Ahh.... good ol' AthlonXP
overclocking action!
I haven't
played with a K7 system in quite some time, and really miss taking the AMD
AthlonXP 3200+ out for a spin. However, before we begin, I suspect my overclocking adventure wouldn't go
very far because VIA doesm't lock the AGP/PCI on the KT600. Gigabyte haven't given the end
user the option to control multipliers on the 7VT600-RZ either, so the Radeon 9800XT or CPU will hold me
back at some point. Still, let's see how far the Gigabyte 7VT600-RZ will let
us go!
Starting
slowly at 200 MHz, the FSB was raised until the 210 MHz mark. The board just wouldn't let us go higher, and raising the voltages didn't seem
to help so we think it was the videocard not liking the higher AGP speeds
that was holding us back. Oh well, nothing to see here so let's move forward and
take a peek in the BIOS....
VIA motherboards always have a lot of memory timings to play with
and here we see that the Gigabyte 7VT600-RZ is full of options. If you're a tweaker
you're going to have a lot of fun playing with these options, just remember to
press CTRL + F1 to un hide the Advanced Chipset Features menu.
In the Frequency Voltage Control we see that
the options are quite limited, but since this board is value-oriented, that's not unsurprising. FSB settings can go as high
as 254 MHz in 1 MHz increments, but you cannot adjust the PCI/AGP frequency....
There are
a few memory dividers which allow you to run the memory slower than the FSB,
but you won't want to use those IMHO. CPU voltage goes to a maximum of 10% over
stock, AGP can do 1.8V and DDR can go as high as 2.8V.
|
Intel PCStats Test System Specs: |
processor: |
intel pentium 4
3.0c |
clock
speed: |
15 x 200 mhz = 3.0 ghz |
motherboards: |
asus p4r800-v dlx (radeon 9100 igp) |
videocard: |
ati radeon 9800 pro |
memory: |
2x 256mb corsair
twinx3200ll |
hard
drive: |
40gb western
digital special ed. |
cdrom: |
nec 52x cd-rom |
powersupply: |
vantec 470w stealth
psu |
software
setup |
windowsxp build 2600 catalyst 4.4 |
workstation benchmarks |
sysmark 2004 business
winstone 2002 content creation 2002 winbench 99 sisoft sandra
2004 super pi pcmark2002 3dmark2001se aquamark3 comanche 4 x2: the
threat ut2003 | |
we chose a
radeon 9100 igp based
pentium 4 test system to compare against the gigabyte 7vt600-rz because the motherboard
is intended for those on a budget.
|
AMD PCStats Test System Specs: |
processor: |
athlonxp 3200+ |
clock
speed: |
11 x 200 mhz = 2.2 ghz |
motherboards: |
dfi lanparty nf2 ultra b* gigabyte ga-7t600-1394* gigabyte ga-7t600-rz |
videocard: |
ati radeon 9800 pro |
memory: |
2x 256mb corsair
twinx3200ll |
hard
drive: |
40gb western
digital special ed. |
cdrom: |
nec 52x cd-rom |
powersupply: |
vantec 470w stealth
psu |
software
setup |
windowsxp build 2600 nforce 3.13 via 4in1
4.49 catalyst 4.4 |
workstation benchmarks |
sysmark 2004 business
winstone 2002 content creation 2002 winbench 99 sisoft sandra
2004 super pi pcmark2002 3dmark2001se aquamark3 comanche 4 x2: the
threat ut2003 | |
* - because
of time constraints, not available for all benchmarks.