BIOS

ECS uses an Award BIOS.


The first page lets you change HDD settings and floppy disk drives - if you still have them. Also the setting IDE BusMaster can be found here. During normal use this should always be turned on since it enables your CPU to do other tasks while waiting for data from the HDD.


Advanced BIOS has a number of options to enable or disable certain CPU features and to set the order in which drives are tried at bootup. Please note that AMD Cool and Quiet is located here and not on the Power Page.


The Advanced Chipset page has two subpages which are related to the HyperTransport configuration and to the memory settings.


The HT configuration page lets you adjust the HyperTransport bus speed. This becomes important when overclocking, because the HT link will increase its frequency and could become unstable beyond certain frequencies.


You can select the memory clock mode between "Auto", "Limit" and "Manual". Limit means that you define a frequency maximum which should be used and the board picks a lower clock if the CPU clock speed or the memory timings require it. Manual lets you pick the memory frequency directly. However, be advised that the number given here is the clock speed at 200 MHz HT. If you overclock this increases proportionally.


To enable manual memory timing configuration you have to select "DCT 0" mode, whatever that is.


Once you have DCT 0 Mode enabled, you can change the CAS latency only! The other settings like tRAS, tRCD and tRP are still managed by the board.