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Bios
Asus
went with the pack in their choice of the Phoenix Technology’s Award BIOS.
They did however; opt to keep the same BIOS interface that they have been
using for quite a few years.
The
BIOS has an interesting feature they call “Post Reporter”. When this feature
is enabled, any post errors are communicated in narrative form by a distinct
female voice. While this technology is not new, Asus has made it unobtrusive,
and a viable alternative to the encoded beeps we dread hearing.
Under
“Advanced Chipset Features”, the FSB can be set in 1 MHz increments to a
maximum value of 211 MHz. Multipliers settings can be manipulated between the
values of 9 and 17. The memory settings are very tweakable with all the
adjustments for memory dividers and timing the enthusiast has come to expect.
Voltage settings for Vcore are capped at a very conservative (some would say
disappointing) 1.85V. Aggressive overclockers with extraordinary cooling
normally take Vcore well above 2.0V. Memory voltage settings cap off at a
very standard 2.8V.
The
“Hardware Monitor” menu has a feature Asus calls “Q-Fan Control”. In enabled
mode, the CPU fan speed is regulated by the load the system is subjected to.
The
remaining BIOS features are pretty standard faire at this point.
Overclocking
Our
overclocking goals for the A7N8X consisted of achieving the maximum
STABLE FSB speed, while running our memory
at the most aggressive settings possible.
Maximum
FSB speeds are best achieved when multipliers can be manipulated. Normally
users have to unlock their CPU in order to achieve this functionality; however
Asus has provided a feature in their BIOS which allows access to multiplier
manipulation.
Using
the test configuration from the table below, we proceeded to employ different
combinations of multiplier/FSB/voltages/memory settings until we were able to
accomplish our goal.
Our
results were as follows:
| Multiplier |
12.5 |
| FSB |
193 |
| Memory |
2-2-2-5 |
| VCore |
1.85V |
| VDimm |
2.8V |
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