EVGA P55 FTW LGA1156 Motherboard Review

Overclocking Results

The EVGA P55 FTW is a board built for overclockers so and we intend to prove (or disprove) that in this section of the review. The features included in the FTW such as triple BIOS, additional power inputs, and ECP V2 have overclocking written all over them and really make this board a pleasure to work with. We will give an overview of our experience achieving our maximum system overclock (fully stable), maximum benchable bus speed (BCLK), and maximum memory overclock.

Before getting too deep, let’s start at the beginning. First off, the board worked flawlessly at stock and arrived pre-installed with an excellent working BIOS that really impressed us with its boundless functionality and myriad of tweaking options. It was basically plug and play; we set it up, turned it on, and installed Windows immediately without an issue. This is good news for a user who does not plan on overclocking or is a new overclocker looking to learn the tricks of the trade.

We also loved the fact that the “Dummy OC” setting presented no issues at all and actually worked extremely well. All you have to do is enable this setting in the BIOS and you get a very nice boost in speed with little to no overclocking experience needed. We didn’t spend too much time with the Dummy OC settings, but everything booted up fine and we ran OCCT for an hour without any crashes.


Max System Overclock

Now we have finally come into the sections most perspective buyers of this board want to see,:the maximum system overclock. This means we want to maximize the CPU and memory overclock while keeping voltages and temperatures in check. We started right off by booting at 200x20 and memory at 2:8, 7-7-7-21 1T with 1.4v for vcore and 1.35v for VTT. To our delight the board POSTed on the first shot and booted into Windows. While it wasn’t 100% stable at this point, we spent some time setting up secondary timings for memory, MCH strap, as well as tweaking voltages for PCH and PLL.


Setting VDroop Control to “Without VDroop” really eliminates the board’s VDroop and we saw that 1.4v was much higher than needed for vcore with this setting enabled. Gradually lowering vcore we got down to 1.350V in the BIOS and were actually still able to run every stability test we could throw at the P55 FTW. Setting 1.350v BIOS vcore gave 1.364v idle and 1.388v load vcore for full stability at 4Ghz but moving up from there, load temperatures would get too hot for our liking so we decided to cap the maximum stable overclock at 4Ghz.

We should add that we were able to get stability at around 4100Mhz as well but the temperatures were too high for our liking so we stuck with 4Ghz. We feel that 4Ghz is the best example of a 24/7 overclock that does not give any concerns about the long-term health of our system. This also points to an interesting aspect about this board: it probably won’t be the limiting factor of any overclock. Rather, it will probably be some other component such as cooling, the CPU or even the memory that will hold you back.


Max Benchable BCLK

When it came to the maximum bus clock or BCLK, we started tests by dropping the multi and the memory ratio so we could rule out memory and CPU instability at high BCLK. Here is where we ran into the first issue: we could not manage to utilize the 2:6 memory ratio for some reason. Every time this ratio was selected the board would not POST but that wasn’t too big of a deal as 2:8 would allow us all the BCLK we needed with water cooling.


After some tweaking we managed a BCLK of 215Mhz which is quite impressive. Since users will probably not be maxing out BCLK in a 24/7 overclock, we used benchmarks such as SuperPI and 3DMark Vantage as stability tests for 215Mhz. Meanwhile, using only 1M for stability we were also able to bench at 220 BCLK but more intense benchmarks would fail at that speed.

For VTT voltage, we stuck to a max of 1.375V, but it is likely with more VTT and further tweaking a user could exceed this level without too much effort. Even at 1.375V VTT (turbo boost enabled for 22x) an overclocker with some serious cooling would be able to run benches near 5Ghz which is more than most cooling can handle anyway. It all comes down to what BCLK you need for your cooling and whether or not you are willing to risk the life of your CPU.


Max Memory Overclock

Next up, memory! The memory we are testing is a low latency kit by GSkill specified to run 1600Mhz at 7-7-7-21 (4GB GSkill Ripjaws F3-12800CL7D-4GBRH) which is rumored to use BBSE DJ-F chips but we are unable to confirm that for sure at this time. What we can say however, is this Ripjaws kit is a very nice low voltage dual channel option for i5/i7.


Since we are running CL7 memory, we wanted to see how far we can push it at stock timings and voltage. We kept timings at 7-7-7-21 and voltage at 1.65v and were able to move up to 836Mhz using the 2:8 ratio. For stability, tests used were OCCT memtest, a run of SuperPI 32M and a run of 3DMark Vantage but you have to remember that we are not saying this means the memory is 100% stable from just these tests, but we can definitely say it is benchable.


Moving timings up to 8-8-8-24 1T the, CL7 Ripjaws give some extra headroom and we were able to achieve a speed of 883Mhz (DDR1766). Voltage remained at 1.65v which is the spec speed for the memory and the same stability tests were used.

All in all, the EVGA P55 FTW definitely has the overclocking potential an enthusiast will want whether it be for a solid 24/7 overclock or the edge of the seat and edge of stability benchmarking.