ABIT KV8-MAX3: Athlon64 and µGuru

Abit KV8-MAX3: Stress Testing

We performed stress tests on the KV8-MAX3 in these areas and configurations:

1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, conducted by running the FSB at 218MHz.
2. Memory stress testing, conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with 2 DIMM slots filled and at 400MHz with all 3 DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible.

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:

As normally done in our testing, we ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure the Abit KV8-MAX3 was absolutely stable at each overclocked FSB speed. This included Prime95 torture tests, and the addition of other tasks — data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel — while Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we ran our benchmark suite, which includes ZD Winstone suite, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.0, and Gun Metal Benchmark 2. At default voltage, 218MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the KV8-MAX3 while running these tests.

Despite the fact that we could successfully run our standard tests at 218, the board was not as stable as we would like to see. At 216FSB, the performance was stable with whatever we threw at the KV8-MAX3. This is typical behavior that we used to see with an overclocked AGP/PCI bus, and we frankly had hoped those days were gone for good. For now, it looks like 8% to 9% is all the overclock that you will achieve with the VIA chipset and current Athlon64 processors. If you recall, we were able to run this same Athlon64 chip as high as 230FSB on Athlon64 boards with the nForce3 chipset. If this CPU could have reached just a bit further to 233, then we would have hit the multiplier that drops AGP/PCI back to 66/33.

Memory Stress Test Results:

This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the KV8-MAX3 to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our Mushkin PC3500 Level II Modules will support:

Stable DDR400 Timings — 2 DIMMs (2/3 DIMMs populated)
Clock Speed:	200MHz
Timing Mode:	N/A
CAS Latency:	2.0
Bank Interleave:	N/A
RAS to CAS Delay:	3T
RAS Precharge:	6T
Precharge Delay:	2T
Command Rate:	N/A

We had no problem running 2 DS 512MB DIMMs of our standard Mushkin PC3500 Level2 in the KV8-MAX3. However, as we have seen in other VIA boards, we did have to relax RAS-to-CAS Delay to 3 for stable operation. At 2-2-3-6, operation was completely stable, but with slightly slower timings than the 2-2-2-6 that we have achieved in nForce3 Athlon64 boards.

Filling all available memory banks is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 2 DIMMs, and in fact, we could not get 3 DS DIMMs to work in the Abit KV8-MAX3. We tried timings as slow as 2.5-3-3-6, but still could not get the Abit to boot. This makes us wonder if there may be more to the “side” limitations that some other boards have advised in their memory recommendations. We also tested with a DS module combined with 2 SS dimms, and still could not get the 3 dimms to work on the Abit. With support for 1GB DIMMs and a 2GB total memory limit, there may be limitations to filling slots on an Athlon64 board as we have seen on some earlier Intel chipsets. We plan to do further testing of the memory limitations of VIA and nForce3 chipsets in future testing of Athlon64 motherboards.

Stable DDR400 Timings — 3 DIMMs (3/3 DIMMs populated)
Clock Speed:	200MHz
Timing Mode:	N/A
CAS Latency:	N/
Bank Interleave:	N/A
RAS to CAS Delay:	N/A
RAS Precharge:	N/A
Precharge Delay:	N/A
Command Rate:	N/A

We tested the memory timings with 2 banks filled using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. Prime95 torture tests were successfully run at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super Pi. None of the three stress tests created any stability problems for the KV8-MAX3 at these memory timings.