January 21 News from Around the Web
Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:05 am
Asus Blitz Extreme Review
"I never thought I would be able to pull more performance out of my existing hardware. My CPU has hit walls from 440 to 470 FSB on other boards but usually I could coax another 5 FSB from it with extreme voltages. As it turns out, the old Quad had a little more life left in it after all. 490 x 7 was stable in Memtest 1.70 but would crash upon loading Windows. Lowering the clocks a little further resulted in a boot into Windows at 484 x 7. Not only did this clock speed boot into Windows, but was Prime 95 stable for over 24 hours as well. Voltages on the northbridge, CPU and CPU PLL were increased to gain stability at this clockspeed. A nice little feature in the BIOS is the color coding of the miscellaneous voltages. Green, of course, for normal, Yellow for high and Red for crazy. This gives you an indication of what levels Asus thinks are "safe" and which are not. Overclocking the memory did not require a whole lot of tweaking to get the memory to perform. By focusing on the CPU clocks I ran the memory slower than it is capable of. This memory does indeed push to 940MHz on this board with timings of 8-7-6-20 at 1.96volts. Pushing the limits on the Asus Blitz Extreme was not a problem. The crash recovery requires just a shutdown and reboot. This takes you back to the default settings, so the next boot is trouble free. Kind of refreshing if you ask me. If it does get to the point where the simple reboot does not work, there is always the clear CMOS button on the I/O panel just in case. The final clock speed of 484 x 7 is the most "Extreme" clockspeed that my Q6600 has ever been able to achieve."
@ OCC
Monday Web Reviews:
HARDWARE
B-Gear/B-Tarantula 550 watt Power Supply Review @ hi-techreviews.com
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition CPU Review @ Virtual-Hideout
OCZ PC2-8500/DDR2-1066 nVidia SLI-Ready Edition 2GB Kit Memory Review @ ocinside
Antec Sonata Plus 550 Case Review @ circuitREMIX
AMD 5000+ Black Edition AM2 X2 Processor Review @ OCC
Peripherals
Saitek X52 Joystick Review @ motheboards.org
X-Arcade Tankstick Dual Controller with Trackball @ HotHardware.com
SteelSeries SP Pro Gaming Mousepad Review @ OCModShop
Saitek X52 Joystick Review @ gamepyre
Software
ATI Catalyst 8.1 Analysis - XP & Vista @ TweakTown
Just Say No to SuperFetch @ OCModShop
Events
AEE 2008 Pictures @ ASE Labs
Games
The Witcher PC Review @ TTGamer
"I never thought I would be able to pull more performance out of my existing hardware. My CPU has hit walls from 440 to 470 FSB on other boards but usually I could coax another 5 FSB from it with extreme voltages. As it turns out, the old Quad had a little more life left in it after all. 490 x 7 was stable in Memtest 1.70 but would crash upon loading Windows. Lowering the clocks a little further resulted in a boot into Windows at 484 x 7. Not only did this clock speed boot into Windows, but was Prime 95 stable for over 24 hours as well. Voltages on the northbridge, CPU and CPU PLL were increased to gain stability at this clockspeed. A nice little feature in the BIOS is the color coding of the miscellaneous voltages. Green, of course, for normal, Yellow for high and Red for crazy. This gives you an indication of what levels Asus thinks are "safe" and which are not. Overclocking the memory did not require a whole lot of tweaking to get the memory to perform. By focusing on the CPU clocks I ran the memory slower than it is capable of. This memory does indeed push to 940MHz on this board with timings of 8-7-6-20 at 1.96volts. Pushing the limits on the Asus Blitz Extreme was not a problem. The crash recovery requires just a shutdown and reboot. This takes you back to the default settings, so the next boot is trouble free. Kind of refreshing if you ask me. If it does get to the point where the simple reboot does not work, there is always the clear CMOS button on the I/O panel just in case. The final clock speed of 484 x 7 is the most "Extreme" clockspeed that my Q6600 has ever been able to achieve."
@ OCC
Monday Web Reviews:
HARDWARE
B-Gear/B-Tarantula 550 watt Power Supply Review @ hi-techreviews.com
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition CPU Review @ Virtual-Hideout
OCZ PC2-8500/DDR2-1066 nVidia SLI-Ready Edition 2GB Kit Memory Review @ ocinside
Antec Sonata Plus 550 Case Review @ circuitREMIX
AMD 5000+ Black Edition AM2 X2 Processor Review @ OCC
Peripherals
Saitek X52 Joystick Review @ motheboards.org
X-Arcade Tankstick Dual Controller with Trackball @ HotHardware.com
SteelSeries SP Pro Gaming Mousepad Review @ OCModShop
Saitek X52 Joystick Review @ gamepyre
Software
ATI Catalyst 8.1 Analysis - XP & Vista @ TweakTown
Just Say No to SuperFetch @ OCModShop
Events
AEE 2008 Pictures @ ASE Labs
Games
The Witcher PC Review @ TTGamer