The BIOS

    The BIOS itself is one of the more important aspects of a motherboard, as you spend most of your time tweaking time in here.  So what special menus does this motherboard have?  We will focus on the more important menus, and not really look at the standard menus that every motherboard has.

        The main menu shows the menu options that are available in the menu, that leads you to the other menus which we will look at, such as PC Health Status (O.T.S), X-BIOS II, and Advanced Chipset Features.

    The advanced chipset menu is where most of the overclocking efforts will occur.  Here you can adjust you FSB frequency and has the ability to increase the frequency in 1MHz increments.  The memory frequency can be adjusted to many different frequencies, from 75% - 200% depending on your FSB.  You are given a large variation in memory timings, for instance with the RAS settings you are given a range from 1 to 15, and the CAS latency goes from 2 to 3.  Another interesting feature found in many nVidia based motherboards is the ability to control the AGP bus speed, from 50MHz to 100MHz. 

    This menu has some of the least options but provides some of the most information that can help you keep you computer up and running.  You can only change the CPU warning and shutdown temperatures and there is not much else in this menu.  What options does the "X-BIOS II" screen have, is it filled with options to change the multiplier of the CPU or other features?

    Here there is only two options for changing the voltage, first for the CPU and the AGP slot.  The CPU voltage ranges from 1.1 volts all the way up to 2 volts going in 0.025 volt increments.  The AGP voltage can only be raised by 0.2 volts but this should be adequate for most users.  What is interesting is the lack of CPU multiplier options, or any RAM voltage options.

Overclocking

    One thing that many people who build their own systems is overclockability.  The combination of nForce 2 chipset which can change the multiplier of many TBred processors, and the lower speed grade Athlon XP's, has produce some of the better FSB and processor speed overclocks.  But how well did our Athlon XP 1800 Thoroughbred overclock on this motherboard.  

    Unfortunately there were a few things that limited the overclockability of this motherboard.  First the lack of any multiplier adjustments meant that this was only a FSB increase with a correlating clock speed increase as well.  However there was also some good points to this motherboard in this area.  The maximum CPU voltage of 2v is higher than most motherboards by about 0.15v, so overclocking should have a slightly higher limit.  The ability to lock the AGP/PCI bus allows for better overclocks in the area between 133 and 166MHz.  But as we can see from the WCPUID screenshot above, the maximum overclock was 1831MHz, though it seemed to be limited to a FSB under 160MHz.  Without the ability to change the multiplier I could not make sure that this was not a CPU limit, though the fact that this screenshot was taken with a CPU voltage of 1.74v so there is plenty of voltage headroom still available.  The system would not even get to the BIOS when we moved to 160MHz or above even with the voltage raised to >1.8v.  Another annoying overclocking point is that sometimes you have to turn off the computer and reboot before any of the overclocked settings work properly.  Even though this motherboard supposedly supports multiplier adjustments now, from what the product page says, I found no way to change the multiplier in the BIOS (with the latest BIOS 5/22/03) or with the overclocking software provided.  With my Barton 2500+ and the FSB jumper set at 166MHz I have been able to reach at least a 200MHz FSB.

Benchmark System