AOpen AK89 Max: From Ugly Duckling to Swan

AOpen AK89 Max: Overclocking and Stress Testing

FSB Overclocking Results

BIOS options don't mean much unless they can translate into improved performance. We have complained for months that the major reason we could not reach higher overclocks was not the poor headroom of the Athlon 64, but rather, the lack of a fixed AGP/PCI lock on the VIA and nVidia chipset boards that we were testing. Now, we get a chance to put our money where our mouth is.

Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed
Default Voltage
Processor:	Athlon64 2.0GHz
CPU Voltage:	1.5V (default)
Cooling:	AMD Stock Athlon 64 Heatsink/Fan
Power Supply:	Antec TruePower 430W
Maximum OC: (Standard Ratio)	233FSB x10 2333MHz (+16.5%)
Maximum FSB: (Lower Ratio)	347FSB x 6 (328x7 for CPU limited 2296MHz)

The above overclocking setup at default voltage allowed us to reach a stable FSB of 233. With such a limited top vCore, we had to consider the 1.55V as essentially the same as the default 1.50V. A voltage range to at least 1.7V to 1.85V would be preferred - especially since the AK89 Max turned out to be an incredible overclocker. Even without CPU voltage adjustment, we reached an astounding 347FSB using some common overclocking tricks. Take a look at the Extreme Overclocking section to see details on how we reached those levels. Screen captures are also included.

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:

A full range of stress tests and benchmarks were run to ensure the AK89 Max was 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 Veritest Winstone 2004 suite, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.1, and Aquamark 3. 230MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the AOpen while running these tests at default voltage and default multiplier.

Memory Stress Test Results:

The memory stress test is very basic, as it tests the ability of the AK89 Max to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our Mushkin PC3500 Level 2 or OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd Modules will support. Memory stress testing was conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with 2 DIMM slots filled.

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:	2T
RAS Precharge:	5T
Precharge Delay:	2T
Command Rate:	N/A

We had no problem running 2 DS 512MB DIMMs of our standard Mushkin PC3500 Level 2 or OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd in the AOpen AK89 Max. Both of these memories were completely stable at the Jedec standard memory voltage of 2.6V at DDR400 with the fastest 2-2-2-5 timings that we could select on this board. We were able to achieve the same fast timings with either 1 or 2 DIMMs.

Filling all available memory banks is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 2 DIMMs. AOpen states clearly that only 2 DIMMs or a maximum 2GB of memory are supported at DDR400 speed, but we decided to try 3 DIMMs at that speed. 3 DIMMs only worked at DDR333 speed. This was consistent with AOpen's specification of a higher memory capacity of 3GB at DDR333. For best performance on the AK89 Max, we would recommend using 1 or 2 DIMMs. If you want more memory, use 2 of the new 1GB memory modules from Corsair, Kingston, OCZ, and others to allow 2GB of total memory using 2 DIMMs.

Stable DDR400 Timings - 3 DIMMs (3/3 DIMMs populated)
Clock Speed:	166MHz
Timing Mode:	N/A
CAS Latency:	2.0
Bank Interleave:	N/A
RAS to CAS Delay:	2T
RAS Precharge:	5T
Precharge Delay:	2T
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 AK89 Max at these memory timings.