When it comes to overclocking, Albatron has earned a good reputation, and so our expectations where high for what the PX925XE Pro-R might be able to achieve.

Unfortunately, at the time of this review, a 1066FSB Intel P4EE processor was not available for testing, so a 3.2GHz 800MHz FSB Intel P4 chip was used.

Starting at 200 MHz FSB we slowly raised the clock speed of the motherboard a few MHz at a time. The motherboard was certainly up to the overclocking challenge and we didn't hit our first snag until 223 MHz. Raising the memory voltage to 2.1V fixed the problem and allowed us to continue.

At 237 MHz FSB, the motherboard started to give us occasional blue screens when booting. Raising the 925XE voltage up 0.2V fixed those problems and we continued to push the board further.

We ran into more stability problems at 243 MHz, and this time we had to turn down the memory divider from 3:4 to 1:1 and run the DDR-2 Crucial Ballistix memory in sync with the FSB. At 245 MHz, the processor began to have some stability issues but increasing the Vcore to 1.45V fixed them.

In the end we were able to hit 256 MHz with 100% stability. We didn't quite meet the 925XE's standard operating frequency of 266 MHz but considering the 3.2GHz CPU was already running at ~4.1 GHz, I'd say the overclock went extremely well, wouldn't you?

Albatron's Powerful BIOS

In the Advanced Chipset Features section of the BIOS we have the DDR2 memory timing adjustments: CAS Latency, RAS to CAS, RAS Precharge and Precharge Delay (spelt wrong in the BIOS). Tweakers will be familiar with these options.

Albatron usually has powerful and flexible BIOS' on their motherboards and we were not disappointed with the PX925XE Pro-R. The FSB can be adjusted from 200-300 MHz in 1 MHz increments. Hopefully Albatron will increase this limit higher with future BIOS releases. You can set the memory to run 1:1 or 3:4 as well as adjust the PCI Express and PCI frequency, although those two are best left alone.

Maximum DDR2 voltage goes as high as 0.4V+, 925XE chipset voltage ramps up 0.3V+ and the CPU 0.3V+.

PCStats Test System Specs:

processor: intel pentium 4 3.2e clock speed: 16 x 200 mhz = 3.2 ghz motherboards: gigabyte ga-8anxp-d (925x)* msi 915p neo2 platinum (915p)* dfi lanparty 875p-t (i875p)** asrock 775v88 (pt880)** albatron px925xe pro-r (925xe)* videocard: msi rx800xt-vtd256* asus ax800xt/tvd ** memory: 2x 512mb crucial ballistix ddr2-533 2x 512mb corsair twinx1024-3200xl hard drive: 40gb western digital special ed cdrom: aopen 52x combo powersupply: seasonic super tornado 400w software setup windowsxp build 2600 intel inf 6.10.1012 forceware 66.85 workstation benchmarks sysmark 2004 business winstone 2004 content creation 2004 winbench 99 sisoft sandra 2004 super pi pcmark04 3dmark2001se 3dmark05 aquamark3 comanche 4 x2: the threat ut2003 ut2004 doom 3

* - msi rx800xt videocard used ** - asus x800xt pe videocard used