BIOS musings
Let's now take a look at Gigabyte's BIOS.
Gigabyte's BIOS is easy-to-navigate but on first glance doesn't offer the range of options you'd expect from an enthusiast-class motherboard. Gigabyte keeps the advanced configuration menus hidden, and you need to concurrently press the Ctrl and F1 keys for the options to be displayed. The following BIOS shots highlight the advanced settings.
The MB Intelligent Tweaker (MIT) section is where most of the enthusiast-orientated action takes place. There's enough options for you to scroll down the page, so we've broken it down into two shots.
We've listed the relevant frequencies and voltages available in the table below. What's clearly evident is that Gigabyte is offering a huge range of options. For example, you can take DDR2 voltage right up to 2.575V, and push up the CPU's past 2V, although just how long it will last is another question.
Gigabyte also offers you BIOS-based overclocking via its C.I.A 2 option. You can pre-select a number of parameters that each push up CPU and memory frequency when the system is under load. Cruise, Sports, Racing, Turbo, and Full Thrust are available. Using the Turbo setting in conjunction with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 CPU (2.13GHz, 266MHz FSB) the board pushed up under-load frequency in Windows to 2.272GHz with a 284MHz FSB. There's a plethora of other options that allow you to fine-tune any overclock. Robust Graphics Adapter, which is designed to increase the frequency of the system's graphics card, wasn't implemented in this version of the BIOS. Setting it to any parameter other than Auto and reloading BIOS would force the board to ignore the request and keep the Auto option active.
| Feature | Adjustments possible |
|---|---|
| FSB Clock | 100-600MHz (1MHz increments) |
| CPU FID | x6-CPU MAX. FID (1x increments) |
| PCI-E Clock | 90-150MHz (1MHz increments) |
| Memory | 400/533/667/800MHz |
| CPU Core voltage | 0.6875V - 2.375Vv in 0.0625V increments |
| Memory VDIMM | Nominal (1.8V) - +0.775V in 0.025V increments |
| PCIe voltage | 0-0.35V in 0.05V increments above default |
| FSB Voltage | 0-0.35V in 0.05V increments above default |
The board's not short on the features count, is it?
Another subscreen lets you to jump into the Dual-BIOS config. utility, which allows you to update or restore BIOS images from a floppy. By default, the 'DQ6 will attempt to load a backup BIOS should the board not POST after a few attempts. You can toggle that setting here. It becomes annoying when you're attempting to overclock and failed POSTs force the board to load a BIOS each time.
It's a shame, then, with all the voltage support on offer that Gigabyte a mediocre reporting section. We'd expect to see real voltages for CPU, memory and FSB, at the very least. You can, however, modulate the fans' speed with respect to the CPU or motherboard's temperature.
A decent enough BIOS that's compromised by poor reporting and inability to save BIOS configs.