ABIT AW8-MAX BIOS
ABIT's now-familiar µGuru-based BIOS is a must if the AW8-MAX is going to appeal to enthusiasts. ABIT offers you the opportunity of saving and reloading up to five separate BIOSes. It's a handy and much-needed feature here, as the AW8-MAX's BIOS has just about the broadest set of user-defininable parameters of any current motherboard.
Heading on over to ABIT's µGuru, which is further split into OC Guru and ABIT EQ categories. OC Guru, shown above, allows you to tinker with voltages and speeds. Specifically, the CPU's external clock (FSB) can be changed from 133-400MHz, opening up the way for some serious overclocking fun. Common on this trio of i955X chipset-based boards is the ability to lock PCI and PCI-Express buses at default speeds, such that overclocking will be limited by either the CPU or northbridge's ceiling.
DRAM, being DDR2 here, can be set to run at DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 speeds, assuming a CPU FSB of 200MHz. Higher RAM frequencies don't make a great deal of sense on a board bereft of onboard graphics, so no problems here. Voltage-wise, ABIT does well. CPU's ranges from 1.4v-1.75v, DDR2's from 1.75v-2.3v, and the northbridge's from 1.5v-2v. We noted that all reported lines were a little weaker than what's inputted in BIOS. It's just as well that the enthusiast has a lot of voltage to play with, then.
Moving on over to ABIT EQ, we see in-depth, unparalleled temperature, voltage, fan speed, and one of three Fan EQ controls. Here's where ABIT is just so much better than other manufacturers and exactly why the µGuru ASIC is an important part of ABIT's feature list. Take your time to peruse the exhaustive reporting here, and then compare it with the others. There's no real competition on this front, is there?
Latency tweaking is just how we would expect it, and the use of some low-latency Corsair DDR2 memory allowed us to run with tight, performance-enhancing 3-2-2-8 timings.
As you would expect, too, features can be toggled on/off.
Taken from whichever way you wish to look at it, ABIT's AW8-MAX has the best BIOS of the trio on test. Excellent range of voltage and speed manipulation is augmented by similar excellence in reporting and monitoring, and that's what a performance/enthusiast BIOS is all about.
