MSI Overclocking
Now we move onto the MSI motherboard where you will find the entire clock options under the Core Cell Menu again.
MSI’s board doesn’t have as many overclocking options as the DFI board. First off CPU ratio can be adjusted but only shows up if you have an unlocked CPU like a Pentium Extreme or a Core 2 Extreme. CPU FSB goes from 100MHz up to 550MHz in 1MHz increments and CPU voltage goes from 1.2v up to 1.5V in 0.025v increments.
DRAM voltage goes from 1.8v to 2.35v in 0.05v increments. Lastly is PCI Express voltage which goes from 1.5v to 1.8v in 0.05V increments.
With the latest BIOS on the MSI website, we managed 362MHz FSB stable with DRAM 1:1, DRAM voltage at 2.3v, CPU voltage at 1.4v and PCI Express voltage at 1.6V. In all we had to raise the CPU voltage and RAM voltage higher than DFI and still the results weren’t as impressive as the DFI motherboard.
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Now you get to see all the Overclocking features in their glory, we won’t go into explaining all the features but we will give you the goodies. First off is the FSB which can be adjusted from your CPU default MHz Rate (266MHz for our Core 2 Extreme) up to a maximum of 500MHz in 1MHz increments.
PCI Express frequency can be adjusted from 90MHz up to 150MHz in 1MHz increments. It is best to leave the PCI Express frequency at 100MHz at this also runs the SATA clock and you don’t want to toast your RAID array with all your important data.
CPU voltage ranges from 1.1v to 1.7v in 0.025v increments. DRAM voltage from 1.8v to 2.45 in 0.05v increments. FSB voltages from 1.2v to 1.45v in 0.05v increments, Northbridge voltage from 1.25v to 1.55v in 0.05v increments. PCIE-SATA voltage from 1.5v to 1.8v in 0.1v increments and lastly southbridge voltage at either 1.015 or 1.215v.
With all these setting we managed to hit an FSB of 443MHz (443 x 7 = 3101MHz) with DRAM at 1:1, CPU voltage at 1.385v, DRAM at 2.0v, FSB voltage 1.4v, and the rest of the voltages at stock. It looks like the 8 phase CPU power system is starting to pay off.
