Make Home Page
Add to Favorites
Print article
Send link to friend
Digg this
Post to del.icio.us
Post to Slashdot
BIOS and Overclocking
The mainboard’s BIOS is made by Phoenix/Award. Overall, the BIOS is quite ordinary, but let’s anyway page through some of its sections like Advanced Chipset Features, PC Health Status and Genie BIOS Setting.
So, the first of the sections, Advanced Chipset Features, includes numerous settings: you even have to scroll down to access some of them. They are far-reaching, too: from memory timings to the AGP port settings. As you can see in the snapshot, these settings are more than enough for tuning the system up. Most users won’t ever need them really.
By the way, the original BIOS was not free from some bugs, particularly connected with memory timing settings, so we had to re-flash a new version (the fresh BIOS is always available at DFI website). However, the new version was also far not quite perfect. For example, I discovered that some settings affect the range of available DRAM and FSB frequencies in the Genie BIOS Setting section. I won’t go deep into detail about this influence, but it shows up when you change the System Performance and Memory Timings presets.
As for AGP settings, they are rather scarce for this mainboard. On the other hand, there is an opportunity to set AGP latencies, which is quite useless for most users.
Now, we are in the PC Health Status section. Regrettably, DFI didn’t manage to avoid the common mistake: they don’t tell what thermal diode the CPU temperature is taken from: the one integrated into the CPU core or the one placed under the CPU socket. Since there is some element under the CPU on this mainboard, I assume it could be a thermal diode. So, we are not sure which way the CPU temperature is measured here. Another questionable option is CPU Shutdown Temperature. You cannot change the default value – 110oC. Meanwhile, the official maximum temperature for AMD processors is 95oC. So, we have a too high shutdown temperature: the processor may be damaged even if the overheat protection system works correctly. It would be better if DFI allowed changing this value.
