Dual Xeon Sweetness Unwrapped, The Asus PC-DL Deluxe
Date: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 Author: Robert E. Bailey aka: Rbreb13 Page: 4 of 4
The most I ended up getting for an overclock was 13*208 for 2.705 GHz. 13*210 wouldn't boot to Windows. I have settled on 13*205 (2.668 GHz) for my everyday settings. In the BIOS I also switched from "Auto" to "Manual". Then I chose 400MHz for the FSB and 2.5-3-3-6 timings. With a slightly higher FSB I have to loosen them up some. I have also decided to make this system my main workstation. I don't game much anymore so I don't need a lot of performance in that arena. Although, I can see (possibly) a better video card in this rig's future maybe something with DX9 support.
Okay, on to some benchmarks.
CPU: 2.61 GHz @ 13*200 FSB
RAM: 201 MHz for a DDR402 setting and timings of 2.5-3-3-6
SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic:
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth:
PCMark 2002:
CPU: 2.67 GHz @ 13*205 FSB
RAM: 205 MHz for a DDR410 setting and timings of 2.5-3-3-6
SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic:
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth:
PCMark 2002:
CPU: 2.71 GHz @ 13*208 FSB
RAM: 208 MHz for a DDR416 setting and timings of 2.5-4-4-8
SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic:
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth:
PCMark 2002:
As you can see there's not a whole lot of difference between 205 and 208 FSB settings. That's why I've decided to use 205 for everyday use. Besides a 65% overclock is very good in my mind. Scoring over 4000/4000+ in the Memory Bandwidth tests just rocks my world. That and seeing 4 processors (2-logical, 2-virtual) in the Task Manager is just awesome.
In conclusion I would say this board even with its limitations is a very good one. It overclocks very well with no modifications and is just a plain awesome overclocker with some minor modifications. It's also a very stable, yet high performing chipset.
Whether you're looking for a fast, stable platform to run at stock speeds or if you want to overclock like crazy the Asus PC-DL Deluxe would be a good choice. The BIOS limitations are the only real detriment to this board and those are easy enough to overcome with a little time and effort.
