OverclockingIn overclocking there are always to aspects that determine the quality of the motherboard: voltage and limit. The first is quite simple to explain: the less voltage you need for a certain setting, the more you have left to push your system even further. To find out if the motherboard is of high quality in terms of voltage
scaling we try to find the lowest voltage settings needed for 500FSB, which is a barrier that most people try to reach when overclocking. 500x8, for instance, gives you already 4GHz at a relatively low vcore (as most 45nm C2D's run at <1.2v stock); 500x9 gives you 4.5ghz, which is doable if you have good air-cooling. In case of Asus and MSI, which we tested for voltage scalability as well, we always needed to increase the Vmch (voltage of the northbridge) a little bit to get 500FSB rockstable. The DFI P45 on the other hand, hits 500FSB with the lowest voltages set in the bios for the chipset!
The second aspect is a little more difficult to test, as it's not always the motherboard that reaches its limit when overclocking. Your memory has to be able to run as fast as the FSB, which is not that common once you go over 600FSB. Furthermore, you processor must be capable of running that kind of front side bus; hence the reason why most people hit extreme speeds at temperatures under -100°C. Many people in the extreme overclocking community who have tested the DFI Lanparty DK P45-T2RS Plus under extreme cooling have hit FSB speeds above 650MHz, without using excessive voltage, but using extreme low temperatures.
This is something new: the ABS, Automatic Boost System, utility. The name implies some kind of utility that finds the maximum overclock of your system, however ... it's not. The ABS utility makes it possible for people to share their saved bios profiles, making it easier for people to hit high frequencies. To be honest, it's a good idea, but it's quite difficult to actually share your settings as every system reacts different on voltages. Especially when the system is very fine-tuned, meaning for instance changed sub timings of the memory; the chances of failure are quite big. Nevertheless, Madshrimps is willing to give the settings we used in our LN2 overclocking adventure.
BANK1: This is the exact settings we used for the 500x8 test setting. All voltages are set to the lowest value, as that worked perfectly.
BANK2: These are settings which are supposed to give you 600FSB on air cooling, provided by OPB of the OCXtreme.org extreme overclocking community. We tested those and were able to boot into windows without a problem.
BANK3: These are the settings that were provided by Pt1t, who is on the Madshrimps overclocking team on Hwbot and widely known for his skills regarding FSB tuning. Again, we tested the settings with our ln² cooled configuration and were able to boot into windows at 650MHz FSB.
BANK4: These are the settings which are supposed to give you 6250MHz. These settings were used to fine-tune our system, but did not gave us a windows-bootable configuration. We were able to POST, though, on an ln2 configuration
Click
here for the file containing these four bios (
bios 0725) configurations.
NOTE THAT MADSHRIMPS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE YOU MAY DO TO YOUR SYSTEM BY USING THIS FILE. Overclocking takes time, please make sure your system is capable of running at these frequencies!!
Overclocking: resultsBelow you can find the results of our first LN2 overclocking session with the DFI P45 motherboard. The results are not bad, but not super either. It was the first time we tested this motherboard in combination with the E8600 and Crucial Ballistix, so we hope for even better results when everything is tested on air cooling first.
Power consumptionDFI doesn't offer any power saving utility or bios option for users who want to save energy. Is that bad? Check out the results. Load is the maximum power consumption in a 3DMark06 run.
Yes, DFI's P45 does use more energy, but the difference between DFI and MSI/ASUS energy saving is very, very small. That is the best proof that, I've said it more than once through my reviews, people who really want to save energy should underclock their system and buy a motherboard that allows them to undervolt the different components of the motherboard. DFI has not added this function to their motherboard and is therefore not the best choice if you want to make your system more energy-efficient.
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