For our overclocking tests we used an Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2 GHz) with 512 KB L2 memory cache based on Venice core, which has a better overclocking capability than our Athlon 64 3800+ used on our benchmarking.
Amazingly enough, this motherboard provides a myriad of overclocking settings, which is definitely not a common feature to be found on entry-level motherboards.
WinFast 6100K8MA-RS (BIOS version: 54AW1P34, January 19th, 2006) overclocking options:
- External frequency: Can be adjusted from 200 to 210 MHz in 0.5 MHz steps and from 210 to 450 MHz in 1 MHz steps.
- PCI Express frequency: Can be adjusted from 100 to 145 MHz in 1 MHz steps.
- Clock multiplier: Can be set from 4x to 11x (processor-limited) in 1x steps.
- HTT bus multiplier: Can be set from 1x to 5x in 1x steps.
- CPU voltage: +20 mV to +140 mV.
- Memory voltage: Can be set from 2.55 V to 2.85 V in 0.05 V steps.
For beginners WinFast 6100K8MA-RS has everything to not let you down. Chipset voltage and PCI Express voltage adjustments were missing, but it is ask too much for a low cost motherboard with on-board video.
click to enlarge
Figure 6: Overclocking options on WinFast 6100K8MA-RS.
click to enlarge
Figure 7: Frequency adjustments are located on a separated menu.
It has also several memory timings adjustments, as you can see on Figure 8.
click to enlarge
Figure 8: Memory timings settings.
On Figures 9 and 10 you can check the overclocking we could achieve with this motherboard.
click to enlarge
Figure 9: HTT configured at 310 MHz, an excellent result.
click to enlarge
Figure 10: Our 2.2 GHz CPU running at 2,798 MHz (280 MHz x 10).
With WinFast 6100K8MA-RS we could put our CPU running stable at 2,798 MHz (280 MHz x 10), an increase of almost 30% on its internal clock rate, an outstanding result for an entry-level motherboard
To achieve this overclocking we had to change the HyperTransport bus multiplier to 3x, the memory voltage to 2.80 V, the CPU voltage to 1.5 V and keeping the memory clock always below 250 MHz.
We must say that apparently WinFast 6100K8MA-RS has some sort of lock that didn’t allow us to configure HTT frequencies above 310 MHz. Any value above that was ignored.
