X-bit labs

DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR Mainboard on ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Chipset (page 7)

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 01/20/2006 | 07:14 PM ]

BIOS and Overclocking

DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard was tested with the latest BIOS version at the time of the tests, which dates back to December 23, 2005.

BIOS is one of the indisputable strengths of the DFI mainboards. DFI engineers work very hard on optimizing the BIOSes of their mainboards for better performance, add new features and useful technologies and offer the users very flexible configuring options. This approach ensures that DFI mainboards receive the highest review scores and get broad public recognition.

The today’s hero, DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR, is no exception from this prospective. Its BIOS Setup boasts very similar features as many other DFI mainboards based on NVIDIA nForce4 chipsets.

The BIOS of the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR mainboard is based on the Phoenix-Award BIOS v6.00PG enhanced with DFI’s brand name overclocking tools and CMOS Reloaded technology.

First of all I would like to say a few words about the CMOS Reloaded technology. It allows saving all BIOS Setup settings as profiles and restore them later one if necessary. Moreover, the mainboard saves all settings automatically upon each successful boot-up. This way you can always roll back to the working Setup settings anytime.

As for the overclocking friendly settings, the list is quite extensive and includes the following options:

• The frequency of the clock generator forming the CPU frequency can be adjusted from 200 to 500MHz with 1MHz increment;
• The CPU frequency multiplier can be adjusted manually (reduced below the nominal value). The minimal value is 4x;
• The parameters responsible for the working frequency and width of the HyperTransport bus can also be adjusted. The frequency of this bus is set with a multiplier (to the clock generator frequency), which can be set to 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x. The width of the bus can be set to 8 or 16 bits in any direction.
• The VID bits of the processor can also be adjusted, so that the CPU voltage can be increased from 0.8 V up to 1.55V with 0.025V increment. Besides that there is a setting that allows increasing the Vcore by up to 36% (relative to what the VID bits are set to). In other words, the maximum CPU Vcore you can set on this mainboard is 2.11V;
• The memory voltage can be set manually: from 2.6V to 4.0V with 0.05V increment;
• The chipset voltage can be increased from the default 1.2V to 1.3V, 1.4V or 1.5V;
• The voltage on the HyperTransport bus can be increased from the nominal 1.2V to 1.3V, 1.4V or 1.5V;
• The PCI Express bus voltage can also be adjusted. You can increase the nominal voltage of 1.8V – to 1.9V.

Although there are no special tools for adjusting the PCI Express bus frequency in this list, it can be clocked independently of the main clock frequency generator. In other words, the increase in the basic CPU frequency for overclocking needs doesn’t imply that the PCI Express frequency will also go up.