BIOS

Like most other companies, Sapphire uses the proven Phoenix AwardBios. The BIOS version we have been using is not the final version and all issues that we reported will be fixed, Sapphire promised.


The first page is called Standard CMOS and offers settings to change date/time, HDD and floppy settings.


Advanced BIOS has settings to adjust general BIOS settings like typematic rate and additional bootup-delays. Also you can disable the full screen POST image here, so that you can see the full output of the system startup. On a subpage you can change the order in which the system will try the available boot devices.

Advanced Chipset

Here you find several ATI chipset related options, for example to control width of the PCI-Express x16 interface. On a submenu you can access the Memory Timings options which we will cover on the next page, in the overclocking section.


On another subpage you find settings related to the LDT speed and width.
Unlike the nForce4, the LDT frequency is not directly linked to HTT, so if you set 800 MHz here, it stays at 800 MHz, no matter what clock speeds you set for the CPU.

Integrated Peripherals

Integrated Peripherals has options to change, which SATA and IDE ports are activated and to enable/disable USB, Audio, LAN, Floppy and the IEEE1394 interface.

RAID configuration is done in the SATA chip's own setup utility which can be entered by pressing a hotkey during POST.


One issue I spotted in the current BIOS, is that the default setting of the SATA controller defaults to RAID. On this setting you might not be able to start the Windows installation without loading additional drivers. Once you change this setting to "IDE Controller" everything will work fine.

---

Under Power Management, you will find the standard options which are usually listed here. One important option you can enable/disable here, is "AMD Cool&Quiet" which reduces heat output and power consumption when the CPU is idle.


PNP/PCI Configurations has no useful options. "Init Display First" is located on the Integrated Peripherals page.


The Hardware Monitoring page shows the usually monitored fan speeds and voltages.
Three temperatures are monitored here: Ambient temperature, CPU VRM, which is the temperature of the MOSFETS under the big black heatsink and Northbridge voltage, which is the temperature of the ATI RX480 chipset. What I am really missing here is an option to monitor the CPU temperature by reading the on-die thermal diode. The board does support monitoring CPU temperature (and another temperature near the CPU socket) it's just that the BIOS does not list these yet.

Options to dynamically change fan speeds based on temperature are not available either.