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| Overclocking Results: |
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PCSTATS has generally had an easy time overclocking MSI motherboards in the 6 years we've been
at this gig, so the expectations were good as the tweaking began in earnest with
the MSI P965 Platinum motherboard.
With an Intel Core 2 Duo
E6600 processor and a 2GB set of Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C4 installed, the MSI P965 Platinum had
everything it needed to fly... Before overclocking began the memory was first
set to run in DDR2-533 MHz mode, this way it wouldn't hold the motherboard
back.
Starting at 266 MHz the P965 Platinum's clock speed was
increased in 10 MHz intervals. That's more aggressive than we normally take it,
but I have a good feeling about this MSI board. ;-)
Sure enough the P965 Platinum motherboard flew by 300
MHz FSB. It's great to see the new generation of Intel Core 2 Duo motherboards
overclock so well. At 360 MHz the motherboard started to show some signs of
instability, increasing the Northbridge voltage to the max value (1.69V) solved
that issue.
We pushed the board a little higher, to a maximum speed
of 375 MHz in fact. Not too shabby at all for a P965 Express motherboard. It's
great to see how well these mainstream motherboards overclock these days.
Inside The P965 Platinum's
BIOS:
MSI provides only basic memory timing
adjustment options in the P965 Platinum BIOS. A bit of a surprise really, MSI
usually has more overclocking flair. In any case these are the major options
that affect system performance when used correctly.
The FSB can be adjusted between 266-550 MHz
in 1 MHz increments, and the CPU voltage goes as high as 0.795V above stock
values. Note don't set your CPU voltage that high unless you have really good
cooling! There are many memory frequency adjustments from DDR2-400 to DDR2-1066
levels, and memory voltage can be adjusted to 2.45V. Northbridge voltage goes as
high as 1.69V, but make sure you have some good system cooling before attempting
anything that risky.
Next up are the benchmarks; will the MSI P965
Platinum kick show its mettle?
Prelude to Benchmarks
The
details of how the MSI P965 Platinum motherboard test system was configured for
benchmarking, including the specific hardware, software drivers, operating
system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the
general specs for the reference platforms this Intel P965 Express based system
is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system
configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark
results.
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| PCSTATS Test System Configurations |
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