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Foxconn A7DA-S & MSI DKA790GX Platinum Review
[Abstract]
Introduction When AMD launched its 780G chipset early this year, it was hailed as one of the best integrated chipsets in the market. Intel was yet to deliver on its newer 4-series chipset then ...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
Overclocking
Obviously, enthusiasts would be sharpening their tools in anticipation of the new ACC feature on the 790GX. However, the settings related to this in the BIOS are woefully limited in terms of explaining what it really does. In fact, the Foxconn A7DA-S had no ACC related settings in its BIOS at all unlike the MSI, which allowed users to adjust the ACC setting from -12 to 12% in its BIOS.
This made us wonder at first if it is even supported on this board. We later found the settings to be present when we installed AMD's Overdrive. So users can actually tweak these settings in Windows through this very useful utility. From what we saw, increasing the values into positive territory will aid in getting higher clocks while the default lower, negative values we saw are for greater power efficiency.
In any case, overclocking the AMD Phenom is quite different from the usual Athlon 64 X2, something that we covered in some detail previously in our 790FX 4-way motherboard roundup. For today, we'll be looking solely at pushing the HTT frequency, even at the expense of lowering the bus multipliers.
For the Foxconn, it was quick to fail our overclocking tests and we only managed 230MHz with a 9.5x multiplier (and it didn't fare any better with a lower multiplier either).
The MSI DKA790GX Platinum performed much better. With its OC jumpers enabled, it easily got to 240MHz. And it kept going till 290MHz, though that was achieved with a lower 7.5x multiplier.
However, with the sacrifices that we had to make to get such HTT frequencies, the overall 'overclock' in terms of final clock speed is not exactly very impressive. ACC is said to help when it came to actual overclocking, when you're only concerned with the final stable clock speed and the anecdotes we are reading online seem to indicate so. At least, it should provide enthusiasts with hours of tinkering to get the right settings in order to see the greatest boost in overclocking, especially with the lack of documentation from AMD.
As for the BIOS options available, the Foxconn A7DA-S had the following:-
- CPU Clock: 190 - 400MHz
- PCIe Clock: 90 - 250MHz
- GFX Engine Clock: 100 - 999MHz
- Memory Speed Adjust: 200, 266, 333, 400, 533
- CPU Voltage: +25mV - 775mV (in 25mV steps)
- Memory Voltage: +50 - 600mV (in 50mV steps)
- NB Voltage: +30 - 300mV (in 30mV steps)
- HT/SB Voltage: +30 - 300mV (in 30mV steps)
- CPU - NB HT Link (200MHz - 2600MHz)
The MSI DKA790GX Platinum had the following BIOS options:-
CPU Clock: 200 - 600MHz
PCIe Settings: 100 - 150MHz
CPU - NB Ratio: 800 - 2600MHz
HT Link: 200 - 2600MHz
FSB/DRAM Ratio: 1:1, 1:1.33, 1:1.66, 1:2, 1:2.66
CPU Voltage: 1.35 - 1.60V (in 0.05V steps)
Memory Voltage: 1.80 - 2.50 (in 0.05V steps)
NB Voltage: 1.10 - 1.40V (in 0.05V steps)
HT Link Voltage: 1.20 - 1.50V (in 0.05V steps)
CPU - NB VDD Voltage: 1.10 - 1.55V (in 0.0125V steps)
CPU - VDD Voltage: 1.10 - 1.55V (in 0.0125V steps)
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