ASUS P4R800-V Deluxe Review - The BIOS
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The ASUS P4R800-V utilizes the standard Phoenix BIOS. Instead of going screen by screen, here are some of the more interesting features.
Under the Advanced screen you see a grayed out option for SurroundView. This feature, with the use of a dual display AGP card, allows the use of three screens (think Swordfish). The option for it is currently disabled because ATi has not released drivers that support it yet. Below that is Frequency/Voltage control option.
The P4R800-V surprised me by having a fair amount of overclocking options. Front side bus speed can be set from 100MHz to 266Mhz depending on the CPU. Memory Bus speed can be set synchronously or asynchronously to DDR-400 (1:1), DDR-333 (5:4), or DDR-266 (4:3). (Ratios given are based off an 800MHz bus processor.) Processor voltage can be set from 1.525 to 1.625 with the VCore Voltage and increased an additional 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, or 0.4 volts. Theoretically, you could set VCore voltage to a very dangerous 2.025. Additionally, the North Bridge voltage can be set to 1.5 or 1.6 volts, memory to 2.5, 2.6, 2.6, or 1.8 volts and the AGP to 1.5 or 1.6 volts.
I was surprised to see the amount of flexibility ASUS put into the BIOS of the P4R800-V, especially after reviewing the Albatron KM18G Pro, which also included onboard video, but only allowed front side bus adjustments but no voltage adjustments.
On top of all the overclocking options, the P4R800-V has all the memory timing adjustments that you'd expect from a pure overclocking board. There are also video settings on this screen that allow the user to select the aperature size, the amount of system resources to be used for the onboard graphics, if the video output is for CRT, TV or Auto, and if the TV ouput is NTSC or PAL standard.
The speech reporter can be enabled in the following screen with the option to report not only errors, but a good boot, and volume booster.
In addition, the
Advanced section is where you would enable the onboard SATA controller, GigaBit LAN, and the 1394 controller. You can also find the option to enable and configure the ASUS Instant Music feature.
Here in the last BIOS screenshot is where you can check your voltage and temperatures. You'll notice that ASUS's Q-Fan Controller can be enabled here.
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