BIOS

It's BIOS time, and as usual, ASUS is one of (if not king) of the BIOS setups. Award version 6 is the module of choice using their standard tab menu layout that has been so popular for quite some time - Extreme Tweaker main menu gives you access to all of the overclocking features.

Once in the Extreme Tweaker menu you need to set A.I Tuning to "Manual" to gain access to the manual overclocking, otherwise you leave it to the A.I system to automatically overclock to a pre determined limit, and who wants that when we can push it faster?

Let's check out some of the important OC options;

Frequencies

FSB: 100MHz to 650MHz in 1MHz Increments

PCI Express: 100MHz to 150MHz in 1MHz Increments

PCI Clock Sync: Auto or 33MHz

Voltages

CPU Over Voltage: 1.100 to 1.850 in 0.0125v Increments

DRAM Voltage: 1.8v to 3.375v in 0.025v Increments

FSB Term Voltage: 1.2v to 1.55v in 0.05v Increments

NB Core: 1.2v to 2.025v in 0.025v Increments

SB Vcore: 1.5v to 1.85v in 0.05v Increments

SB Chipset: 1.05v to 1.225v in 0.025v Increments

There are plenty of great voltage options available but what does this mean when it comes to the overall overclock?

Overclocking

Using the latest BIOS version from the ASUS website, as you can see in the CPU-Z screenshot above, we managed to get the FSB to a stable maximum of 507MHz with the memory at 1:1, CPU voltage at 1.4v, DRAM voltage at 2.2v, FSB Term Voltage at 1.5v, NV Voltage at 1.6v, SB Vcore at 1.65v and SB Chipset at 1.2v.

Hitting quite a bit over the magic 500MHz FSB mark, it looks like Gigabyte's stunning P965-DQ6 has finally been knocked out of top place for maximum FSB overclocking on any Socket 775 motherboard which we have tested to date. Suffice to say, the ASUS Commando motherboard offers kick-ass overclocking and will bring a smile to anyone's face!

Important Editor Note: Our maximum overclocking result is the best result we managed in our limited time testing the motherboard. Due to time constraints we don't have enough time to tweak the motherboard to the maximum and find the highest possible FSB as this could take days to properly find. We do however spend at least a few hours overclocking every motherboard to try and find the highest possible overclock in that time frame. You may or may not be able to overclock higher if you spend more time tweaking or as new BIOS updates are released or "burn in" time might come into play if you believe in that.