Overclocking Performance:

Here’s a look at how we conduct our overclocking performance tests on various boards. We start by overclocking our system in 5Mhz increments and slowly increase the frequency of the microprocessors as well the memory as need be. After overclocking the board in small increments, we boot back to Windows and run our regular suite of gaming stress tests to make sure the system is stable before continuing further. As long as the system passes our Aquamark3, 3Dmark01, UT2004, Far Cry, Halo and Doom III tests, we consider the system to be stable enough to continue testing. We then head back to the BIOS to make necessary changes (such as memory timings) and continue with our overclocking tests. After each attempt, the system is rebooted and put through rigorous assessments to ensure its stability. When we finally reach the potential of the motherboard, we go back to the BIOS, alter any settings we feel could limit the motherboard’s overclocking attempts and downclock a little bit to reach a stable point. When we reach another peak point, we generally move the bus speeds in one MHz increments to get the best overclock possible. And of course, once we have found the limit of the board, we continue to run stress tests on it to confirm system stability. The testbed is the same throughout the testing process with an exception of IDE and SATA drives. Since SATA drives have a tendency to limit overclocking, we usually use IDE drives in our tests, thereby, finding the true capabilities of the board.

Due to the lack of PCI/AGP lock, we only managed to overclock the board to 221MHz at standard voltage settings. Unfortunately, it’s dismal to see such enthusiast friendly boards take the backseat due to chipset limitations. What good are the rest of the BIOS settings when you can’t overclock the system? Then again, you could try to get the best stock performance out of the board. Like the majority of the KT800 boards in the market, this, too, isn’t a appealing choice to die-hard overclockers in the market, but this should be expected from KT800 chipset at this point.