Overclocking Stability Compared
Performance is obviously going to be one aspect of today’s article, but variations in base clock can’t always be repeated on different processors. So, we began by shooting for the highest multipliers at the X79 Express' stock 100 MHz.
The spread between achievable maximum multipliers at 1.45 V is fairly large, with EVGA’s 4.6 GHz overclock falling 200 MHz behind Asus' 4.8 GHz. Additional screenshots can be found in our photo album by clicking on the above images.
The Rampage IV Extreme also jumped straight to the memory’s DDR3-2133 XMP profile, while the X79 FTW required manual timing configuration to hit a far smaller DDR3-1866 using the same 1.65 V.
Asus also hit 4.8 GHz at 133 MHz base clock, while EVGA improved its 4.6 GHz result at 4.67 GHz.
Both motherboards reached DDR3-2133 at 133.3 MHz, but the Rampage IV Extreme got there easier using the memory’s XMP-2133 setting with a manual 16x multiplier setting. The X79 FTW required full manual configuration of both its primary and secondary timings, as well as the memory multiplier.
