BIOS thoughts
Jumping straight to the adjustments possible.
| Item | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| CPU bus frequency | 100 to 650MHz in 1MHz steps |
| DRAM frequency/multis | DDR2 533/667/800/889/1067MHz |
| CPU voltage | 1.1000V-1.8500V in 0.0125V steps |
| CPU multiplier | 6x - 13x |
| DRAM voltage | 1.800V to 3.375V in 0.025V steps |
| FSB termination voltage | 1.200V to 1.550V in 0.05V steps |
| PCI-Express frequency | 90MHz to 150MHz in 1MHz steps |
| SB voltage | 1.050V to 1.225V in 0.025V steps |
| SB SATA/PCIe voltage | 1.50V to 1.85V in 0.05V steps |
| Intel Speedstep Control/EIST | Yes |
Discussion
Any enthusiast-oriented motherboard needs a BIOS that offers fine control over all the facets that determine performance. ASUS's R.O.G. team has taken the usual AMI BIOS - which we put down as a disadvantage compared to the ease-of-navigation offered by the competing Award BIOSes - and offered the user an extremely wide range of voltages and speeds to play with, as shown in the table above.In particular, DDR2 voltage is hugely impressive and the upper settings are only to be used with active cooling if you want your DRAM to last longer than a few minutes. Memory speed support is similarly impressive and offers the option of dual-channel 1067MHz at 266MHz FSB. The Intel P965 chipset isn't as tweakable as, say, NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI, but ASUS has gone as far as it realistically can with the COMMANDO's tweaking options.
ASUS also has an O.C. Profile option that stores all the inputted frequencies and speeds: a veritable godsend if the board should require a CMOS reset to POST correctly in situations where the enthusiast is pushing the board to the very limit.
In terms of cooling control, three of the board's seven fan headers, as well as the CPU's, can be regulated by ASUS's Q-Fan control. It's designed to modulate fan speeds in relation to reported temperatures, but is somewhat compromised by the inability to manually set the temperature trigger point. Three further fans - OPT1, 2, 3 - can be set to fixed speeds or also temperature-controlled if the fans have the correct temperature probe sensors. The last fan, PWR, isn't adjustable at all. Total supported fan wattage is an impressive 84W, and any one connector can accept up to 24W. Cooling, then, is top-notch.
Below are a number of photographs detailing some of the options present.
