BIOS Setup

Now that we have checked out almost impeccable PCB design of the Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P mainboard and studied the impressive list of supported features, any computer enthusiast will be more than pleased. The BIOS Setup check promised to be quite pleasant as well, because we all know how thoughtful Gigabyte is when it comes to making their mainboard BIOS more illustrative, convenient to use and rich in features and functions. Unfortunately, we faced a few upsetting issues that may somewhat spoil the fun from working with Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P.  

Gigabyte keeps hiding some BIOS Setup settings behind “Ctrl-F1” key combination. Don’t forget to press them on launching the BIOS Setup if you want to get full access to the available parameters.

The first section we see is “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)” holding almost all settings that may be of interest to computer enthusiasts and overclockers. At first glance, the page looks quite common for Gigabyte: easy to work with and informative.

It reports the current CPU frequency that will change when you change the clock frequency multiplier or clock generator frequency. You can also easily check the integrated North Bridge frequency, which is set with multipliers of its own.

As for the HyperTransport bus frequency, which also increases together with the clock speed, it is set as is, without any multipliers:

It doesn’t matter what format is used to set the HyperTransport bus frequency. The problem is that the reported value remains fixed and doesn’t change as the clock speed increases. You will have to calculate the actual HyperTransport bus frequency manually, to make sure that it remains close to the nominal value during overclocking. Quite an inconvenience.

Let’s move on. Numerous parameters dealing with the memory subsystem configuration are all on a separate page called “DRAM Configuration”:

I think it doesn’t make sense to duplicate settings for clock and memory frequency, but it is not a big deal anyway. However, it is great to see not only the timings that the mainboard sets automatically, but also those written in the modules SPD. But what will happen if we decide to change some memory timings manually?

Once you switch “DDR3 Timing Items” parameter to “Manual”, all “Auto” settings will disappear right away. Now you will see the actual values for all of them, and as you can notice they differ dramatically from those used in Auto mode as well as from those written in the modules SPD. As a result, even if you only wanted to adjust one timing value, you will be forced to set absolutely all memory timings manually. A pretty big setback.