problems. I don't feel as if this is an erroneous result either. I've been browsing a number of forums and stability above 150FSB seems to be non-existent.
