Overclocking and System Setup
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
Just as with the Epox 8KHA+, the Shuttle AK31 Rev3 is a great motherboard for tweakers and overclockers. There are multiplier options of 6x to 14x and FSB options from 100-166 MHz which seems a little low compared to Epox’s 200 MHz. Shuttle provided a DIMM voltage of 2.7v over the normal 2.5v, and as such, users will be trying to break the 166 MHz mark, so I am confused as to why Shuttle did not offer FSB options over 166 MHz. There is always the chance of this being changed in future Bios releases, as well.One interesting and different option is that Shuttle has allowed the user to change the CPU Vcore up to +0.275 over the default value. That means if you close the bridges on the processor to 1.85v default, you can shove an enormous amount of power through it, 2.125v to be exact!
How far did I overclock it? Well, I fairly easily topped out the 166 MHz front-side bus option and could have gone farther I am sure. The top speed that I could reach on the unlocked Athlon XP 1800+ was the same as that on the Epox KT266A board: 1.7 GHz.
Another note, I was able to reach about the same FSB will three different kinds of memory. First, was Corsair XMS2400 memory and then I tested it on the Crucial standard PC2100. A latecomer, the TwinMOS PC2100 memory was able to match the 166 MHz FSB with the Corsair brand memory. The TwinMOS representative that sent me the memory claimed it was stable up to PC2700 memory, but that they were not marketing it like that. I guess they were right!
Below is the system setup that I used for this review. Just like in my Duron 1.1 GHz review and the Athlon XP 1800+ review, I made the switch to Windows XP. All the benchmarks that you see now have been tested with the new operating system; so comparing the number directly is no longer a problem.
| CPU | 1 x 1.53 GHz AMD Athlon XP 1800+ Processor |
| Motherboards |
Shuttle AK31 Rev3 Epox 8KHA+ v1.3 Gigabyte 7DX v4.3 Bios F5D |
| Memory |
1 x 256MB TwinMOS PC2100 DDR DRAM |
| Hard Drive | 20.5GB 7200 RPM IBM EIDE |
| Video Card | GeForce 3 |
| Video Drivers | Detonator 12.90 |
| Operating System | Windows XP |
Tests:
Quake III: Arena
3DMark 2001
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bench
SiSoft Sandra CPU Bench
Content Creation Winstone 2001
Business Winstone 2001
4 different SPEC view perf tests
Cachemem
ScienceMark
Sysmark 2001
