hey thanks everyone for your kind comments, its really the board in this case and not me,

i didnt even test highest benchable or anything because of vcore, at the moment im limited to 1.78~ because of ovp, once i sort that (engineers are going to find a work around on monday) and get a vdroop i will target max benchable mhz and mhz validation also...

this board seems reasonably efficient, obviously for max fsb everything was as loose as i could possible get it, but should still be able to bench with reasonable timings and reasonably tight mch settings and still high fsb..