Page 13 - Overclocking and Conclusion
For this review, I decided to go nuts and see what maximum overclock I could attain within somewhat reasonable voltage. Blowing 1.45V through the Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Brisbane that runs at stock 2.3GHz (11.5*200), I set the VDDA voltage to 2.728V and lowered the HTT link and memory frequency to make sure nothing gets in the way. The multiplier is set to 10x for some ease in overclocking (I mean, who can do mental math nowadays if the multiplier is not 10x?) as well as seeing how the NVIDIA 780a SLI chipset can stack in terms of FSB. The fun begins.
Generally speaking, in our hours of overclocking and stability testing, the maximum overclock we were able to attain on the Asus M3N-HT Deluxe with the Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Brisbane was 3.0GHz stably. We were able to boot a bit higher than 3.1GHz, but it wasn't Orthos stable. Since this is my first time overclocking with this specific chip and motherboard, I don't know how it compares against others, but from my internet sources it's pretty good from what I can see. I mean, despite our obsession with Intel and their insanely overclockable CPUs, the 65nm AMDs aren't bad in terms of overclocking either (Sans the voltages, but whatever, it's reasonable enough haha) -- 30% is really quite decent.
Vdroop is not very evident on the M3N-HT Deluxe -- the voltage control and regulation is decent on the M3N-HT Deluxe motherboard.
It's definitely nice to see that there's such great motherboards made for AMD CPUs at this point. While we haven't had entirely great impressions with NVIDIA chipsets on the Intel platform in the past, my personal experience with NVIDIA chipsets for AMD CPUs has always been excellent -- ranging from the original Newcastle and Clawhammer Athlon 64 days, to Winchester, Venice, San Diego, and eventually Manchester and Toledo on Socket 939 with the nForce4 Ultra/nForce 4 SLI, the M3N-HT Deluxe with the 780a SLI chipset on AM2 continued this trend -- I am still pleased with this NVIDIA chipset and AMD CPU combination. Great things like Hybrid SLI and support for 3-way SLI is also implemented on the Asus M3N-HT Deluxe, thanks to the NVIDIA 780a SLI chipset. In terms of layout, there are certainly room for improvement, most notably the odd placement of floppy connector and a lack of connectors at the back I/O. Performance is fairly consistent -- anything poor you see in our charts previously, is really because of the relatively weak CPU we've used as seen in the 3DMark06 scores. Overclocking is also decent on the M3N-HT Deluxe; pulling a sweet 3.0GHz out of an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Brisbane at 300MHz FSB. Generally speaking, if you're looking for a Socket AM2 motherboard at this time, the Asus M3N-HT Deluxe is definitely worth considering.
Special thanks to Wil over at Asus for making this review possible.
Starting from April 30, 2007, Number Ratings has been dropped for motherboards, RAM, and graphics cards. This is to ensure the most appropriate ratings reflected without the limits of using numbers. Everything else will continue using the Number Rating System.
More information in our Review Focus.
Sticking with AMD and need a sweet, full featured AM2 motherboard with decent overclocking capabilities? The Asus M3N-HT Deluxe is definitely a board worth considering!
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Page Index
1. Introduction, Features, and Specifications
2. Bundle, Chipset, BIOS
3. A Closer Look, Board Layout
4. Test System; Benchmark: 3DMark06
5. Benchmark: PCMark05
6. Benchmark: Cinebench R10, SuperPI 1M
7. Benchmark: EVEREST CPU
8. Benchmark: EVEREST FPU
9. Benchmark: EVEREST Memory
10. Benchmark: EVEREST Memory Latency, HDTach 3.0.1.0
11. Onboard Sound (RMAA 6.06) Analyzation
12. Asus Express Gate Onboard Linux
13. Overclocking and Conclusion
