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Bootup splash screen
Upon first power up you get that monstrosity. I don't know why but I'm not a fan of these boot splash screens. The first few seconds of a boards powered up life should be dedicated to useful information about the boot sequence. It's not on screen for long, but at the same time it should be used so you have at a glance confimation that everything is set right. Memory and CPU speeds and hard drive information is all accessible in these precious seconds, you should be able to take a look if you want to without entering the BIOS itself. Turn it off, you know you want to.
So with the delete key worn into oblivion and that screen turned off, what are you greeted with?
BIOS screenshot showing maximum front side bus speed, processor voltage and benchmarked memory timings
BIOS screenshot showing maximum Vddr and Vagp voltages available
It's the usual ASUS affair, a BIOS I'm not a particular fan of. I just prefer the other AWARD style as used by the likes of ABIT. Keyboard navigation is more intuitive (at least for this cack handed user) in the other style. However it's not rocket science to pick through and everything is laid out logically.
In the screenshots showing the processor, front side bus and memory adjustment, I've set everything to its maximum so you can see the range of options you have to work with.
It would be nice to be able to type in a front side bus selection without having to scroll up and down the huge selection manually but since some front side bus speeds are off limits I guess it makes sense. Voltage adjustment is average, you only get to shove up to 1.85V up your processor victim and only 2.8V can be fed to the DDR modules. While that's enough for a decent overclock of both, some more memory voltage would have been nice at least. I'd sacrifice any adjustment of AGP voltage for a couple of notches more adjustment on the processor and memory, to satiate the overclockers at least.
Apart from those gripes and my personal issues with the navigation, ASUS have a perfectly fine BIOS on their hands with the 2.0 version of the A7N8X Deluxe.
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