The Unexpected


Memory

At first, I thought tight memory timing and 1:1 ratio would make all the difference in performance. Hence, I spent the money not realizing this does not apply to A64. There is only minimum gain in performance. With DDR memory pricing being the lowest at this moment, a pair of 512 Micron or Apacer would cost me less than the 2x256 MB GSkill and PQI.

Video Card

Although this econo class Apollo 6200 overclocks like crazy. The money I did not spend on memory would have given me the 6600GT within my budget. Overall, I must say I am very satisfied with the card. At the end, I was able to play Doom3 in HQ in 1024x768.

BIOS

Its always nice to have the correct information from the right source. My fellow reviewers "petervandamned" and " JNav89GT" advised the use of N4D414-2 BIOS when TCCD memories are used. Then, there are many BETA BIOS; I have tried four different ones and I know more will come as more and more enthusiasts are getting this board to make it even better.

Temperatures



The heatsink is the SLK948U with 80mm fan running ~3,000 topped with Chill Vent II with cooling fans on top of the PWM IC allowing a comfortable lower 40°C temp @23°C room temp. The memories are cooled by two 40mm fans as shown.




If you have been living with Prescott for the past year, you would appreciate this extra furnace in winter months. The Venice has only ~65 watts of thermal loss and default 1.38 Vcore; surely it is a big change for me. At 1.6 Volt and 2,700 Mhz, Sandra reports a mere 92 Watts, which is only a number by computation based on average. Try 1.6 Volt on Prescott and you will end up a melt down.

The Power Supply

Another unexpected is the use of just a plain 400 Watts 20-pin Macron power supply. Here you could see the low 12 volt rail dropped to below 11.6 which did not affect performance. Switching to Thermaltake, the voltage was a steady 12.03 Volt as shown on the temp photo above. So, you really don't have to use 24-pin connector. Although I will be testing a couple of 24-pin power supplies in the coming days, we will then share some of the outcome. Bottom line, the economy video card allows me to use 20-pin power supply and save some money at the same time.



Before we turn the page.... the sound level right now is 47 dBA with Cool & Quiet off.