Albatron K8SLI: Overclocking

FSB Overclocking Results

Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed
Processor: Athlon 64, 4000+, San Diego Core
CPU Voltage: 1.4875V (1.4000V default)
Memory: OCZ PC4800 Platinum Edition
Memory Voltage: 3.00
Cooling: AMD Stock Heat sink and Fan
Power Supply: OCZ Power Stream 520
Maximum CPU Overclock
Standard Ratio (12)
246fsb x 12, 4x HT, (2-3-3-7, 1T)
2955MHz (+23%)
Maximum FSB Overclock
Lowered Ratio (9)
317fsb x 9, 3x HT, (2.5-4-4-8, 1T)
2856MHz (+58.5% Bus Overclock)

This board is a good overclocker at both standard and reduced ratios. We were unable to overclock the board past 246fsb with the stock ratio and still complete our benchmark suite. We relaxed the memory timings, increased voltages, and changed the HT ratio to 3 without success. However, the board posted the best lowered ratio fsb setting at a 1:1 memory ratio although its performance did not equal that of the Asus A8N-SLI Premium at the 295fsb ratio. At the settings listed, our test system was able to complete the entire benchmark suite three times without any reported issues.

Memory Stress Testing

Memory stress tests look at the ability of the Albatron K8SLI to operate at the officially supported memory frequencies of 400MHz DDR, at the best performing memory timings that the OCZ Technology PC4800 Elite Platinum could support.

Albatron K8SLI
Stable DDR400 Timings - 2 DIMMs
(2/4 slots populated - 1 Dual-Channel Bank)
Clock Speed: 200MHz
CAS Latency: 2
RAS to CAS Delay: 2
RAS Precharge: 2
RAS Cycle Time: 5
Voltage: 2.8V
Command Rate: 1T

The Albatron K8SLI was completely stable with 2 DDR modules in Dual-Channel at the settings of 2-2-2-5, at the default 2.8V.

Tests with 4 double-sided DIMMs on an AMD Athlon 64 system are very demanding, since AMD specifies DDR333 for this combination. However, most AMD Athlon 64 motherboards combined with recent AMD processors have been able to handle 4 DIMMs at DDR400 settings.

Albatron K8SLI
Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs
(4/4 slots populated - 2 Dual-Channel Banks)
Clock Speed: 200MHz
CAS Latency: 2
RAS to CAS Delay: 2
RAS Precharge: 2
RAS Cycle Time: 7
Voltage: 2.8V
Command Rate: 2T

The Albatron K8SLI was completely stable with 4 DDR modules in Dual-Channel at the settings of 2-2-2-7, at the default 2.8V.

Albatron K8SLI: Features FOXCONN NF4SK8AA-8KRS: Features
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  • Gary Key - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    Hi,

    I have been informed by Blue Gears that the significant differences we are seeing is due to the current beta driver set. They recently released a 64-bit driver set that improved performance up 18% in some applications. The general C-Media driver that was provided last fall was in worse shape than the June beta for the 32-bit operating systems so they went back to the drawing board. If you go back and read some of our recent Intel reviews you will see that Realtek has improved their HD codec performance by up to 40% in some instances over the last three driver releases. The A380 release we utilized for the ALC850/655 was around 9% better in Serious Sam II and BF2 (not shown yet) over the A379.

    I would not be concerned with their next card at this point. They are very customer focused and are doing everything possible to improve the performance of the C-Media driver sets.
  • yacoub - Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - link

    Thanks for the replies, Gary. Looking forward to seeing better numbers. I totally understand what you mean about scenes breaking up. I experience that as I'm waiting for the new BlueGears card to come out later this month so I'm running the onboard ALC-8xx series audio on the A8N-SLI Premium I have. It's pretty crappy and sometimes heavy action scenes with lots of sound sources seem to chug the computer and now I see that's typical of the onboard solutions.
  • yacoub - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Obviously, if you are a serious gamer, then a dedicated sound card is still a requirement to ensure consistent frame rate averages across a wide variety of games.


    Considering the surprisingly poor results of the BlueGears and CLabs X-Fi cards in the actual gaming tests, why do you state that like it's an "obvious" conclusion when the numbers state exactly the inverse - that the onboard audio solutions, as cpu-grubbing as they are, actually provide the better framerates in most of the games tested?

    Unless your results are anomalic, I'll have to start my soundcard research all over again. I was sold on the upcoming X-Plosion but now that it doesn't really gain me much if anything in the way of cpu usage improvement during gaming (half the purpose of getting a peripheral soundcard to begin with), I only end up with better audio quality (the other half of the purpose) and for that, yes, the BlueGears card should be better than the X-Fi series, but I really want to get better cpu usage as well. Hmmmm...
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Considering the surprisingly poor results of the BlueGears and CLabs X-Fi cards in the actual gaming tests, why do you state that like it's an "obvious" conclusion when the numbers state exactly the inverse - that the onboard audio solutions, as cpu-grubbing as they are, actually provide the better framerates in most of the games tested?


    The audio quality of those two sound cards are significantly better than the Realtek ALC850/655 codecs across the spectrum. Their performance at times is worse in absolute numbers but the difference in consistent frame rates while playing on-line and within the game was significant from a subjective viewpoint. We are finishing our benchmark suite for showing (consistently) the low/average/high frame rates with sound enabled. I did not publish the BF2/F.E.A.R./HL2 numbers yet as we needed time to verify the benchmarks were repeatable with the latest patch updates. However, the two add-in cards scored better and have more consistent frame rates than the on-board sound solutions. In a couple of scenes in the BF2 benchmark the on-solutions would stutter and the scence would break up, this never happened with the add in cards.

    The lastest SSII patch and Creative drivers should improved the scores even further in that game. In Serious Sam II we were quite surprised by the results and they shadowed the same results from the last Intel article. Although I can make out the near/far audio effects being played with a set of high end headphones on the ALC850 codec, it in no way compares to the sounds being played back by the XFI and Mystique. The sound on the ALC850/655 is tinny and muffled while you can hear exacting details in the same scenes with the other two cards. It is even more obvious in F.E.A.R and BF2, almost to the point of wondering if you were listening to the same audio playback.

    Also, the on-board ALC850/655 solutions only support up to 26 buffers in the drivers.

    Thank you.
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    quote:

    In a couple of scenes in the BF2 benchmark the on-board solutions would stutter and the scene would break up, this never happened with the add-in cards.


    Really need an edit function, hit the button before I finished proof reading.
  • Spacecomber - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    Shouldn't the game benchmarks, at least, have focused on performance running two video cards in SLI? There was some mention in the Final Words section of using two video cards on these boards; so, I got the impression that this might have at least been tried. Still, it comes across as an after-thought, which seems to miss the point of a thorough testing of what is the main feature of these boards.

    Just a bit puzzled.

    Space
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    Good Day,

    We will have SLI benchmarks up once we complete the SLI roundup that consists of several more boards between the $80~$140 range. I might modify the article to include our initial results between the three boards tested. The issue is previous boards were tested with the 78.x drivers while these boards were tested with the 81.85 driver set. There is a significant performance difference in several benchmarks between the two driver sets that would have been confusing. We have not gone back and tested all of the boards in SLI with the 81.85 up to 81.98 drivers yet.
  • deathwalker - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    Odd that the Albatron and Foxxcon come out very satisfactory in the testing and the don't make the Motherboard roundup that came out only 2 days ago. Great review though and it nice to see that you can save a couple $ on off-brand mobos and still get a decent product.
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Odd that the Albatron and Foxxcon come out very satisfactory in the testing and the don't make the Motherboard roundup that came out only 2 days ago. Great review though and it nice to see that you can save a couple $ on off-brand mobos and still get a decent product.


    We still have several more value to mid-range SLI products to review and as such any final recommendations will be done at the completion of the testing cycle.
  • Calin - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    On the second page, in the table, all the boards have slots for DDR2 memory. It should be DDR, I think

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