BIOS Walkthrough

We spent many months with the ECS P67H2-A2 motherboard in "B2" stepping format, and during that time, were able to see the BIOS mature a fair bit over the months. The most interesting difference to note is that both boards are recognized as separate products, even down to the OS-level, and the BIOS is no different in that regard. The interface is very simple and easy to navigate, and very reminiscent of previous non-UEFI-based BIOSes. The opening page greets us with standard time and date info, while the next page, reached via the arrow keys, allows you to adjust the functionality of the majority of onboard components. The "PC Health" listing gives access to live voltage and temperature readings, as well as access to fan adjustments, as you can see in the pictures above. It's also worth noting that ECS has included "eJiffy", a Linux-based OS for quick Internet access, which is disabled by default, but can be enabled via the "Advanced" page's "eJiffy" listing.


The chipset page allows for a couple of options specific to the chipset itself, which leads us into the "M.I.B.", or "Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker" page, where the real magic in overclocking happens. The main "M.I.B." page contains voltage settings for critical components, as you can see in the middle of the page, with actual readings of those voltages listed down below. When you adjust each option, you will see a corresponding change in the monitoring section, although we found the changes shown to not always be 100% accurate until after a reboot. At the top of the "M.I.B." page is access to both ICC clocking (Integrated Clock Chip) for base clock adjustments, and the "Performance" listing leads to options for both the CPU and memory. In order to make successful clock adjustments, you will need to set the options as we have above, or BCLK changes will not be possible.


The CPU page allows us to manipulate "Turbo" settings in order to overclock. The "IA Core Current" option is most critical; with it set to normal, you may set clocks to whatever you wish, however, the CPU's multi will lower under load in order that the CPU's current consumption meets a pre-determined limit that will change from CPU to CPU. Power limit values and multipliers are both customizable here, but do keep in mind the "IA Core Current" setting will override both multi and power limit options as we just mentioned. The memory page is quite limited in its functionality, only allowing the memory divider to be set, as well as primary timings. This is one specific area we feel does need some work, as secondary timings will prove to present stability issues with the upper dividers, making memory clocking fairly difficult as the secondary timings are not set to appropriate values when the divider is changed.


The final three pages, "Boot", "Security", and "Exit", are shown above, all having the required options needed, with the "Boot" page allowing you to set the order for up to eight different boot devices, in successive order. If one of the listings fails, the board will automatically move on to the next, good for those that like to boot from disc-based media as well as USB devices, should you need these options. The "Exit" page allows us to both set the current settings as a user default, and force-boot from a specific device, good for OS installation and quick changes to an overclocked setting when it is required.

In total, while not a complete UEFI implementation like we've seen elsewhere, lacking the mouse support, the BIOS was more than adequate for us, given some caveats. The lack of secondary memory timings proved very frustrating, however, ECS has provided users with tools that work with the P67H2-A2 to allow setting those specific options, so all is not lost. Let's take a look at the board software, on the next page.