BIOS Setup Issues

We have discussed almost all important features of the Asus Rampage II Gene mainboard BIOS. However, some entire sections and sub-sections have been left out. We did it on purpose and now we are going to get back to them. Speaking of the BIOS in general, its functionality is absolutely superb, but we have already mentioned quite a few drawbacks. We are sure that the incorrectly displayed memory frequency in the nominal mode will be fixed shortly. We are not sure that they will replace the string-type with column type display, although it would be much more convenient to perceive information displayed in columns. We also can’t promise that we will get a unified “Hardware Monitor” section back instead of a combination of individual sub-sections. I hope that they will also remove the unnecessarily duplicated parameters and the structure will be more thought-through. For example, there are several parameters in the “Extreme Tweaker” section that refer to the external LCD Poster panel. Why are they there, while it could make much more sense to have them moved to the special sub-section called “LCD Poster and LED Control”?

While we were listing all these small issues, we have finally got to a more significant problem: lack and in some cases I would even say concealment of information. First of all I am talking about new unknown functions and features of Asus Rampage II Gene mainboard. We have just mentioned a few parameters connected with the LCD Poster panel. The idea behind the first one is actually quite transparent. “Debug Mode” parameter can be set to String or Code, i.e. the status of the startup POST procedure will be displayed in text form or digital code form. But what does the second parameter called “Keyboard TweakIt Control” stand for? If we open the user manual we will get the following “explanation”: the parameter may be set to Disabled or Enabled. It reminds us of DFI mainboards, because this was the way they described the functionality of unknown parameters: possible settings are Mode 1 and Mode 2 but not a single word about the difference between them. But DFI has already corrected this mistake, there are special manuals available with examples and detailed description of unknown parameters like that, so why would Asus make the same mistake?

This is a rhetorical question. Besides, the information about the unknown parameter is available in the mainboard BIOS. Part of the screen on the right-hand side is devoted to contextual comments. If you select “Keyboard TweakIt Control”, then you get… not the detailed description, of course, but just a hint. It turns out that when you use a PS/2 keyboard, you can manage the information displayed on the LCD poster screen using navigation arrow keys.

We connect PS/2 keyboard and only now after a few experiments start to understand what’s going on. The “LCD Poster Mode” parameter in the “LCD Poster and LED Control” sub-section by default is set at “Current Time”. It means that once the startup stage is over the external LCD display will show current time. It is not the most useful information, but you can change it to “All Voltage”, “All Temperature” or “All Fan Speed”. In this case, all voltages, temperatures or fan rotation speeds that Asus Rampage II Gene can control will be displayed on the LCD Poster screen consecutively in a loop. Independently of the setting entered in the BIOS, you can use PS/2 keyboard to replace the current parameter group with a different one right from Windows, or make the screen show only one particular voltage, temperature or fan speed.

I totally encourage the presence of brief contextual comments in the BIOS, but believe that there always should be a full detailed description of all functions in the user manual. Even the functions with seemingly obvious functionality should be described, not to mention the unknown ones. In fact there should be no “unknown” parameters at all, and if something completely new appears, then the explanation should be twice as detailed.

There is a mysterious “iROG Configuration” sub-section in the “Advanced” section of the BIOS. Its description in the user manual is very vague that is why I decided to take my chances and enabled the mysterious “iROG Timer Keeper” parameter. It turned out that in this case the mainboard simply starts taking the on-time. Although I still didn’t find out what “iROG ID_Number Information” actually stands for.

In this respect I would like to remind you that some time in 2004 the BIOS of Abit mainboards acquired a new sub-section called “Power Cycle Statistics”. We checked it out only once and never came back to its contents. Why? Because everything there is simple and clear without any additional commentary. Mainboards allowed keeping track of all statistics: current and total on-time, number of system boot-ups, number of reboots, etc.

Well, there were much more functions there than by Asus Rampage II Gene mainboard. Moreover, everything was obvious, there were no unknown abbreviations like iROG and there was no need to consult the manual to learn about certain parameters and their meaning. That seems to be a perfect approach. And when we have to guess what’s hiding behind a strange abbreviation, when there is no clear description and you have to experiment in order to understand what’s the deal – this is a totally wrong approach. BIOS is a very complex thing already. Without knowing possible consequences of your actions, you should never change any settings, but Asus actually makes us do it.

By the way, the external LCD panel called Abit Guru Clock appeared also back in 2004. And even today it is superior to LCD Poster from Asus in a number of parameters, but it just happened to come up here.

I decided to leave the “TweakIt Batch File” subsection from the “Tools” section for dessert, because I couldn’t really figure out what it is meant for. We can set ten parameters: base frequency and nine different voltages, and then we can save all info twice and then later restore. We have only one question here: why would we need all that?

After I failed to find an answer to this question, I even checked out a few already posted reviews of the Asus Rampage II Gene mainboard on other web-sites, but the reviewers seemed to have found no explanation either. Some assumed that it was some kind of a BIOS notepad that should help remember what voltages correspond to what base frequency. I doubt it is the case. Why would anyone need to save two versions of very limited settings data if we can use Asus O.C. Profile to save eight full settings profiles? Anyway, I failed to guess the meaning of it and didn’t find any description in the manual, so the idea behind this mysterious section remained a secret to us.

Just in case I would like to make one thing very clear: I really liked the functionality of the Asus Rampage II Gene BIOS. There are a lot of parameters available for configuring, the supported ranges are broad enough and the increments are small. The BIOS functionality will be useful not only for commencing and experienced overclockers but also to common users, who care about the efficiency of their system. Unfortunately, there are a few not very serious issues that make working with this BIOS not as convenient as it could have been and the lack of appropriate documentation doesn’t allow using the BIOS functionality to its utmost extent. Honestly, there are no real problems there, the pointed out issues are not critical, and Asus definitely did a terrific job on their BIOS. And this part of our review appeared only to make sure that as time goes on the next BIOS versions will become even better and even more convenient.