 |
| Overclocking Results: |
|
|
The AMD 790GX chipset is aimed at a more demanding
market segment than the less-expensive 780G, which made PCSTATS hopeful that the
Foxconn A7DA-S will provide a decent overclock. After lowering the CPU
multiplier and setting the RAM, Northbridge and CPU frequency clock speeds to
manual, the motherboard's bus speed was increased by 15MHz increments, starting
at 200MHz.
Overclocking from 200MHz up to 225 MHz was no problem,
but beyond that graphical artifacts started to appear on boot-up and Windows
Vista would begin to hang and stall. Increasing the CPU voltage by .15V solved
this problem, and the clockspeed was increased up to 240MHz. Unfortunately any
speed greater than this would cause the artifacting to return, and no amount of
voltage fiddling would fix the problem.
While not the best overclocking result, it's still not
quite as good as PCSTATS has been able to achieve on similarly-priced,
non-integrated AMD motherboards.
|
Hard power and reset buttons are convenient desktop
tweaking and troubleshooting a motherboard out of the
box. |
It should be noted that the integrated Radeon HD 3300
graphics processor on the Foxconn A7DA-S is also highly overclockable - with
minor tweaking it was possible to increase the default 700MHz clockspeed up to a
stable 900MHz. While PCSTATS didn't have a chance to run benchmarks at these
speeds, it should provide a noticeable boost to the IGP's gaming performance.
A quick peek into the BIOS:
Foxconn's motherboards come with a lot of
tweaking options and the A7DA-S is no exception. In the Foxconn Central Control
Unit BIOS page there are options for most CPU, northbridge and memory timing and
voltage options.
Here's a look at the basic CPU adjustment
screen. CPU clockspeed can be adjusted in 1MHz increments, and the CPU
multiplier can be adjusted from as low as 4X up to its natural 13X
multiplier.
Pretty much every aspect of RAM timing can be adjusted,
although for most users leaving timings on AUTO will be fine.
Here's the configuration page for the internal graphics
controller. Overclock the graphics processor is quite easy, and might give
enough extra performance to warrant some fine-tuned adjustments.
CPU voltages can be increased in +25mV increments up to
a total of +375mV. The northbridge can be brought up to +300mV, and the memory
can be increased to +600mV. Remember that these are the maximum voltages, and
power settings this high can damage your motherboard and components, so be
careful before you start adjusting them!
Prelude to Benchmarks
The details of how the Foxconn A7DA-S motherboard test
system was configured for benchmarking; the specific hardware, software drivers,
operating system and benchmark versions is indicated below. In the second column
are the general specs for the reference platforms this AMD 790GX based
motherboard is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS
test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results
on the next page.
|
| PCSTATS Test System
Configurations |
|
test system |
reference system #1 |
reference system #1 |
| processor: |
amd Athlon64 X2 5000+ (AM2) |
AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+ (AM2) |
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (775) |
| Clock
Speed: |
13 x 200 MHz = 2.6 GHz |
13 x 200 MHz = 2.6 GHz |
8 x 333 = 2.66GHz |
| Motherboard: |
Foxconn A7DA-S
(AMD 790GX) |
ECS A780GM-A
(AMD 780G)
Biostar TF8200 A2+ (Geforce
8200)
Foxconn A690GM2MA (AMD 690G) |
Intel DG45ID (Intel G45)
ECS G33T-M2 (Intel G33) |
| Videocard: |
MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E-HD-OC |
| Memory: |
2x 1024MB Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C4 |
| Hard
Drive: |
74GB
Western Digital Raptor WD740 |
| CDROM: |
AOpen Combo 52x |
| PowerSupply: |
PC Power &
Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI |
| Heatsink: |
AMD Athlon64 FX-62 Reference |
Intel E6750
Reference |
| Software Setup: |
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
ATi Catalyst 8.8
nVIDIA
Forceware 169.25 |
Microsoft
Windows Vista Ultimate
Intel INF
9.0.0.1009
nVidia Forceware 169.25 |
| Benchmarks: |
SYSMark
2007 Preview
SiSoft Sandra 2008
Super Pi
PCMark
Vantage
3DMark06
3DMark Vantage
FEAR
Call of
Juarez
Lost Planet
Crysis | |
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