Overclocking

Not too many motherboards out there can support 2GHz and beyond memory frequencies, but the ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard just happens to be one of the few that can. The 3GB Kingston HyperX 2GHz memory kit runs with 9-9-9-24 1T timings with just 1.65V.  Since risking an Intel Core i7 960 processor doesn't seem too smart we let the memory voltages remain at 1.65V and pushed up the Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) to see just how high we could get the kit while remaining fully stable.  It should be noted that no other settings in the BIOS were adjusted and all the other motherboard voltages remained on 'auto' in the BIOS.

After a good hour or two of tinkering with the overclock we were able to reach a QPI of 151MHz, which was enough to reach an effective DDR3 clock frequency of 2113MHz.  This is an overclock of exactly 111MHz and just goes to show that this kit has more left in it without changing any other settings in the BIOS.  With the processor running at 3.62GHz and the memory kit at 2.1GHz the system felt more responsive and it was fully stable. Keep in mind this was done by adjusting the QPI frequency in the BIOS from 133MHz to 151MHz and increasing the memory voltage from 1.2V to 1.65V.  All the other settings weren't touched, so for a quick and simple overclock we couldn't be happier with the results.

Speaking of the results, notice that we nearly broke 21,000MB/Sec with this kit of memory in the Everest 4.60 Read Test! This is a great result and is higher than what Kingston Technology showed off in a viral marketing video that they posted to YouTube, that used an earlier revision BIOS and motherboard. The newer BIOS versions improve stability, but have lowered memory performance a bit.  This is the reason why we were only able to reach ~19,600MB/Sec at 2GHz and ~21,000MB/Sec at 2.1GHz.