Test: Overclocking
Probably the most time consuming aspect of this article was finding the peak overclocking abilities of each motherboard using our Core 2 Duo E6700 processor. In the past we have found that this processor could easily reach 3.60GHz on 975X and P965 motherboards. Some of the better boards pushed up to 3.66GHz but not many managed to go beyond this without the aid of water-cooling. These results were all recorded using the Thermaltake V-1.
The best overclocker in the pack was the ASUS P5K Deluxe which did not surprise me given what we have seen this board do when water-cooled. The next best overclocker was the Abit IP35 Pro which was happy at 3.68GHz while the ASUS P5K-E managed 3.66GHz. The worst overclocker was the ASUS P5K-SE which reached 3.57GHz. Being completely fair, this is still a very good achievement and again proves the small difference between these nine motherboards performance-wise.