BIOS options
| Feature | Adjustments |
|---|---|
| HT reference clock (CPU-SPP) | 190MHz-600MHz (1MHz increments) |
| HT link frequency | Auto/200/400/600/800/1,000(MHz) |
| CPU FID | x4-CPU max. FID (x1 increments) |
| PEG clock | 90MHz-250MHz (1MHz increments) |
| SB Reference clock | 90MHz-150MHz (1MHz increments) |
| Memory clock | 400/533/667/800MHz |
| Graphics clock | 150MHz-1,023MHz (1MHz increments) |
| Graphics frame-buffer | Auto/32/64/126/256/512/1024MB |
| CPU core voltage | 0.800-1.550v (0.025v increments) |
| CPU Vcore 7-Shift | +0 - +35% (5% increments) |
| Memory VDIMM | 1.700V-2.850V (0.05v increments) |
| NB voltage | 1.10V-1.2V (0.05v increments) |
Gallery
The 'Advanced Chipset Features' menu provides a good spread of options; the usual memory, HyperTransport and PCIe options, as well as letting you adjust the integrated graphics core.
As with many AMD boards, there is a wealth of options for tweaking the integrated memory-controller. At first, the board would boot at different timings than selected in BIOS, but the cause was chased down to the option labelled 'DDRII Timing Item', which must be set to enabled.
The integrated-graphics configuration menu lets you adjust the amount of memory partitioned for IGP usage, as well as allowing you to overclock the graphics cores clock speed, which ships at 500MHz.
The Surround View option is typically there to enable both the IGP and a discrete graphics card to operate simultaneously, but we ran into issues enabling the setting. Usually to enable Hybrid CrossFire - where the integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics core works in cooperation with a discrete HD 3xxx - you activate Surround View in the BIOS, and CrossFire in Catalyst Control Centre.
However, enabling Surround View resulted in the board refusing to POST. In addition, Sapphire advises that for Hybrid CrossFire you set the integrated graphics as the first display to be initialised, but with it enabled this option is removed, only allowing you to choose between PCI or PCIe. Phew!
We did manage to get Hybrid CrossFire operational by disabling Surround View and setting the IGP as first initialised display. With this selected it was the discrete HD 3450's display that initialised first and was the primary display in Windows. Obviously, this is a BIOS issue for Sapphire to fix.
Additional overclocking options are available in 'Power User Overclock Settings'. There's a generous range of overclocking options for a mATX board, but having the settings available doesn't necessarily mean they are achievable.
Boards designed for overclocking and pure IGP-laden designs tend to serve two disparate markets, with IGP boards very much built to cost rather than striving for absolute performance. If you're looking for some serious overclocking, it comes as no surprise you should probably look elsewhere, yet the range of options available should let you squeeze that little extra from your system compared to most competing IGP solutions.
