Backup

This system runs (2) different operating systems, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

CPU COOLER: 
Xigmatech Dark Knight

MOBO: Asus M2N4 SLI AM2 Nvidia nForce 500 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard (s/n:)

GFX: PNY XLR8 8800 Video Card  (s/n:_________________) Registered Warranty:_____________

RAM: 2Gb SuperTalent 800MHz

PSU:  Ultra 600 Watt SLI

CASE: Apevia X-Plorer

APU:

HDD: Hard drive #1     Hard Drive #2:

DISPLAY:

KEYBOARD:

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows VISTA 32 bit Microsoft Registered and Authorized on 9-28-2010 (s/n:__________________)

MOTHERBOARD: Asus M2N4-SLI

[Product Information]
*Product Type : Motherboard
*Product Model : M2N4-SLI
*Product S/N : 69MOAB345324
*Place of Purchase : Tiger Direct
*Date of Purchase : 2007/1/1

[Motherboard Specification]
*Motherboard Revision : 90-MIBOLO-GOURYGZ
*Motherboard BIOS Revision : M2N4-SLI

[VGA Card Specification]
*VGA Card Vendor : PNY
*VGA Card Model : GeForce 8800 GT
*VGA Card Chipset : 8800 GT
*VGA Card Driver : 8800 GT

[CPU Specification]
*CPU Vendor : AMD
*CPU Type : AM2
*CPU Speed : 2.01

[Memory Specification]
*Memory Vendor : SuperTalent 800MHz
*Memory Model : DDR2 800
*Memory Capacity : 2

[HDD Specification]
HDD Vendor :
HDD Model :
HDD Capacity :

[Add-on Card Specificatio]
Add-on Card Vendor :
Add-on Card Type :
Add-on Card Model :

*Operating System : Vista 32bit

 AMD Live!™ Ready
- Support AMD® Socket AM2 CPU
- NVIDIA® nForce 500 SLI Technology
- Dual channel DDR2 800
- ASUS Q-Connector
- ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3

Chipset NVIDIA nForce 500 SLI MCP
Front Side Bus 2000 / 1600 MT/s
Memory Dual channel memory architecture

4 x DIMM, max. 8GB, DDR2-800/667/533, ECC and non-ECC, un-buffered memory

Expansion Slots 2 x PCI Express x16 slot with NVIDIA® SLI™ technology support, at x8, x8 speed
2 x PCI Express x1
2 x PCI 2.2

Scalable Link Interface (SLI™) Support two identical NVIDIA SLI-Ready graphics cards (both at x8 mode)
ASUS two-slot thermal design

Storage NVIDIA nForce 500 SLI™ MCP supports:
* 2 x Ultra DMA 133 / 100 / 66 / 33
* 4 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s
*Supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD span cross Serial ATA drives

LAN NVIDIA nForce 500 SLI™ MCP built-in Gigabit MAC with external Attansic PHY
Support TCP/IP Acceleration

Audio Realtek ALC850, 6-ch AC'97 CODEC
Jack Sensing and Enumeration
S/PDIF out interface

USB Max. 10 x USB2.0 ports

Overclocking Features AI Overclocking (intelligent CPU frequency tuner)
SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection): allowing FSB tuning from 200MHz up to 400MHz at 1MHz increment
ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
Adjustable FSB/DDR2 ratio. Fixed PCI/PCIe frequencies.

Special Features ASUS EZ DIY:
- ASUS CrashFree BIOS3
- ASUS EZ Flash2
- ASUS Q-Connector
ASUS Q-Fan 2
ASUS MyLogo2

Back Panel I/O Ports 1 x PS/2 Keyboard port
1 x PS/2 Mouses
1 x LAN (RJ45) port
4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
1 x SPDIF Out
1 x Parallel(Printer Port)
1 x COM port
6-channel Audio ports

Internal I/O Connectors  3 x USB 2.0 connectors supports additional 6 USB 2.0 ports
1 x Floppy disk drive connector
2 x IDE connector for four devices
4 x SATA connectors
1 x CPU / 1 x Chassis / 1 x Power Fan connectors
1 x S/PDIF output connector
Front Panel Audio connector
AUX audio in
CD audio in
24-pin ATX Power connector
4-pin ATX 12V Power connector
System panel connector

BIOS 4Mb AWARD BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.3

O/S Compatibility Windows Vista/XP/2000

Support Disc Drivers
ASUS PC Probe II
ASUS Update
NVIDIA MediaShield™ RAID
Anti-virus software (OEM version)

Form Factor ATX Form Factor, 12"x 9" (30.5cm x 22.8cm)

CPU:

Codename: Windsor
Release Date: May 23, 2006
Socket:  AM2 (939/940 PIN)
Brand ID: 4
Package: 90nm
Core Voltage:  V
Family: F
Extended Family: F
Model: B
Extended Model: 6B
Stepping: 2
Revisions: BH-G2
Core Speed: 2211.5MHz
Multiplier: 11.0x
Bus Speed: 201.1MHz
HT Link: 1005.2MHz
L1 Data: 2 x 64KBytes 2-way
L1 Instruction: 2 x 64KBytes 2-way
Level 2: 2 x 512KBytes 16-way
BIOS
Phoenix Technologies LTD
Version: ASUS M2N4-SLI BIOS Revision 1205
Bios Date: 08/19/2008

 

Anandtech Review:

Date: 5/23/2006

It's taken AMD almost the entire life-span of the Athlon 64, but Intel is finally on the run. Pick whatever measure of success you'd like, whether it is performance benchmarks, the Dell announcement, or being publicly accepted as a threat - AMD has done it. It's because of AMD's extremely successful uphill battle against Intel these past few years that we've had such high expectations from the company. So when Intel first started talking about its new Core architecture, we turned to AMD for a response that it surely must have had in the works for years, but as you all know we came up empty handed.

Only recently has AMD begun talking about what's coming next, and it will divulge even more information in the following weeks. The problem is that the architectural revisions to K8 that AMD is finally talking about now are still things we will see in the 2007 - 2008 time frame, while Intel's Core architecture is still on schedule to be a reality for 2006. What AMD does have planned to keep itself afloat during 2006 and until the new K8L core debuts is a brand new platform: Socket-AM2.

The long awaited Socket-AM2 platform marks the beginning of AMD's transition to DDR2 memory. If you'll remember, Intel made this transition about two years ago with the introduction of its 925X and 915 series of chipsets. The move to DDR2 proved to yield very little in the way of performance, but it was necessary as Intel was able to drive enough quantity of DDR2 in order to make the cost reasonable today. With DDR2 prices low enough, and availability high enough, AMD was poised to take advantage of Intel's work in establishing DDR2 as a desktop memory standard and support it on a new platform. Of course the most prominent feature of AMD's Socket-AM2 platform is the new socket and its support for DDR2 memory.  As we've already mentioned, Socket-AM2 is a 940-pin socket that is keyed differently from the original 940-pin Athlon 64/Opteron sockets; only AM2 processors will physically fit into an AM2 motherboard.  One of the Athlon 64's strongest selling points continues to be its on-die memory controller, which has of course been significantly changed for the new Socket-AM2 platform.  All AM2 CPUs feature a 128-bit wide DDR2 memory controller, compared to the 128-bit DDR memory controller that we've come to know from the Socket-939 platform.  A DDR2 memory interface actually requires more pins than a DDR1 interface, but AMD was able to keep the AM2 pin count down by removing a large number of unnecessary pins on the Athlon 64's package.  When the Socket-940/939 Athlon 64s were first designed, approximately 10% of their pins were redundant and could be removed in later designs.  Not desiring to introduce a new socket as frequently as its competition had, AMD waited until Socket-AM2 to remove those unnecessary pins thus enabling a dual-channel DDR2 interface in virtually the same pin count as the earlier DDR1 equipped CPUs. 

All of the Socket-AM2 CPUs support up to DDR2-667, but the AM2 Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon 64 FX models support up to DDR2-800.  Since Socket-AM2 unifies AMD's desktop socket strategy, all Semprons, Athlon 64s, X2s and FX processors will feature this dual channel DDR2 memory controller.

There's basically no price premium for the new Socket-AM2 chips, encouraging a quick transition to AMD's new DDR2 platform. You will also notice in the picture above that none of the model numbers have changed, so an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ on Socket-AM2 has the same clock speed and L2 cache size as the Socket-939 version.  Since AMD's model numbers haven't changed, you already know not to expect any major changes in performance with Socket-AM2.  In fact, the only difference on the CPU side is the introduction of the new Athlon 64 FX-62, Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and Athlon 64 X2 4000+

Overclocking at Stock Voltages
To start things off we did nothing more than raise the hypertransport (HTT) in the BIOS and the system seemed to literally take off! As you increase the HTT, you will also increase the CPU clock speed since the two are directly related. When you get to a certain point, you're going to have to lower the HTT multiplier in order to keep increasing the frequency. It's 5x HT by default (200mhz x 5 = 1000mhz and then 'doubled' to 2000MHzz because it's HT 2.0). Once we reached 250MHz on the HTT the Foxconn board started to become unstable, so we decreased the HT to 4x. At 252MHz with the 5x multiplier we were hitting 2520MHz, but after lowering the multiplier on the HT to 4x it was lowered to 2016MHz - nearly stock.

If you are confused maybe this picture of the BIOS changes will help.  Here we see a picture of the system clocks page of the BIOS found on our Foxconn 590SLI motherboard. The two areas that needs to be changed have been marked in red.  The first is known as the reference clock (HTT) on the Foxconn board and anything over 200MHz will raise your final clock frequency that times the CPU multiplier. Since we were able to hit over 250MHz we lowered the HT Multiplier from 5x to 4x.

With just 1.35V we were able to reach a HTT of 252MHz with the stock multiplier of 11 and a HT multiplier of 4x.

With the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ AM2 processor clocking in at 2.6GHz and featuring a $315 price tag our little 4200+ has gone 166MHz past the stock 5000+ for far less money.   We have managed to take the 4200+ and overclock it to nearly the clock speeds of the FX-62 with no voltage adjustments on anything at all.  This is an impressive achievement to say the least.  Now let's take a look and see what happens when we increase the voltage on the processor.

Increasing The Voltage
The AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ AM2 processor comes set to run at 1.35 Volts and to go higher than 2.76GHz we need to increase the voltage running to the processor.  To do this we just need to go to the system voltage menu in the BIOS and increase the voltage from 'auto' to whatever Voltage you like.  The BIOS cautions going over 1.65V and that's not a concern as we just bumped it up to 1.45V. We also increased the memory voltage to 2.2V, which is the standard voltage on the Corsair PC2-6400C3 modules.

After increasing the voltage we continued to increase the HTT and managed to go from 252MHz to 264MHz, which increased the overall frequency from 2.76GHz to over 2.91GHz.  This frequency is faster than any desktop processors that AMD currently sells in the market today!

While reaching 2.9GHz on a 2.2GHz processor kicks ass we really wanted to keep going higher, but needed to check temperatures first.  After downloading nVidia's nTune software and the SpeedFan utility we found our processor was running in the high 40's, which is not too high for overvolting a processor on an air cooled system.  Since everything seemed okay we increased the voltage from 1.45V to 1.55V and was able to break the 3GHz mark. The load temperatures on the processor were recorded as being 53C with the idle being 33C.

With a solid 800MHz overclock on our processor we seem to have a winner on our hands. At 3.0GHz the processor flies, but we did encounter some stability issues when running gaming benchmarks. We ended up raising the voltage to 1.65V to see if we could stabalize the system and for the most part we could.  Only under the most extreme benchmarking could we get the system to lock up and require a reboot.  No Blue Screens of Death this time around!

With a solid 800MHz overclock on our processor we seem to have a winner on our hands. At 3.0GHz the processor flies, but we did encounter some stability issues when running gaming benchmarks. We ended up raising the voltage to 1.65V to see if we could stabalize the system and for the most part we could.  Only under the most extreme benchmarking could we get the system to lock up and require a reboot.  No Blue Screens of Death this time around!