We were also planning to take a closer look at the new Auto Boost System (ABS) Technology, however, unfortunately, it failed. I have already mentioned during the discussion of DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS BIOS functionality that DFI boards have one of the best and most convenient systems for saving user settings profiles. Auto Boost System technology should allow you to save user profiles not only in the BIOS micro-chip, but also on external storage media for the purpose of exchanging them with other mainboard owners. ASUS boards have similar functionality, however, DFI’s implementation is better and much more convenient.

The manual for Auto Boost System suggests that it should launch if you press F1 on boot-up. However, in our case this key would automatically load user profile 4, which was empty at the time, so the system wouldn’t boot at all. So, we saved an operational settings profile into slot 4 and repeated our attempt to launch Auto Boost System again. The saved profile 4 would load and the system would work just fine, but where is Auto Boost System technology and how is pressing F1 different from pressing hot key “4” assigned to profile 4? We couldn’t figure it out.

Frankly speaking, the actual way of launching the ABS technology by pressing F1 is pretty doubtful to begin with. This key already has a function reserved for it - to continue booting after clearing CMOS.

We also couldn’t use the special utility for Auto Boost System to work in Windows OS. For some reason it requires to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 during installation, although Windows Vista doesn’t need it. It installs eventually and allows saving the current user settings profile on the hard drive, but that’s all it does.

The utility cannot load the profiles it has just saved, it doesn’t see the profiles saved in the CMOS, and when we tried to launch a special file for automatic update downloaded from DFI web-site, it reported incompatibility of the current BIOS version:

We learned about Auto Boost System technology from DFI’s official web-site, the page devoted to DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard. Here you can also download a special auto-upgrade profile, a program installation file, a user’s manual in .pdf and Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 formats to launch the program under Windows XP. However, before you start, they suggest that you should download BIOS version X48DD711.

You can get much newer BIOS versions for a long time now, but maybe Auto Boost System technology works only with his particular BIOS version? No, even in this case the program still claimed that the BIOS version is not the same. Moreover, the tests showed that the board showed poorer overclocking results with BIOS version X48DD711. The system becomes unstable, although it worked perfectly fine with BIOS version X48DD725 and X48DD829.

By the way, it turned out that there are at least two different pages with BIOS Updates for DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard on the official site. If you click on the word “BIOS” in the navigation pane on the left-hand side of the page, you will get to the page with the latest BIOS version X48DD725 from July 25. If you click the link offering to download BIOS version X48DD711, you will get to a different page with a completely different set of BIOS versions available! The last one is version X48DD829 from August 29. For a while we couldn’t explain the difference between these two pages, however DFI fans helped us out. It turns out that if the URL of the page contains “FLAG=A” – it is the page with official BIOS versions. If you replace “FLAG=A” with “FLAG=B”, you will get access to beta-versions. In other words, the latest official BIOS version is X48DD725 dating July 25, while BIOS version X48DD829 from August 29 and version X48DD711 from July 11 – are betas.

The description, screenshots and ABS utility suggest that there are at lest three cases, when you may really need Auto Boost System technology. First of all, it will be very helpful for commencing overclockers. We all know that the BIOS of DFI mainboards contain a scary amount of settings, which may be pretty hard to figure out. Instead, an inexperienced user may download a special settings profile that will overclock the processor by, say, 20%, or overclock DDR2 800 to 1066MHz.

However, commencing overclockers are not the only ones to benefit from this technology. I managed to get my mainboard sample to work only at 483MHz FSB, and someone else may have reached 580MHz bus frequency. Wow! How did you do it? Instead of describing all the details of your overclocking success, you can just email me a tiny file with the settings profile that will contain all the necessary values for the BIOS parameters. There are no two same mainboards, like there are no two same processors anywhere: each has its own potential, its Vcore, its cooling system… You may need to correct a few values so that they fit your particular system, but the main tendency will be clear.

There is also the third use for Auto Boost System technology. If I am going to surf the Internet or listen to music, a CPU working at its nominal speed is more than enough. I press “1” on system boot-up and load the first profile with default settings. If I am going to play some contemporary high-tech game, I will need everything my overclocked system can offer. So, I press “2” on system boot-up and load the second profile with the settings for successful CPU overclocking to 4.1GHz. But what shall I do if I decide to play a game after I’ve listened to enough music and have read all hot news and articles? I have to reboot the system, wait for the beginning of POST and hit “2”, so that the system could boot in overclocked mode. Auto Boost System technology allows me to launch a special utility right from Windows and load the desired profile, so that I could simply restart the system and enjoy.

Unfortunately, these are just our guesses. Since, Auto Boost System technology didn’t work, we have to postpone discussing its features and functionality. So, hopefully next time we will be able to offer you more details of the ABS technology and its potential.