BIOS
ASUS uses a modified Phoenix AwardBIOS for the P4R800-V Deluxe. Previously, ASUS' BIOSes have been a little unwieldy in the navigation and input department. Let's see how this one does.
The main screen simply highlights the devices attached and little else. The advanced screen, however, is where the tinkering fun starts. There's Prescott support with the test BIOS that's dated 26th Feb. 2004., although, as you can see, we ran with a regular 3.4GHz Northwood processor. Hyper-Threading support is a given - it would be extremely difficult to market a modern S478 motherboard without it.
The frequency/voltage control section is where most enthusiasts will be initially drawn to. It bears repeating that the P4R800-V isn't designed for all-out speed. CPU clock frequencies range from the default 200MHz to 266MHz. Most Canterwood boards are able to exceed this limit. Just like Intel's boards, DRAM can be set to DDR400 (synchronous), DDR333 and DDR266 speeds. The latter two allow all 4 DIMM slots to be used concurrently. Choosing Turbo from the performance selection menu pushes up the board's FSB speed to 204MHz. With a 3.4GHz processor that's 3.475GHz. Turbo should be renamed to FSB inflation. That's why we chose to go with a standard setting.
CPU Vcore initially appears to top out at 1.65v, but in true ASUS style it can be offset by up to 0.4v, giving a very healthy 2v. Healthy is perhaps the wrong word. Shoving 2v up a Northwood will be highly detrimental to its longevity. Northbridge and AGP Vcore sees 0.1v adjustment and DDR voltage tops out at a standard 2.8v. Pretty decent ranges for a board that's not explicitly geared towards benchmarking nirvana. Voltages tended to be fluctuate less than on ASUS' P4C800-E Canterwood.
The chip configuration is where further performance fine-tuning takes place. Onboard video can take up to 128MB of system RAM, and RAM latencies can be set to our preferred 2-2-2-6.
P4R800-V Deluxe is a model that'll sell more on features than performance. Here's just a few that the board offers.
We'd like to think that 31c was a correct BIOS temperature for a 3.4GHz Northwood processor that's cooled by a retail heatsink and fan combination. We're sure it's not. Why can't manufacturers have internal and cross-company temperature consistency?. This section's a little weak. There's no DDR voltage reporting but there's ASUS' Q-Fan cooling system present.
It's interesting to note that ATI and ASUS had initially included SURROUNDVIEW technology support for the 9100 IGP platform. SURROUNDVIEW allowed the use of the IGP's graphics core and a further two video outputs from an add-in ATI AGP card, giving three concurrent displays, much in the vein of Matrox's Parhelia. It appears as if ATI has effectively ended SURROUNDVIEW support by not including the necessary components in the latest driver sets and ASUS has removed support from within the BIOS. A shame, really.
