BIOS
ASUS have always stuck with the 'phoenix' style of award bios, the functionality is similar but the layout is totally different.
As with most motherboards nowadays, you can adjust the FSB in 1 Mhz intervals. Other overclocking favourites such as multiplier adjustment, CPU core voltage, DRAM voltage are present. The maximum CPU and DRAM voltages are less than some other motherboards, the CPU Vcore maxing out at 1.850V and the DRAM at 2.85v. The 'System Performance' option seems to be the same as the CPU command decode rate option found on the usual Award BIOS. Also notice the separate AGP voltage adjustment, this is very handy for extremely high AGP bus speeds.
Here we see the available memory timing options. Just about every timing that can be adjusted has been covered. Missing from the options are memory drive strengths, although this is no great loss as I have found them to make very little difference to stability at high speeds on other motherboards.
The hardware monitor page is where you can check on your power line voltages and temperatures. Like other KT400 boards the CPU temperature makes use of the onchip temperature diode, for a more accurate reading. Something you don't find on other boards is what ASUS call their Q-Fan control. This feature will automatically adjust the fan speed according to the CPU temperature - allowing for a much quieter running system. The options available here allow you to adjust the minimum fan speed the board will use and how fast it responds to temperature changes.
Finally ASUS also offer the ability to flash upgrade the BIOS via the inbuilt EZ-Flash utility. By pressing ALT-F2 during boot up you will be presented with a simple page prompting you for the filename of the new BIOS, which it will read off a floppy disk. I'd personally find this feature very useful as it saves hunting round for that old DOS boot disk.
