System setup, notes, overclocking
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.
- Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz HT S478 Northwood CPU
- Intel Pentium 4-Mobile 1.7GHz S478 CPU for FSB testing
- ABIT BH7 i845PE run in official DDR333 mode
- ABIT IT7-MAX i845E run in official DDR266 mode (D7 BIOS supporting HT)
- SOYO SY-P4I i845PE run in official DDR333 mode
Common components
- ATi Radeon 9700 Pro (324/320) with Zalman heatpipe cooler
- 512MB OCZ PC3500 run at 2-6-2-2 at DDR333 for both i845PE motherboards and DDR266 for the MAX (i845E)
- 61.5GB IBM 120GXP Hard Drive.
- Liteon 16x DVD
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- Samsung 181T TFT monitor
- Cooler Master Fujiyama heatpipe cooler
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- DirectX9
- Intel 4.30.1006 chipset drivers
- Intel application accelerator drivers
- ATI CATALYST 3.1 drivers and control panel (6292s)
- Pifast v41 to 10m places
- Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album
- Virtual Dub 1.5.1 DVD encoding (P4 optimised), DivX 5.03 Pro CODEC
- Hexus SETI benchmark
- 3DMark 2001SE
- UT2003 Demo (Build 2206)
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
Notes
The BH7 was installed inside a standard Lian-Li PC60 aluminium case without issue. It's a little narrower than other ABIT motherboards (225mm vs 245mm). Installation of a Zalman cooler-equipped ATi Radeon 9700 Pro caused no problems. Modules from TwinMOS, OCZ, and Corsair were used as part of stress testing over a 24-hour period. The BH7's CPU voltage only wavered by 0.04v in all that time. Windows XP Professional was installed without a problem and was stable throughout the testing period. All devices installed and functioned to specification. There were no quirks or idiosyncracies with our BH7 sample. It performed as it should.
It will be compared to another i845PE motherboard in the SOYO SY-P4I and the i845E-powered ABIT IT7-MAX v1.0 motherboard. A recent change in hardware and software test configuration has meant that other motherboards will be added to the comparison list shortly.
Overclocking
With the promise of 200FSB looming in the distance, and the knowledge that my personal ABIT IT7-MAX v1 had a ceiling of 180FSB before motherboard-related errors, I was keen to test the BH7's publicised overclocking potential out myself. Using a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 mobile processor, ones that always default to 12x multiplier in a desktop motherboard environment, I was confident that the CPU was capable of 200FSB (2.4GHz). Using the 6:1 FSB-to-PCI ratio, the BH7 booted first time at 2.4GHz, much to my satisfaction. Here's a CPU-Z shot in Windows XP:
It was all perfectly stable through Prime95 torture testing. Knocking it up a notch to 215FSB was stable enough.
The FSB speeds usually reserved for AMD CPUs now on a P4 platform. 225FSB would cause general crashes either in loading or using Windows XP (even using the fix PCI option). I'd hazard that the CPU was getting near its limit, as the system RAM was set to extremely relaxed settings. The fact that it POSTed and tried to load at 230FSB indicates that the BH7 is a master overclocker and fully capable of running the upcoming 200FSB processors with ease. It would be nice if Intel would provide us with a truly unlocked CPU, though :).
Clock speeds
Benchmarks try to compare like for like. However, motherboards rarely operate at the exact frequencies as one another. In this little round-up, the three protagonists ran a stock 3.06GHz CPU at the following speeds.
3070.4MHz - ABIT BH7
3070.4MHz - ABIT IT7-MAX v1
3058.0MHz - SOYO SY-P4I
Please bear these in mind when comparing results.
