BIOS Setup

We are very well familiar with the exterior looks and structure of the Asus mainboards BIOS based on AMI microcode that has undergone significant modifications:

Without going deep into details on all available functions, we would like to draw your attention to the most important BIOS Setup sections that are essential for proper system configuration. In this respect the primary section would be “Ai Tweaker”. Although it has some many parameters that they simply can’t fit into the first screen, I consider this layout to be much more informative and easy to work with than a nested chain of numerous sub-topics. When we configure our system settings we go through all the parameters from top to bottom, changing those settings that we need, and it is much more convenient than jumping from one sub-section to another. Only the memory timings are singled out onto a separate page, but it seems to be a smart decision, considering how numerous they are.

You can set “Ai Overclock Tuner” parameter to Manual, and in this case you will get full access to a bunch of other settings. You8 can select “D.O.C.P.” — DRAM OverClocking Profiles. In this case the mainboard will select the most optimal settings for the desired operational mode on its own. For example, if you have an Intel Core i7-860 processor and you wish to overclock the memory to 1800 MHz, the board will increase the base frequency from the nominal 1333 MHz to 150 MHz in order to get the desired memory frequency. At the same time it will lower the processor clock frequency multiplier, so that its resulting frequency could be as close to the default 2.8 GHz as possible.

If the memory modules in your system support X.M.P. (eXtreme Memory Profile) technology, the board will act in a similar manner. In order to switch our DDR3 Corsair Dominator GT CM3X2G2000C8GT memory modules to 2000 MHz frequency, we had to increase the base clock to 167 MHz and at the same time reduce the multiplier to 17x.

The examples above are true for the Intel Core i7-860 processor. With an Intel Core i5-750 CPU the board acts differently. It is not only because this CPU features lower nominal clock frequency and will require a different clock multiplier. As you know, Intel Core i5-750 turned out more feature limited than we have expected it to be. It doesn’t support 12x memory multiplier that we used before and can only go as far as 10x. In this case, we need to increase the base clock to 200 MHz and lower the processor frequency multiplier to 13x in order to hit 2000 MHz memory frequency.

Why do we pay so much attention to “D.O.C.P.” and “X.M.P.” settings for “Ai Overclock Tuner” parameter? These features are not really new, Asus mainboard have supported them for quite some time now. The thing is that when we changed the processor clock frequency multiplier before, it was locked automatically at a selected value, the multiplier would no longer drop in idle mode when the processor utilization was low. Of course, it had its negative effect on system power consumption and all related aspects such as heat dissipation and noise levels that is why these overclocking techniques weren’t taken seriously. Today, it has become an absolutely real way of increasing the system performance, because now the processor clock multiplier will still get lower in idle mode even if you change it manually. This new feature expands our abilities for system fine tuning. For example, you can increase the base frequency in such a way that your memory modules will work at their most effective frequency. At the same time, you can lower the processor clock frequency multiplier in order to avoid increasing its Vcore, and end up with a pretty fast and energy-efficient system.

Another new feature is the “OC Tuner Utility” built into the mainboard BIOS. If you activate it, the mainboard will reboot multiple times, each time increasing the base clock a little more. As soon as the board detects first errors at the POST stage, it will step back a little to avoid these errors in the future.

Of course, it is still a pretty primitive overclocking technique, but it doesn’t require user’s participation and is performed automatically. We don’t have many ways of influencing the work of “OC Tuner Utility”. All we can do is change the “OC Tuner Limit Value” parameter from “Good Performance” to “Better Performance”. However, it is nevertheless better than the older “CPU Level Up” overclocking option, when we used the preset CPU profiles, just like we did for the memory. This time the system doesn’t try to squeeze our CPU into a certain preexisting pattern, but tries to adjust for the potential of the existing processor unit.