As for “Smart Boot Menu” parameter, it simply disables the display of the boot-up devices list by pressing Esc key during system boot-up. I doubt that anyone will get to the “Smart BIOS” section more than once. I believe it would have been much more convenient to leave all these options in the main section instead of moving them into an individual sub-section.

“Fox Intelligent Stepping” sub-section contains the complete set of parameters necessary for CPU overclocking. There is also the option that allows increasing the frequency of the integrated graphics core.

At first glance everything looks very good, but only until you start using these overclocking-friendly options. The parameter values do not get recalculated when you change the clock generator frequency, they are all set exactly according to the nominal frequency of 200 MHz. As a result, we can’t tell what the North Bridge frequency will be when we set it using the multipliers. Moreover, the memory, CPU and HyperTransport bus frequencies will also be above the indicated one, but you will have to calculate them manually, which is extremely inconvenient.

The next sub-section offers options for voltage increase. It is impossible to lower the voltages, though. The supported increment is pretty big. For example, for the CPU core voltage it makes 25 mV, i.e. 0.025 V.

Another bit of information about the CPU and the options for management of its power-saving technologies are hidden in the “CPU Configuration” sub-section.

“Advanced Chipset Features” section will allow you to configure the memory and graphics subsystem parameters.

Memory timings are all set automatically, but you can also configure parameters for each channel separately.

You can also work with all timings for both channels at the same time, but in this case they will simply be listed on the screen twice and you will still have to change each of them individually: for the first channel and then for the second one.

We never really check the “Integrated Peripherals” section, because there is usually nothing unique or unexpected there, all options are pretty familiar and clear.

We wouldn’t have checked it out this time, too, if it hadn’t been for the mysterious “SuperIO Configuration” sub-section, where some of the parameters are duplicated for some reason. And maybe Foxconn A7DA 3.0 mainboard does in fact have two FDD controllers after all?

Overall, we can’t help admitting that the issues we pointed out are not critical, and the BIOS of Foxconn A7DA 3.0 mainboard does have all the options necessary to configure the system for optimal performance and even to overclock. It is a different story that these options are not very convenient to work with. The increment is too big, all settings are scattered over numerous sections and sub-sections, you need to have a calculator or be able to calculate the resulting values yourself in order to pick the correct values.