BIOS
AOpen uses a modified AwardBIOS configuration utility. Frequency control is such that the CPU's FSB and multiplier appear on the same line. Choices for the FSB range from 100MHz to an improbable 255MHz. Multipliers range from 5x through to 12.5x (XP3000, 12.5 x 166MHz). AGP frequency ranges from the default 66.67MHz to 100MHz, although not quite in 1MHz increments. DRAM frequency is a little strange. There's various FSB multipliers that range from 1x through to 4x, so at 166MHz FSB it's possible to input a DRAM frequency of DDR664. Highly unlikely to work and pretty useless to boot. The EZ18 doesn't officially support 200MHz FSB Bartons. The CPU's FSB speed is independent of AGP and PCI settings, so the dividers rise to highlight the growing disparity between FSB and bus speeds.
CPU voltage sees reasonable level of adjustment, from 1.1v - 1.85v. DDR voltage tops out at 2.7v and AGP at 1.6v. It's also strange to see manual BIOS adjustment for the onboard GeForce4 MX video, ranging from 199MHz - 250MHz. We'd leave tinkering to an OS-driven application.
The DRAM section is pretty good, as one would expect. We could run our preferred 2-2-2-6 latencies at DDR333 speeds without a problem. The IGP shares system RAM with the onboard video and CPU, so setting a larger frame buffer cuts into the CPU's resources. Not a problem if you're running 1GB+, though. The onboard video's basic architecture won't benefit from massive allocations of memory. What's more important is RAM latency and speed, for it's directly tapping into main memory.
Lots of features and options, yet SATA support is conspicuous by its absence.
For some bizarre reason, the hardware monitoring section doesn't report on DDR voltage. Fan speed is controlled via both BIOS and SilentTek (OS) settings. It can be set to full speed or Smart Control, with the latter taking the CPU's temperature into account. The quiet PSU and a Smart Control setting makes the EZ18 virtually inaudible over general background noise. Definitely one of the quietest SFF systems we've heard thus far.
