BIOS Features
Winfast went with Phoenix Award BIOS which is pretty standard.
Under the "Standard CMOS Features" is all the standard features that are expected to be in BIOS such as time and hard drives.
In the "Super BIOS Features" tab is all of Winfast's features. SuperBoot allows for the BIOS to store all information during a normal startup (based on your hardware) to make subsequent boot ups faster. SuperBIOS-Protect is protection for the BIOS against Viruses. SuperRecovery is a data protection and recovery function. SuperSpeed increases the FSB frequency up to a maximum of 300 in 1 MHz increments. Noticeably missing from the options here is the lack of Multiplier frequency which hurts the overclocking potential of the board.
Advanced BIOS features has all the standard functions we come to expect like boot order and floppy seek etc. Nothing abnormal here.
Under "Advanced Chipset Features" it allows for manipulation of the HT Frequency from 1-5 and Auto, and the HT Width for a maximum of 16 up and 16 down to combinations of either 8 up or down and 16 up or down.
As a sub-category underneath "Advanced Chipset Features" is "DRAM Configuration" which configures all of the RAM latencies on the board. Max Memclock which is essentially a divider that only allows for four options. The other latencies are pretty standard and self explanatory.
The "Integrated Peripherals" tab has all the onboard support items including the RAID configuration, onboard audio, and USB options.
The Power Management Setup allows for all the power functions like HDD power down and Power-On by Alarm.
"PnP/PCI Configurations" has Initial display first and PCI/VGA Palette snoop etc. Not a whole lot in here.
"PC Health Status" allows the user to see all the current temps and voltages. Additionally it has 3 options for a maximum temperature before it automatically shuts down.
"X-BIOS II < Over Clocking >" Contains all of the voltage settings for the motherboard. The Chipset Vcore goes up to a maximum of 1.8V. The Memory goes up to a maximum of 2.8V. The Hypertransport goes up to a maximum 1.5V. And finally the CPU goes up to a maximum of 1.8V and to a minimum of 1.2V. I would have liked to see at least a 2.9V setting for the ram or even a more intense 3.2V, but without multiplier adjustment having a higher voltage setting doesn't matter much.
Test System
3500+ A64 Winchester (@ 11x200 and 11x223), Winfast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS (6.39 nForce standalone kit), 1GB Corsair XPERT RAM, MSI 6600GT 128MB PCI-E (71.22 drivers), with Windows XP w/ SP2 and all updates.
The test software will include:
3D Mark 2001 SE
Aquamark
dbpowerAMP Music Converter
Comanche 4
Doom 3
HD Tach 3.0.1.0
Jedi Knight
PCmark 04
Sisoft Sandra 2005 memory Bandwidth Benchmark
SYSmark 2004
TMPGEnc Plus
Unreal Tournament 2004
Subsystem Testing
Audio Subjective Listening
During all testing I listened to many various CD's like Incubus's Morning View and Make Yourself, Rob D's Furious Angels, and Hybrid's Wider Angle Special Edition. During all audio listening there were no audible pops or hisses, and was very clear.
With these scores it shows that it takes a little over 12.5% CPU utilization to play sound which is very high.
Only a little over 6% CPU utilization for sound on this test. This is a much better score to see.
HD Tach 3.0.1.0
CPU utilization is good on this Western Digital 80GB 2MB Cache IDE hard drive. At 5% it's about on par with every other solution.
CPU is also good on the Western Digital 250GB 8MB Cache SATA hard drive. It's also 5%.
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