System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Clawhammer CPU. RAM running with an 10 divisor (DDR400, single channel)
- Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz ES 800FSB CPU
- ABIT AI7 i865PE Springdale motherboard (A14 BIOS)
- ABIT IC7 i875P Canterwood (A18 BIOS)
Other components
- Hercules 3D Prophet 9800XT Classic
- 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2, run at 2-6-2-2 @ DDR400 for all boards
Software
- Windows XP Professional
Notes
The board installed and operated Windows XP SP1 without any problems. It was flashed to the latest A14 BIOS which provided PAT-like performance optimisations. It will be compared to two other ABIT boards. The IC7 Canterwood and the KV8-MAX3 VIA K8T800 S754 AMD 64. The latter should make for some interesting comparisons.
Issues
Not that many, really. The on-board floppy controller decided to commit hari-kiri soon after benchmarking was complete. The BIOS was consistently stated a floppy-related error had occurred (code 80). The drive and cable were tested in another machine and found to contain no faults. 2GB of PC3500 RAM would sometimes crash at overclocked speeds and latencies, but 1GB of Corsair TwinX XMS3200LLPT showed rock-solid form.
Overclocking
With the lack of multiplier adjustment for our semi-unlocked 3.2GHz P4, a 2.6GHz 800FSB CPU was used. The board showed excellent stability at 250FSB, with all peripherals and features working correctly, including the 5:4 FSB-to-RAM ratio. Raising the FSB ceiling much higher suggested a CPU limitation rather than a chipset's. We'll return to this section once we have an appropriate multiplier-unlocking BIOS.
Running speeds
3208.1MHz - ABIT AI7 i865PE
3207.7MHz - ABIT IC7
2004.5MHz - ABIT KV8-MAX3
On to the benchmarks we go.
