Overclocking Results:

stock max. oc motherboard speed: 266 mhz 530 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

With the Asus BLITZ Extreme based on Intel's P35 Express chipset, we already know that the motherboard will overclock well... the only question is how well. The motherboard was equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 processor and 2GB of Corsair's DOMINATOR Twin3X2048-1800C7D memory. Starting at 333 MHz FSB the clock speed was increased in 5 MHz increments.

As with all modern motherboards the Asus BLITZ Extreme had absolutely no difficulty passing the 400 MHz mark, at 465 MHz the system started to show some signs of instability but that was fixed by increasing the Northbridge voltage to 1.4V. To get to 500 MHz FSB the BLITZ Extreme required another Northbridge voltage jump to 1.46V.

The maximum speed the Asus BLITZ Extreme motherboard could run with stability was 530 MHz, anything higher and it was a no go. Still 530 MHz FSB is a very respectable speed and high enough for you to push your hardware to the max.

Inside the Asus BIOS:

In the Extreme Tweaker section we find the overclocking options. You can adjust the CPU clock multiplier and motherboard clock speed from 200-800 MHz in 1 MHz increments. Here you'll also find the memory timing adjustments and Asus includes all the usual options like CAS Latency and a few extras that will take you some time to figure out.

Further down on the page we find the voltage options. One thing is certain with the values that Asus provides, make sure you know what you're doing otherwise you'll kill your motherboard, memory and processor. Asus does its part by putting dangerous values in red.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the Asus BLITZ Extreme 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 P35 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.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system #1 reference system #2 processor: intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (775) AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+ (AM2) Clock Speed: 8 x 333 = 2.66 GHz 9 x 266 MHz = 2.4 GHz 13 x 200 MHz = 2.6 GHz Motherboard: Asus BLITZ Extreme (P35 Express) ECS PN2 SLI2+ (NF 680i SLI) Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKRS2H (975X) Biostar TForce P965 DLX (P965 Express) Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (P965 Express) Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H (P965 Express) MSI P965 Platinum (P965 Express) Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 (P965 Express) Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 (P35 Express) MSI P35 Platinum (P35 Express) Asus BLITZ Formula (P35 Express) ASRock AM2V890-VSTA (VIA K8T890) Albatron KM51PV-AM2 (GF6150) MSI K9N SLI Platinum (NF 570 SLI) Asus M2-CROSSHAIR (NF 590 SLI) Videocard: MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E Memory: 2x 1024MB Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2X2048-8888C4DF (DDR2) 2x 1024MB Corsair DOMINATOR Twin3X2048-1800C7D (DDR3) Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Intel E6600 Reference AMD Athlon64 FX-62 Reference Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Intel INF 7.22 nVIDIA Forceware 91.47 Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 nVIDIA Forceware 9.35 nVIDIA Forceware 91.47 Benchmarks: SYSMark 2004 PC Worldbench 5.0 Super Pi SiSoft Sandra 2005 PCMark05 3DMark05 3DMark06 FarCry Doom 3 Quake 4