Overclocking Results:

stock max. oc motherboard speed: 200 mhz 232 mhz if you're new to Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent Guides for some pointers: Overclocking the CPU and Memory Overclocking the Videocard

Overclocking the ASRock 775XFire-ESATA2/A/ASR motherboard is an interesting proposition since ASRock is not known for its overclocking capabilities. Starting at 200 MHz, the FSB was increased in small 5 MHz intervals.

At 217 MHz the 775XFire-ESATA2 motherboard seemed to be a bit flaky, yet increasing the VDDQ (NB, SB) voltage from Low to High solved that issue. Continuing upwards, the 775XFire-ESATA2 motherboard maxed out at 232 MHz; anything higher and the system was unstable. System memory was not the issue since it has been tested up higher as has the processor.

It is not the greatest overclock we have seen, but considering that this ASRock motherboard is aimed at the budget market it's not a bad result either. One thing should be clear, if you're looking for overclocking stick with the enthusiast class motherboards, though they will cost a lot more.

What the 775XFire-ESATA2/A/ASR BIOS Offers

In the CPU Configuration section users can adjust the Asrock 775XFire-ESATA2 motherboard FSB between 100-300 MHz in 1 MHz increments.

The real fun is in the Chipset Settings menu. Here users can adjust the memory frequency between DDR2 400 or DDR2 533 as well as adjust the memory timings. In the Chipset Settings menu are also the memory and NB/SB voltage adjustments although ASRock do not list numeric values. The BIOS just lists 'Low,' 'Middle' and 'Hi' options.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the ASRock 775XFire-ESATA2/A/ASR 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 Intel 945PL 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 processor: intel Pentium D 840 Clock Speed: 16 x 200 MHz = 3.2 GHz Motherboards: ASRock 775XFire-eSATA2 (945PL) Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 (955X) Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2 (945P) Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI) MSI P4N Diamond (NF4 SLI) AOpen i945Ga-PHS (945G) Videocard: MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E Memory: 1GB (2x 512MB) Corsair Twin2X1024-8000UL Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Thermaltake Jungle 512 Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Intel INF 7.2.2.1006 nVIDIA Intel nForce4 7.15 ATI Catalyst 6.1 Benchmarks: SYSMark 2004 Business Winstone 2004 Content Creation 2004 Super Pi SiSoft Sandra 2005 PCMark04 3DMark2001SE 3DMark05 AquaMark3 Comanche 4 X2: The Threat UT2003 UT2004 Doom 3