Installation and Testing:

Test System and Danger Den Torture Rack

The ASUS P5K3 Deluxe has been an excellent motherboard for testing these past few weeks. Due to it's very adjustable BIOS, it was once again chosen in part to its stability and performance. Many overclocking sessions have had a few settings that just didn't work and didn't require having to ever clear the CMOS. If the system failed to post, a hard reset would bring the system back to the default BOOT screen letting you know the settings failed to load and that F1 would take you to the BIOS to change the settings. The Patriot PC3-15000 installed and booted up without issue.

Stock CPUZ

Mainboard

Memory

SPD

Oddly, my efforts to get CPUZ to report the correct timings and module SPD just hasn't been successful. CPUZ works for the most part, but still insists on reporting the oddest of information under the Memory tab. This is the only screen shot of the utility in action that will be used for the most part due to the issue which I'm very sure will be fixed soon. Benchmarks using 3DMark05, SANDRA Memory Bandwidth, Mathematical, and Multi-Media as well as Fear, Battlefield 2142, and Quake 4 were performed throughout the spectrum of testing. The reason XP PRO is being used is due to unforgiving nature of Vista when trying to overclock the system.

First off, I'm sure you there are questions as to whether or not the PC3-15000 is capable of performing at 1866MHz at the rated 8-8-8-20 memory timings. The answer is simply, yes! In order to get the test system there, it took some more serious tweaking as a 465MHz CPU Bus was necessary to be able to access the kit's rated memory frequency on the P5K3 Deluxe motherboard.

Go P5K3 Deluxe!

1866MHz Confirmed

As previously mentioned, the memory modules can and do operate at lower frequencies with more aggressive, lower timings. To help simplify the confusion, I checked to see at what frequency ranges most anyone can expect assuming they have a comparable system. Starting at 1066MHz, the PC3-15000 operated with 6-6-6 timings up to 1440MHz. From here, the memory required 7-7-7 timings which held true up to 1725MHz at which point they had to be raised to 8-8-8 up to the 1880MHz mark. I'm sorry to say, at that point, the test boards had pretty much reached their maximum tweakable limits. The memory kit still had some more to offer, but even these current motherboards don't seem quite ready for this kind of speed.

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