BIOS
ABIT's recent BIOSes have been pretty good. Let's see how the Pro's fares.
The shipping BIOS was manually updated to the -11, dated 4th May 2004. A couple of features need pointing out here. Firstly, ABIT provides a facility whereby you can save and load 5 BIOS configurations. The rationale behind it lies with the time it takes to fine-tune a performance BIOS, one which will be lost if overclocked too far. It's a simple, decent idea that works well.
Bizarrely, ABIT's µGuru subscreen is in present in an AMI-like fashion. What's even more bizarre and, frankly, hugely disappointing is the board's inability to lock AGP and PCI buses. This is one of the K8T800 Pro's main selling points, so not having it implemented immediately is unfathomable from a performance-orientated company such as ABIT. On a better note, voltage manipulation is healthy, with up to 1.85v for the CPU and a RAM-scorching 3.2v DDR.
This screenshot shows the external driven clock raised to 245MHz. Note the accompanying rise in reported AGP and PCI speeds. What is ABIT thinking of?. We really don't know. Perhaps the rush to get a Pro board out to market was too alluring. Just removing the bus-locking feature (or asynchronous bus control) should strip this board of its Pro title. Most disappointing. It really, really is.
The other portion relating to µGuru is a comprehensive hardware monitoring section. Thanks to the µGuru chip, Temperature monitoring, voltage monitoring, fan speed control, and FanEQ control all provide comprehensive information on every facet of power delivery.
We used the above timings during formal testing. As with almost all S754 boards, you're given the option of reducing the maximum memory clock to 100MHz, 133MHz or 166MHz. Performance mode, naturally, uses a 200MHz (DDR400) memory setting. Our only way to determine that this is a K8T800 Pro BIOS is to take a look at the HyperTransport Bus subpage, although the usefulness of a 1GHz HT link is questionable. A separate page allows one to toggle features on and off. The BIOS also supports AMD's Cool'n'Quiet technology.
What's otherwise a robust BIOS is savagely let down by a lack of AGP and PCI bus control. There's simply no excuse for its omission.
