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| ASUS P5W64 Wall Street Qartet Professional We Avoid Temptation | |
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(Review by MS, November 16, 2006) |
Installation
The general installation of Windows XP went without any problem. Runing a pair of ASUS Extreme n7800 GT's in SLI configuration in Slots 1 and 2 using the 86.95_mod drivers also posed no problem. However, adding a third card, in this case, the nVidia QuadroFX 1400 resulted in a blank screen and loss of the SLI capabilities of the 7800GT cards - well we asked for that. Installing different drivers and removal of the SLI Link did not solve the problem. Substituting a Sapphire RADEON X800 GTO2 for the Quadro did not solve the issue either. No matter what card was in the lower slot, it caused the monitor light to come on (in green) but the display remained blank. In the case of the RADEON, it was not even possible to install the drivers since the system complained about a lack of supported hardware.
As it turned out, it was necessary to install the cards bottom to top, that is, starting with the lowest priority slot. Even then, there were issues that persisted but we'll save that for a bit later.
Overclocking
In view of the configuration and target audience of the P5W64 WS Professional it is difficult to see the need for overclocking - I mean, who would jeopardize the Dow Jones index by running a PC out of spec - but if the features are there, we test them anyway. At 340 MHz bus frequency, we had no problems getting into Windows with the QuadCore Kentsfield QX6700 (multiplier set to 6x) but the system was a bit sluggish at that host bus frequency. Interestingly, AI showed the speed as 3400 MHz.
It seems as though the ASUS AI monitoring utility has some difficulties with keeping track of the core frequency. The CPU was running at 2043 MHz as shown by CPUZ while the AI utility displayed 3400 MHz.
In contrast to some other boards tested earlier, the performance - at least as far as SiSoft Sandra was concerned - did not collapse (above 315 MHz bus speed we often see memory bandwidth values of 1,700 MBs as opposed to the expected 6,000 MBs)
next page: => Test Configuration =>
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