System setup, notes, and overclocking
System setup
CPU speed
Testing software
We ran the Gigabyte GA-965-DQ6 through the usual barrage of tests:
- ScienceMark Memory Bandwidth
- ScienceMark Memory Latency
- Pifast calculation to 10M places
- KribiBench
- HEXUS WAV encoding
- HEXUS DivX encoding
- Cinebench 2003
- HDTach 3.0.1.0
For 3D performance it was the intrepid trio of HEXUS custom benchmarks:
- Far Cry v1.33
- Quake 4 v1.04
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05
Gigabyte's tried to increase benchmark scores the old-fashioned way, that is, by inflating the FSB the board and CPU run at.
Intel, as you would expect, keeps the CPU speed right on the money, which translates to an operating speed of 2933.33MHz. Please bear this slight speed increase in mind when comparing benchmarks. AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62 AM2 is run at 2802.15MHz on the reference Sturgeon board.
We've not included any details on the accompanying packaging. We received the bare board and will update this review with the associated bundle once it is confirmed.
Overclocking
By increasing all voltage rails and touch and knocking down the multiplier on the unlocked Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU to 6x, we were able to inch up the board's FSB to ~350MHz. This stable speed was acheived with standard air cooling.
