FIC AU13 Motherboard - FIC AU13 Motherboard

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FIC AU13 Chameleon Max

 

 

BIOS FEATURES

The first order of business upon booting up was to replace the pre-production BIOS that came with the motherboard. So a quick trip to the FIC website for a download of the latest BIOS and flash utility was in order. I got the only BIOS listed for this motherboard. Unfortunately, the website did not list any information on what fixes or improvements were included with this BIOS. I upgraded from BIOS TFA402 to production BIOS TFA42 which fixes support for 200MHz FSB for AMD Athlon XP 3200+.

 

 

Now that the BIOS is up to date, let's take a look at the feature set.

 

 

Once you get into the BIOS, you will recognize the standard Phoenix - Award BIOS screen layout. A notable addition to the Advanced BIOS Features screen is the BIOS Guardian which prevents the BIOS from being flashed until it is disabled. This feature provides protection for your BIOS from viruses while the system is in normal operation.

 

 

In the Advanced Chipset Features screen you find options to manipulate your RAM memory timings. The settings are Optimal, Aggressive and Expert. Expert allows you to individually change T(RAS), T(RCD), T(RP) and CAS latency. The Integrated Peripherals, PnP/PCI Configurations, PC Health Status and Power Management Setup screens are pretty standard fare.

 

 

The Frequency/Voltage Control screen is where the dangerous tweaking settings are found. Here you can alter the following selections:

• System Performance - Settings are Optimal, Aggressive or Expert.

• CPU Ratio - Clock multiplier from 3 to 24 in .5 increments

• FSB Frequency - Set from 100MHz to 233MHz

• Memory Frequency - Set memory frequency to the following: SPD, 2:1, 5:3, 3:2, 4:3, 5:4, 6:5, 1:1, 5:6, 4:5, 3:4, 2:3, 3:5, 1:2 or AUTO

• CPU Interface - Set CPU/FSB parameters for either Optimal (stable) or Aggressive (overclocked) when not in System Performance "Expert" mode.

• FSB Spread Spectrum - Disabled by default

• AGP Spread Spectrum - Disable by default

• AGP Frequency - Set AGP frequency either Auto or from 50MHz to 100MHz in 1Mhz increments

• DDR Voltage Control - Set from 2.5V to 2.8V in .1V increments

• AGP Voltage Control - Set from 1.5V to 1.8V in .1V increments

• CPU Voltage Control - Set from 1.1V to 1.925V in .025V increments

Although you can lock the AGP bus to 66MHz during overclocking experiments, there is no readily apparent option in the BIOS to lock the PCI bus. Some enthusiasts would probably like to see a larger voltage range for the three voltage controls for overclocking purposes.

 

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BENCHMARKS AND TESTING

 

(you can see in the picture that the Northbridge has the active cooler installed at this time)

 

I assembled the AU13 Chameleon MAX on a test stand with the following components:

• FIC AU13 Chameleon MAX (TFA42 BIOS, nVidia nForce2 UDP 2.03 drivers)

• AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (333MHz Barton) XP 3200+(2200 MHz, 11x200 MHz)

• Vantec Aeroflow CPU Cooler

• Kingston HyperX DDR PC3500 (2 x 256MB Dual Channel)

• ATI Radeon 9700 PRO 128MB (Catalyst 3.4, default settings)

• Maxtor 20GB HD 7200rpm 2MB buffer

• Generic floppy drive

• Enermax 350w PSU (EG365P-VE FC)

• Windows XP Pro (SP1, DX 9.0a)

• Senfu Tech Station

My software bundle for today is:

• Sisoft Sandra (OCA edition)

• PCMark2002

• 3dMark2001 SE v330

• 3dMark2003 v320

• Comanche 4 Demo

• AquaMark Demo

• CPU-Z

 

The test results from this motherboard were a pleasant surprise for me. I had never given much thought to using an FIC product before. But after pushing this motherboard for all I could, I have a new found respect for the FIC brand. I started out by running all the tests at the system defaults to get a feel for what the motherboard would do for the "average Joe". Once the baseline results were out of the way, it was time to play. I found something really interesting in overclocking this board. Even though the BIOS has FSB Frequency settings that go up to 250MHZ I could not get the board to boot properly with a setting any higher than 200MHZ. I'm not complaining because that does support FIC's claim of DDR 400MHz memory support. Something else that I haven't figured out yet is that I could pull Sisoft Sandra and PCMark2002 scores all day long at 2405MHz (XP3400+ estimated by Sisoft Sandra, CPU: 12 x 200, Vcore 1.75, Memory: 7-3-3-2, synchronous, 2.5V) but could not run the 3D benchmark programs. Fully stable benchmark results were achieved at 2185MHz (XP3100+ estimated by Sisoft Sandra, CPU:11.5 x 195, Vcore 1.7V, Memory: 7-3-3-2, synchronous, 2.5V). So I will be presenting the three results that were achieved.

 

XP2500+ 1837MHz (11 x 166)	XP3100+ estimated 2185MHz (11.5 x 190)	XP3400+ estimated 2405MHz (12 x 200)

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