Chipset Configuration

On the Chipset Configuration page you can enable/disable the on-board Ethernet port and the on-board audio.

The AGP port can also be tweaked here. For overclockers an important option is CPU-NB link speed which controls the HTT multiplier. When running high FSB speeds, the HTT bus between CPU and chipset tends to go out of spec and limit your overclock. It is best to have it running around 1000 MHz. The options here are labeled with absolute MHz values. For example the 1000 MHz setting is multiplier 5 (200 MHz x 5 = 1000). Now, if you overclock to 300 MHz HTT, the option will still be labeled 1000 MHz but it would actually set 1500 MHz (300 x 5 = 1500). Consider this when overclocking.


You can set your memory voltage to "Auto", which is the same as "Normal" which results in 2.6V and "High" which isn't so high with 2.7V. This list of options is really a shame. I couldn't get my Winbond BH5 memory to run 2-2-2-5 stable, so all benchmarks are run at 2-2-3-5 which has almost no performance impact. It's still annoying. A mod to increase memory voltage is described here.


There are no interesting options on the pages ACPI, PCI PnP, Floppy Configuration and USB Configuration.


The IDE Configuration page has the usual options that control how your IDE and SATA ports are handled. If you do not run RAID you should change the SATA Operation Mode setting to "Non-RAID" this will short your boot time, because the RAID BIOS does not have to be loaded.


I always disable the floppy controller in the BIOS, you can do it here and also change some settings of the serial and parallel ports.


On the Hardware Monitoring page you will find the bare minimum temperatures, fan speeds and the monitored voltages. Options to dynamically change fan speeds based on temperature are not available.


The order in which boot devices are tried during startup is configured here. You can also disable certain startup devices. A nice feature of this BIOS is that after pressing F11 on the POST screen you get a list of detected devices and can chose from which to boot.


On the security page you can enter passwords to protect your system bootup or your CMOS setup from being entered.