BIOS and Overclocking:
Most of the Phoenix Bios is pretty standard, although there are a few screens I do want to take a closer look at. In particular we will focus on the Advanced Chipset Features screens. Here we can begin our overclocking adventure.
The first option is the CPU frequency, which can be adjusted in 1MHz increments from 200MHz to 400MHz! The second option is the HT frequency multiplier, which can be adjusted from 1x to 5x (or even Auto). This would allow us to have a potential of 2000Mhz HyperTransport frequency! Then you have the HT width, ranging from 8 down and 8 up to 16 down and 16 up (and any combination 8/16, 16/8). At the bottom portion of this screen you can adjust CPU voltage to have an additional +375mV (increments of +25mV), DIMM Voltage can be increased from 2.55V to 3.11V.
Another major screen connected to the Advanced Chipset Features screen includes the DRAM Configuration options. Here you can adjust the settings for your RAM. The first option is the Memclock Index Value, where you can select 100, 133, 166 or 200Mhz. Next is the CAS# latency, and you are given the choices of 2, 2.5 or 3. Now you can adjust the specific timings on the RAM, starting with the Min RAS# active time (Tras), here your choices range from 5T to 12T. Next is the RAS# to CAS# delay (Trcd) and are given the choices from 2T to 7T. Row precharge time (Trp) is next, and you can again select from the range of 2T to 7T. There are still more RAM settings you can adjust! You can set the 1T/2T Memory Timing, the Read Preamble value from 2ns to 9.5ns in .5ns increments, and finally, the Async Latency value ranges from 2ns to 11ns in 1ns increments.
Another screen I found interesting was the RAID Configuration screen. Here you can select your RAID settings, specifically which drives will be available for a RAID array.
I wanted to see how well I could overclock the ECS KN1 SLI compared to the Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI. For the initial test, I wanted to see how well it would overclock with the default settings, just by adjusting the CPU Frequency (default is 200). With the Gigabyte motherboard, I was able to get a stable operation at 226MHz, while the
ECS KN1 SLI, was able to run at 228MHz. Not a big difference, but every little bit helps.
Next I adjusted the HTT Frequency multiplier, and was able to get the Gigabyte motherboard to have a stable 247MHz, and pushed the ECS KN1 SLI to 253Mhz.
