BIOS
Of immediate concern in this AwardBIOS setup is the lack of hardware monitoring. You just kind of expect it to be there, so it's shocking to see it absent. We can't see any reason for its exclusion in this BIOS.
The Frequency / Voltage control section is also limited in nature. The driven clock can be adjusted from 200 - 233MHz, but be careful as AGP/PCI speeds aren't run off discrete clocks. What the above screen also shows you is the lack of voltage adjustment on offer. We can't even tell how much each line is getting at default settings, either.
DDR latencies will be shaped by your RAM's abilities at stock or near-stock volts. We're testing with some Corsair XMS3500C2 that's proven to run at 2-2-2-6 latencies with 2.55v.
This used to be one of the K8T800's advantages over NVIDIA's initial chipset. 6.4GB/s of bandwidth can flow between the northbridge and CPU. It's important to remember that it's not the link between bridges.
Every feature listed above flows from the VT8237 southbridge. A simple BIOS that's severely compromised by the lack of hardware monitoring and, to some extent, missing Cool'n'Quiet technology and multiplier adjustment.
