ECS 755-A2: Performance and Value for the Athlon 64

ECS 755-A2: Stress Testing

Stress tests were performed on the 755-A2 at a FSB of 222MHz. Since the 2 DIMM slots were filled for all testing of the ECS board, there was no need for memory stress testing.

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:

As part of normal overclocking tests, a full range of stress tests and benchmarks were run to ensure the ECS 755-A2 was stable at each overclocked FSB speed. This included Prime95 torture tests, and the addition of other tasks - data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel - while Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we ran our benchmark suite, which includes ZD Winstone suite, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.0, and Gun Metal Benchmark 2. 222MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the 755-A2 while running these tests. Since there is no current voltage adjustment, all tests were run at default voltage.

Memory Stress Test Results:

This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the ECS 755-A2 to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our Mushkin PC3500 Level 2 or OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd Modules will support:

Stable DDR400 Timings - 2 DIMMs (2/2 DIMMs populated)
Clock Speed:	200MHz
Timing Mode:	N/A
CAS Latency:	2.0
Bank Interleave:	N/A
RAS to CAS Delay:	2T
RAS Precharge:	6T
Precharge Delay:	2T
Command Rate:	N/A

We had no problem running 2 DS 512MB DIMMs of our standard Mushkin PC3500 Level2 in the 755-A2 board at the fastest timings available. However, as we have seen in other boards, we did have to raise the vDIMM to 2.65V for completely stable operation. At default 2.5V, the fastest timings that we could run with either our standard OCZ or Mushkin memory were 2-2-3-6. This underscores the need for a wider range of memory voltage options to get the most from the fastest memory on this board.