BIOS Walkthrough

The ASUS UEFI BIOS is pretty mature at this point, having been in use for a bit over a year now on nearly every ASUS product. Upon booting the board we are greeted with what ASUS calls "Easy Mode", and easy to use graphical interface that offers most of the basic functionality users need, including a bit of monitoring, too. Pressing F3 or F8 will bring up a shortcut menu, which the second and third pictures above show. F3 leads to the shortcut menu that will lead directly to the listed section in the advanced BIOS mode, while F8 pops up a boot menu that lets you boot directly from any of the listed devices, really handy during OS install, for sure. You can also hit ESC or the button in the top-right corner to access the Advanced BIOS, which provides a ton of options not available in Easy Mode.


Once in the Advanced mode, we are greeted by the standard ASUS UEFI opening screen that contains time and date setting, but this time we also find security options listed here as well. We have been big proponents of OEMs minimizing the number of BIOS pages and optimizing the click-flow to do certain things, and ASUS is definitely listening. The second image above shows the options contained within the Security sub-heading. The next page over is shown in the third image above, labeled AI Tweaker. This page contains the majority of critical clocking and voltage adjustments, as well as a few other things, such as subheadings for CPU options, VRM adjustment, and DRAM timing control. There's so much, in fact, that the next three images are all of the same page.


Even though there are so many voltage options here, we can see the need for nearly every one, and there is nothing that stands out as being needed. The complexity of the P9X79 Deluxe VRM design is such that the absolute maximum options for user customization are possible, which helps ensure that all users get the most they can out of their system. We even find that ASUS has separated the voltage provided to each bank of DIMMs, and with the fine-grained voltage options, reaching speeds and stability not possible elsewhere becomes very easy to achieve.


The DRAM timing options are just as numerous as the voltage options, if not more so. Primary and secondary timings all fit on the first screen, but we scrolled down to find nearly five full screens lower down all filled with system memory or controller timings and options.


The ASUS P9X79 Deluxe even has separate skew adjustments for every channel, and although the primary and secondary timings are for all channels, nearly every other option is broken down to per channel, if not per DIMM slot.


Moving on to the DIGI+ subheading, we find a ton of options here as well, with adjustments available not only to increase or limit current as desired, but also quite a few options to separately set the frequency of each of the VRM sections, thanks to the use of multiple controllers. The full list of settings is shown in the first two images above, while the third shows the CPU Performance Settings, which includes settings for the CPU ratio, as well as Turbo parameters and SpeedStep.


It's hard to believe that all of those options we just showed are contained within the single AI Tweaker page, especially considering how easy it is to navigate from one section to the next. Of course, that's not all, and the next page up is the Advanced page, which contains board-specific settings, as well as other CPU and memory settings that weren't contained within the AI Tweaker page.


There are even settings for PCIe speed, to help with compatibility, and even the options to enable or disable the hardware-level HotSwap capabilities of the Intel X79 Express chipset are available.


USB settings are contained within their own page, but all of the other onboard devices are on a separate page, including options for the add-on Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo card. The APM page has just a few power-management specific options, but considering how much there is elsewhere, it seems all too appropriate to have a page or two with very little.


The monitor page doesn't actually list that much monitoring information other than a couple of temperatures and fan speeds the top, but just below it does offer Fan Xpert settings for each Chassis fan individually, while the dual CPU_FAN headers are in their own section. Below that we find listings with a few voltages and a setting labeled "Anti-Surge Support". ASUS tells us that when overclocking, this setting in particular can be very important in reaching the maximum clocks, and we found it just as useful as they suggested.


The boot page contains setting for setting the priority for boot devices as well as having a section that allows a direct boot from the devices attached to the board, whether via SATA, eSATA, or USB. The tools page has just four selections inside; access to the EasyFlash utility to flash the BIOS, a tool that lists the SPD information from installed DIMMs, a section to store BIOS profiles for each swaps between stock and overclocked settings, and finally, ASUS Drive Expert, a tool for RAID array creation that offers several different modes, but for the most optimal use, also requires that appropriate software and drivers be installed.


That leads to the very last page, the exit page, which can not only exit from the BIOS, but can also you get you back to the Easy Mode, should you desire. There is also the option to launch an EFI Shell stored on a drive, for users that need it.