ASUS M4A79T Deluxe Motherboard Review

Overclocking

When it comes to overclocking the AMD Phenom II X4 810 is an interesting processor in that it is locked and has a multiplier of 13x with a default HT clock frequency (bus speed) of 200MHz. With multiplier options ending at 13x I figured you are really left with just raising the bus speed till something limits your overclock. When I reviewed the AMD Phenom II X4 810 processor on the MSI DKA790GX Platinum motherboard I was able to reach an HT clock frequency at 295MHz and I wanted to see if I could beat that on the ASUS M4A78T Deluxe motherboard.

Using the same ASUS Triton 81 CPU Cooler that I used on the MSI DKA790GX Platinum motherboard the ASUS M4A79T Deluxe motherboard reached an HT clock frequency of 294MHz, which is 1MHz shy of our previous best for this specific processor. This put the final clock frequency at 3.82GHz, which is an overclock of 1,222MHz. When overclocking on this board I kept getting a CPU over voltage post message, but CPU-Z only showed the CPU Voltage being 1.300V. After going into the BIOS and taking a closer look at the settings I noticed that the processor was running 1.65V even at AUTO since ASUS automatically increases the voltage when the HT clock frequency is increased. I also found a bug with the BIOS where if you load the default settings after overclocking the CPU voltage will not go back down to 1.31V, which is the default voltage for this processor on the ASUS M4A79T. In order to get the voltage back to normal you have to manually set the HT clock frequency back to 200 rather than auto, so keep an eye on the voltages and keep your fingers crossed that ASUS releases a BIOS that resets the voltage when loading default settings after overclocking or when going from manual to auto on the HT clock frequency setting.

Here is a short video that I tossed together about the BIOS and the issue that I noticed.