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Introduction
It has been a short period of time since we released the shocking information about Intel's i820 being inferior the old yet nimble 440BX chipset
The Questions
So there are a few obvious questions we needed to answer before pushing the 133MHz FSB setting on the 440BX motherboard. First things first, you have to have a reliable 440BX that can run the 133MHz FSB setting and memory that can do this as well, preferably CAS latency 2 memory. Once you have those two issues taken care of, you are now faced with which video card to choose. Currently, we know that the reference GeForce 256 has no issues running at the overclock setting of 89MHz but this doesn't mean any flavor of GeForce 256 will as board designs vary. We also don't know how other graphics chipsets will react. We need to find out not only if they'll work but if they can handle the stress for an extended period of time if we're to deem them stable.
The Testing Methodology
Testing each card would be done on a P3 800/133, Asus P3B-F, PC133 CAS 2 (and 3) memory, Netgear FA-310TX network card and WD Expert 418000 HDD. Each card would be tested by booting it, loading the OS, and then finally, running Quake3 for 30 minutes while connected to a server full of bots. Any crashes or failures would be noted and idle/working temperatures would be tracked to see how the added buss speed affected heat, if at all. Obviously if the card failed to even boot, no tests would be run and the card would automatically fail the test. It is possible that a card may boot, get into the OS yet fail to start Quake3 or run it with stability. These tests were run on CAS2 and CAS3 latency memory to see a comparison of the performance and stability of each. Technically, the memory timing shouldn't matter to the video card but it's good to check regardless.
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