![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , December 05, 2006
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS Striker Extreme
ASUS brings their technological expertise in motherboard design to NVIDIA’s new 680i chipset for Intel processors. Listing an incredible set of features and official SLI support, does this board have it all? Or does the ASUS Striker strike out when the heat is on?
BIOS
ASUS used the Phoenix Award BIOS with the Striker Extreme. Version 0403 was used for testing.
The Award BIOS screen looks the same as it does on most motherboards made for the do-it-yourself market. Here you will find PATA/SATA drive information, floppy settings, time and date, and this screen also shows the user the amount of installed ram.
ASUS has made a few changes on the Striker Extreme compared to previous motherboards when it comes to BIOS implementation. They’ve changed the location of the overclocking settings and they are now all under the Extreme Tweaker menu. The first setting is AI Tuning. There are several modes to choose from. The first option is Manual, second is Auto followed by Standard, AI Overclock, and finally AI N.O.S. Within the Extreme Tweaker menu are several sub menus such as System Clocks. Here the PCIe x16 slots and the SPP, Ref Clock, MHz are all configured. The default for these settings is automatic. Next is FSB & Memory Config. Here you will find the settings for configuring the system memory frequencies. In order to adjust these values independently of the CPUs FSB, you will have to set the FSB Memory Clock Mode to Unlinked. This will allow you separate asynchronous adjustment of the memory bus. The next setting is FSB Memory Ratio, then FSB QDR, MHz, and then a display of Actual MEM (DDR), MHz is displayed last. Additionally ASUS has been very generous with settings here. The memory speed is adjustable from 533MHz to 3000 MHz. Though anything like that will be difficult to achieve, it’s nice that ASUS has included settings that are above and beyond normal, in order to better meet the enthusiasts’ needs.
The next section is overclocking. Here you will find CPU multiplier adjustments as well as memory timings and Spread Spectrum Control. The latter two options are controlled via sub menus. The Memory Timing Settings sub menu has all the memory timing adjustments you could ever want. The basic tCL (CAS Latency), tRCD, tRP, tRAS, and Command Per Clock (CMD) are all here in the standard section. Below those settings you will find an Advanced Memory Settings section. Here you will find tRRD, tRC, tWR, tWTR, tREF, tRD, tRFC and finally Async Latency.
As mentioned before, there is also a Spread Spectrum Control menu within the Extreme Tweaker menu. Within the Spread Spectrum Menu you will find the following settings : CPU Spread Spectrum; PCIE Spread Spectrum ; MCP PCIE Spread Spectrum ; SATA Spread Spectrum, and finally LDT Spread Spectrum.
Next up is Over Voltage. This menu contains all the voltage adjustments for board voltages as the name implies. Here, you can manually adjust your systems voltages as needed. The settings are : VCore Voltage ; Memory Voltage ; 1.2V HT Voltage ; NB Core Voltage ; SB Core Voltage ; CPU VTT Voltage ; DDRII Controller ; DDR II Channel A Ref Voltage, and DDR II Channel B Ref Voltage. I really have to applaud ASUS here for not only providing a vast array of voltage settings, but also a wide range of adjust-ability for voltage for each category.
Once past the enormous amount of tweaking settings, you’ll find the Advanced Tab within the BIOS. Here the first setting is AI Net2. AI Net2 allows virtual testing of your network cables for diagnostic purposes.
On board Device Configuration is the next item of interest in the advanced section. This is where PATA/SATA and RAID settings are located. Here you can disable unused components should you desire to do so. Here you will see HD Audio, On board 1st NVIDIA LAN, On board 2nd NVIDIA LAN, Silicon SATA II Controller, and LCD Poster settings.
Within this section, you will find IDE Function Setup, which contains OnChip IDE Channel0 Enabled/Disabled IDE DMA Transfer Access Enabled/Disabled, and IDE Prefetch Mode Enabled/Disabled. USB Configuration rounds out this sections list of sub menus. Here you will see USB Controller Enable/Disable ; USB Legacy Support ; and USB 2.0 Controller Enabled/Disabled.
The Power Tab, has all your basic ACPI settings and APM settings. Also within this section you’ll find the Hardware Monitor. There are several monitors here. Voltage, Temperature and Fan Speed Monitor. Also, there is a Fan speed Control menu as well as a CPU Fan Speed Warning threshold.