Published in Reviews

ASUS Maximus DDR3 vs. Maximus DDR2

by on19 December 2007

Index



BIOS:
ASUS stuck with an AMI BIOS 2MB version. This BIOS does show you the SPD readings of your memory and some default timing values outside the SPD shown in order of the BIOS settings, which helps while overclocking, the same as the P5E series do. The most annoying feature of the ASUS BIOS is that while overclocked the CPU will not receive idle voltages. The CPU multiplier is reduced but the VCore remains, and there is no override or setting for VCore idle. When you do high overclocks be sure to enable CPU Loadline Calibration, it will not set on "auto." Some of the settings are insanely high, we would not advise to use 3V on DDR3 memory or 2.4V on your CPU.

FSB-Overclocking:
As expected the Maximus Series did very well. They were also able to reach the 489MHz FSB our CPU could endure; well done.

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CPU-overclocking:
The drawback came with the maximum frequency. While this board was able to boot with 3730MHz, it was not able to run in the long term, because the temperatures were too high. The Maximus Series did better then P5E Series, but did use 0.025V more VCore compared to DFI.

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Memory-overclocking:
The Formula did well with 1200MHz, also the Extreme did well with 1800MHz.

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FSB BIOS clocking:
We have to state that we always recalculate the bench results to nominal frequencies. Most vendors do an overclock to their products, maybe to get more bench points, but we nullify such attempts. The P5E3 is overclocked with 266/333MHz, underclocked with 366MHz and on target with 320/400MHz:

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Last modified on 21 December 2007
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