Loved my old x48 foxconn black ops, being able to change the stepping per core helped me clock it to the max.

As for in general just having all the useful overclocking settings and simple fan control, I never touch any auto overclocks and such. For layout etc I am not that fussed, after a heavy clocking and stability testing I never visit again unless something goes wrong.

Well something which would be a nice improvement for a lot of BIOS's I've seen would be a clear explanation for what settings actually do and/or why you might want to change them, especially for more obscure ones. It might be OK for seasoned tinkerers but they can be very intimidating for new and even moderately experienced users, even for settings which have a simple explanation.

For example, I've seen a lot of boards with a memory hole remapping setting, where the explanation is something along the lines of ‘remaps memory hole’. Yeah, no s…

GUI may look more welcoming to newcomers, but it in no way resolves the above problems.

Some BIOS's use or alternative names for common settings. Well, anyone who's had experience with a few motherboards likely knows the sort of thing I'm on about.

Reasonable default settings would be nice too, so newcomers needn't panic about getting simple settings correct.

As with many electronics - they should allow for as much freedom of choice as possible. Or at least, that's my opinion.

The first thing I do is click the advanced mode, as the GUI imo is just a vanity feature, it just looks pretty and lacks full set of options your MB is capable of. If you are tinkering with the BIOS in the first place you are of the Overclocker / Enthusiast type of user and not the novice newbie type of user anyways as almost all modern MB's work straight out of the box with nothing to be altered in the bios.

44degrees ,where do you keep your pc,in a stove ?

One word: organization.

Saves me the time of going back and forth, and for looking for things that aren't where they should be.

It would be nice too if everyone used standardized terms. It's irritating when you're trying to help someone who has a different motherboard from a different manufacturer and each has their own ways of doing the same thing…all in all inefficiency.

I still prefer ASUS P8P67 UEFI BIOS :


Motherboard manufacturers should all aim to have excellent automated fan speed controlling like ASUS QFAN2. Gigabyte are the worst , where fan speed controlling can only be done from software after Windows starts ( telling from experience with G41 series )

It tells you everything that you don't even need to read the manual anymore.

Navigation is really easy, and items of similar things are conveniently named and grouped together.

Well, a bonus would be a light and color control for LED…if only a motherboard manufacturer would put in some fancy LEDs on a good shiny board. A white motherboard would look good too :P

As most of the mother boards today use a serial flash chip, to load the BIOS from, meaning the chipset or processor must have some characteristic to carry out the serial loading process, maybe it's time to move BIOS into a serial device such as a socketed SDCARD.

Would make life easier if your BIOS gets corrupted etc!

“What makes a great motherboard BIOS?”

Simplicity & Complexity !

What is this madness? Thought bios menus were still blue screens with white text.

Shows how much I've been out of the loop.. XD

Still waiting for:
AUTO FINDING Max Stable Settings possible for each hardware changes it plugs to.

So I no longer need to find best voltage, best frequency etc. for any processor I plugged in, nor finding best ram timings, etc.

hwarda
Still waiting for:
AUTO FINDING Max Stable Settings possible for each hardware changes it plugs to.

So I no longer need to find best voltage, best frequency etc. for any processor I plugged in, nor finding best ram timings, etc.

Considering testing for stability is a complex process that takes a long time to test and tweak, and varies between individual chips, it's not something I'd expect to find with auto-overclocking on BIOS any time soon. This is why there are teams and competitions dedicated to overclocking.

xslavic
44degrees ,where do you keep your pc,in a stove ?

The CPU is not in a power saving state when in the BIOS.

Being operating system agnostic, and bug free. Fairly obvious imo. Bonus points for minimising the need to tinker.

1. user adjustable PWM or voltage curve for fans, just like the one in the picture above.
2. ability to remap fans, whether pwm or voltage, to specific temp sensors. (e.g. I don't want a PWM slot to be permanently stuck to variate with the south bridge temps, I want it to adjust to CPU temps)

watercooled
Well something which would be a nice improvement for a lot of BIOS's I've seen would be a clear explanation for what settings actually do and/or why you might want to change them, especially for more obscure ones. It might be OK for seasoned tinkerers but they can be very intimidating for new and even moderately experienced users, even for settings which have a simple explanation.

For example, I've seen a lot of boards with a memory hole remapping setting, where the explanation is something along the lines of ‘remaps memory hole’. Yeah, no s…

+1 on that. Heck, I'd be happier if those settings were even documented properly in the manual.

OilSheikh
I still prefer ASUS P8P67 UEFI BIOS. Motherboard manufacturers should all aim to have excellent automated fan speed controlling like ASUS QFAN2. Gigabyte are the worst , where fan speed controlling can only be done from software after Windows starts ( telling from experience with G41 series )

+1 on the Asus UEFI BIOS - upgraded to a Sabertooth a while ago and it was a revelation compared to my 2010-vintage mobo that was replaced.

hwarda
Still waiting for:
AUTO FINDING Max Stable Settings possible for each hardware changes it plugs to. So I no longer need to find best voltage, best frequency etc. for any processor I plugged in, nor finding best ram timings, etc.

Not sure that this isn't a feature. My old (Asus) 890GX-based board had a self-overclock setting that worked in conjunction with some Windows-resident software to give you “optimum” settings for cpu and memory. I think it'd be too much to expect such a BIOS-tuning to cover the graphics card unless that card was also from the same manufacturer as the mobo.

watercooled
Considering testing for stability is a complex process that takes a long time to test and tweak, and varies between individual chips, it's not something I'd expect to find with auto-overclocking on BIOS any time soon. This is why there are teams and competitions dedicated to overclocking.

crossy
Not sure that this isn't a feature. My old (Asus) 890GX-based board had a self-overclock setting that worked in conjunction with some Windows-resident software to give you “optimum” settings for cpu and memory. I think it'd be too much to expect such a BIOS-tuning to cover the graphics card unless that card was also from the same manufacturer as the mobo.

Previously I hope this would've been a challenge for manufacturers to show their quality standards accuracy, that at the other end users can really choose ‘a performing product’ rather than buying a ‘high priced multi-featured product’ and hope for the best.

But after reading that even Intel positioned overclocking as selling feature in their Devil's Canyon, while some of us still feel it like opening a Christmas present, this indeed won't happen anytime soon.