![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, September 13, 2006
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS P5NSLI
ASUS’ P5NSLI motherboard mates full support for Intel’s new Core 2 Duo line of processors and NVIDIA’s dual card SLI architecture. With both of these winning technologies, ASUS is almost assured to have a powerhouse on its hands.
BIOS
ASUS chose to use an AMIBIOS type design for the layout of the P5NSLI’s bios. The BIOS version used in testing was version 0601.
The Advanced screen in the BIOS contains a series of submenus for configuring various aspects of the board’s overall functioning and speed.
The JumperFree Configuration submenus contains a series of overclocking related options and submenus, which become accessible depending on what setting is selected within the AI Tuning option. The Standard & Auto settings tend to be the most restrictive, allowing no automated overclocking or user configured manual overclocking options to be configured. The AI Overclock option allows for user access to the Overclock Options setting. Through this option, the user can set up BIOS controlled automatic overclocking through the use of preset speed percentages or physical CPU bus and memory speed settings. The Manual option gives the end user the most control and overclocking freedom, exposing the Frequency Control and Voltage Control submenus.
The Frequency Control menu contains all board speed related options. The PCIE Frequency (MHz) setting controls the speed for the PCI Express bus, with a maximum 150MHz bus speed allowable. The System Clock Mode option determines the relationship between the CPU and memory frequencies. With this option set to CPU Precision Tweaker, only the CPU FSB is user configurable, with the memory speed set synchronously to the selected CPU FSB. The MEM Precision Tweaker option allows for independent setting of memory speed without affecting the CPU FSB. The CPU/MEM manual-mode option allows for both CPU FSB and memory speed to be set independent of one another. The CPU FSB speed itself is configured through the New FSB Speed (QDR) option, with a maximum FSB setting of 400MHz (shown as 1600) allowed. The DDR2 memory speed is configured through the New MEM Speed (MHz) option, with a maximum speed of 1200 (600MHz actual speed) allowed.
The Voltage Control submenu contains all available options for configuring board voltages. The DRAM Voltage option controls the voltage supplied to the DDR2 modules, with a 2.100V maximum allowed. While this amount of voltage is not insanely high, it should be enough to give your DDR2 modules an extra nudge in the right direction. The Chipset Core Voltage controls the Northbridge chipset voltage, with at 1.5V maximum. The CPU Termination Voltage option sets the CPU’s Vtt voltage, with a 1.35V maximum allowable. The CPU voltage is set via the VCore Voltage option. This option allows for a decent 1.6000V maximum, a full .3V over the default voltage for most Core Duo CPUs.
The Chipset submenu contains a submenu for configuring memory related timing settings as well as HyperTransport related settings. The HyperTransport bus speed is controlled through the LDT Frequency option through a series of pre-set ratios. The actual speed the bus can be determined by multiplying the selected ratio setting with the current CPU.
The Memory Timing Configuration submenu contains all user configurable memory timing options.
The available memory timing options become user accessible once the Memory Timings option is set to Manual. The following memory timing options are available for configuration: cas latency (T(CAS)); RAS to CAS delay (T(RDC)); RAS precharge delay (T(RP)); active to precharge delay (T(RAS)); row cycle time (T(RC)); and command rate (Addressing mode). Note that on the listed memory timings options, the numerically lower setting forces more aggressive memory operation.