ASUS P5E3 Premium X48 Motherboard Review

Overclocking Results

This was going to be the crowning jewel of this review. We had great success in all aspects of the Rampage Formula x48 DDR2 overclocking and expected nothing less of our P5E3-Premium. Unfortunately things didn't quite work out how we wished, but despite our troubles, we did always have success in the 'sweet spot' and would fully recommend most 24/7 setups to be running in that FSB range.

We started having relative success with FSB clocks on BIOS 0401 but only passed 500FSB with this new beta 0503 BIOS. Keep in mind, this is the same CPU that was running Prime 95 at 580FSB within hours of setting the hardware up with the Rampage Formula. Our ASUS motherboard experience is deep and goes back through both the Maximus Extreme, P5K3-Dlx, and P5B-Dlx so the X48 chipset isn't exactly new, nor is the way ASUS sets up a motherboard but we have simply fought with this motherboard for high FSB clocking.

We have had success in a lot of other areas, one of them being with a 2x2GB kit of G.Skill PC3-12800 7-7-7-18. A very recent reader of HWC asked us to check stability at the rated timings/frequencies of a 2x2GB kit and since we were going to be limited by our FSB short comings on 2x1GB modules, we figured why not use this as a memory test.

2x2GB DDR3-1600 7-7-7 Stability Testing

After the questions being rasied about this motherboards ability to run 2x2GB kits of memory at DDR3-1600, I was concerned putting these G.Skill Pi modules in but they booted right up at the XMP profiles of 800MHz 7-7-7-18 and ran 100% out of the box. So much for those worries as the P5E3-Premium has shown it can handle DDR3-1600 2x2GB modules. All memory in this review was ran in the black slots.

Maximum Overall Stability Overclocking

The next order of business was our overall system overclock. In the Rampage Formula, this processor managed close to 4.1GHz stable so we started there. Much to our surprise, 456*9 for 4104MHz turned out to be stable with the memory running 1:2 @ 1824 7-7-7-20 at PL6. The voltages are all set to their lowest with slight bumps in PLL and of course vNB up to 1.51v which is still plenty low enough for 24/7 operation. Getting this type of overclock was relatively easy. Once we found out that the 266Strap didn't really work, we stayed on the 333Strap and life was good.

Maximum FSB Overclocking - Thus Far

This last screen shot is a departure from our regular rigorous testing and this is because we just got out hands on a beta BIOS that seems to be showing potential. We have only had it for a day but the FSB overclocking which was previously stalled right around the 500FSB mark has improved somewhat with very limited time in this new BIOS. When every other P5E3-Premium in the overclocking community is clocking well into the 550FSB range, we are perplexed as to why we are fighting for 530FSB with our sample.