Here is a screenshot of the Overclocking Options in Bios:



Here is my first preliminary 3dmark05 shot on the new 32 pipe crossfire setup.

STOCK 3.0GHz, FSB STOCK, 2900 XT's STOCK:



Man, I love this board. 520 FSB out of the box with no tweaking whatsoever.

7 X 520 (1.47vcore) CPU @ 3.65 GHz
I got the ram at close to 1600 MHz now.



Time for a little high FSB 3.65 GHz benchies.

7 X 520 FSB (3.65Ghz) Please note, this motherboard has been benching for the last hour straight without a hiccup. Stock voltage on everything except for vcore!!! I will say it again, this board has been a pleasure to work with.

Again, these are crossfire results with completely stock core/mem clockspeeds:


3DMARK 05



3DMARK 06



Aquamark:



Had my first little glitch with the board. I spent about 2 hours running benchies and during my last 3dmark03 bench the rig froze up on me. I restarted and went back into bios to check my temps. CPU temp was 35, and NB was 51*C. Since this is a passively cooled motherboard, and I had been running 520 FSB for about 1 hour and 1/2, I knew this was NB related.

Tried to restart the rig, and it wouldnt restart. Kept giving me power to the mobo, but no post. So, I started to panic, swapping sticks, jumper clearing cmos and removing battery to no avail. Last resort putting a room fan directly in the case and cooling down my NB. Got the temps back down to 30*C on the NB (at least thats what I checked after she booted right back up).

It was a scare but these Gigabytes definitely need some form of active cooling at 500FSB plus. I need to figure something out tomorrow with fan placement. Back to 9 X 333 for the time being.

The first CPU/mobo stability test was a huge success. 3.76 GHz @ 1.48vcore, Othros Stable Overnight for 5 hours:




Just started working on 3.87 GHz. I'm going to leave orthos on for the day today:



UPDATE
Any DDR3 guys out there? I am extremely new to DDR3 and how what dividers they may or may not enjoy. For some reason last night, I could not get these sticks stable at anything over 1666 MHz, and they are rated at 1866 (8-8-8-20). I tried different multipliers with completely different dividers and of course I manually set voltage and timings. It just will not post when the ram is higher than 1666. Cant figure this crap out yet. Any help would be a benefit.

UPDATE
What a wonderful night! I download Gigabytes updated bios for my motherboard. It offered enhanced memory and cpu overclocking stability as per gigabytes website.

I download the bios, erase and flash which was completely successful.

On the next reboot, its bricked!!!!! I now have a dead mobo. More headaches, and shipping costs + rma time on my watch and out of my wallet..

This absolutely blows. I heard there was a rumor about the first production of these boards not accepting bios flashes. Now we find out.

UPDATE
IM BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!
I swore to myself I would give it until this morning to decide to RMA or not.
Last night, I took the CMOS battery out and pulled the plug on the rig, left everything like that overnight. Woke up this morning, TOOK OFF WORK!!!!, lol.

Plugged the battery back in, plugged the rig in. Fired right up!

Close call .... More benchies to come today fellas..

UPDATE

I got a nice little comparison for everyone.

Ran the FEAR in game benchmark about 5 minutes ago.
I am extremely impressed with this CF setup.

New Scores
E6850 @ 3.96 GHz, 2900 XT Crossfire @ stock core/mem
FEAR, Maximum, Maximum Settings 1024 X 768
210 FPS Average

My Old Scores
E6700 @ 4.00 GHz, 8800 Ultra @ Stock core/mem
FEAR, Maximum, Maximum Settings 1024 X 768
150 FPS Average

HIGH RES SCORES:
E6850 @ 3.96 GHz, 2900 XT Crossfire @ Stock Core/mem
FEAR. Maximum, Maximum Settings 1600 X 1200
120 FPS Average