BIOS Overclocking

There are not many settings for overclocking here.


The FSB is selectable between 200 and 450 MHz, quite optimistic of ECS. It seems that there is a bug which sets the FSB to 281.4, if it is higher than 281 MHz, no matter the actual setting. More about this in the overclocking section of this review.


This setting controls how fast the memory will run in relation to the CPU clock. The setting 3:10 looks interesting, it is only available on the SIS chipset. Even if you run your CPU at 200 MHz stock, your memory will run at 666 MHz = DDR2-1200. I think it will be hard to find memory being able to run that fast.


The range of VCore options is laughable, only 0.075V extra? This won't cut it for overclocking.


The VDIMM range is better, +0.15V is needed for many performance DDR2 memories to run stable.


This is useful boot menu pops up when you press a hotkey during startup. You can set your first startup device to HDD in the BIOS, and the rest to disabled (faster startup times). On the rare occasion when you have to boot from CD or USB stick, just use this boot menu.

BIOS of SIMA 939 Card

Since the SIMA cards allow you to use CPUs of a completely different architecture, a different BIOS is needed.


The voltage options for Socket939 CPUs are found under Power Management. Up to 1.55V for CPU VCore is quite ok. But...


... the maximum FSB you can set is only 232 MHz. I assume that all the complex signal routing makes the add-in card a bad overclocker, so ECS chose to limit the settings here.


When overclocking, you may have to reduce the HT speed a bit. With the 232 MHz limit, I doubt this will be needed, but good to have it anyway. The 1000 MHz setting didn't work for us, no matter the clock speed.


Custom memory timings aren't really possible here with only CAS latency listed. Where are the other timings, ECS? Having a 1T/2T switch is nice though.