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| by MAC | July 2, 2009 | ||
| Overclocking Results Overclocking ResultsWhen a new motherboard is released, the immaturity of the BIOS is often the limiting factor when it comes to overclocking. Regrettably, we believe this was also the case with the Maximus II GENE. As you will see below, the stable overclocking results are very good, but we expected a bit more at this point in time given ASUS' extensive experience with the popular P45 chipset. More specifically, while the average stable overclocks were fairly impressive, there was very little additional headroom available for any semi-stable benchmarking attempts. Effectively, we were hitting artificial walls, and no amount of tweaking or additional voltage would allow us to surpass those walls. This is an absolutely insignificant issue for the vast of majority of overclockers who simply find a stable overclock and run it 24/7 forever. However, for those of us who like experimenting and pushing the limits, these walls can be quite frustrating. Having said that, this model's potential is apparent, and once the kinks are ironed out it will undoubtedly be able to achieve some class-leading results. Although we used the first released 0223 BIOS throughout our overclocking tests, we did try out the newer 0402 BIOS and the results were identical. As of this writing an even newer 0504 BIOS has been released, but we haven't yet had the opportunity to test it out. By the way, in an extended period of thoughtlessness, we forgot to have a CPU-Z instance open showing the memory tab for all three overclocking results. Therefore, please rely on Lavalys Everest and MemSet for the DDR2 memory clocks and timings. Highest Stable FSB Overclock Click for full size…  As you can see, we were able to achieve a solid 520Mhz FSB at 1.34vNB with a respectable Performance Level of 10. To put that into perspective, our average stable front-side bus (FSB) after having reviewed seven P45 motherboards is 507Mhz. We were able to achieve this result without touching the more complex reference voltages. We could have likely kept the other voltages on auto as well, but above 500Mhz FSB the VTT and PLL voltages are automatically set to a very high ~1.48V and ~1.78V, respectively. During our time reviewing various P45 motherboards we have knowingly stress tested with higher voltages than these one two seperate processors for hundreds of hours with no apparent consequences, but still do not recommend them for long-term use. The reason that we were limited to a 'mere' 520Mhz is due a failure to boot into Windows consisently above 530Mhz, even 525Mhz was hit & miss. No matter how much voltage we used and how much tweaking we did, we could not get above this wall. By using the 1:1 memory divider, we ensured that our memory was not the limiting factor, and our E8400 has booted into Windows at way over 600Mhz FSB on other boards, so the MIIG was clearly the limiting factor. Now we could have likely achieved a stable FSB higher than 520Mhz by increasing the Performance Level, but we have used a PL of 10 for all our P45 motherboard reviews thus far, and anything above that decreases overall performance to such an extent that those additional Mhz are simply not worth it. Lastly, realistically speaking, only a miniscule amount of people will ever need an FSB above 500Mhz for their 24/7 overclock. Ironically, a stable 520Mhz is identical to the result we achieved on the Maximus II GENE's only noteworthy mATX competitor, the DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS . Highest Stable Memory Overclock Click for full size…  On the memory front, we were able to achieve DDR2-1234, which is effectively identical to what we achieved on the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 and GA-EP45-UD3P. However, in both those cases, we were limited by our choice of memory modules. This time we used a cherry-picked 2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 .16FD5 kit that can do DDR2-1300+ 5-5-5-15 with 2.2X volts. However, on this motherboard, there was simply no way to pass any instance of SuperPI at DDR2-1240 and above. Whenever we tried the end result was always the same: hard lock. We have no doubts that ASUS will fix little issue quickly, since they do advertise support for DDR2-1300. Having said that, once again, for most overclockers DDR2-1200+ is still a Pie in the Sky achievement, so few will be affected by this current limitation. Highest Stable Memory Overclock Click for full size…  As with most previous P45 motherboards, we have no qualms recommending the Maximus II GENE for 500Mhz FSB 24/7 use. At this speed, the nothbridge only requires 1.26V and the Performance Level can be set to 8, which improves overall performance. In our case, this resulted in a 4.0Ghz/500Mhz FSB/DDR2-1200 system that is fast by any measure. Those of you with Core 2 Quad's will likely be able to run in the 450Mhz-475Mhz range, but that is a guesstimate at the point. We will be using these clock speeds as the overclocked configuration in the subsequent benchmarking section. | ||
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