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- Date:
- Monday , January 01, 2007
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS P5N-E SLI
ASUS offers up an affordable motherboard from the new nForce 600 series family; the P5N-E SLI featuring the nForce 650i chipset. To put it plainly, this motherboard gave us awesome overclocking for the money spent.
BIOS
ASUS chose to use a modified version of the popular Phoenix AwardBIOS design for the P5N-E SLI’s BIOS. The BIOS version used for testing was version 0304.
The Hardware Monitor submenu, accessed from the Power tab menu, contains monitored statistics on all system voltages, temperatures and attached fan speeds. Automated CPU and chassis fan control can be enabled using the Q-Fan Control options. These options only allow for enabling and disabling only, with no fine adjustment available for the factory pre-set temperature or voltage thresholds.
The Boot tab menu contains numerous settings related to system initialization configurations, including those relating to boot device access order. With a properly detected USB 2.0 type device attached at system boot time, the device shows under the Hard Disk Boot Priority submenu. Priority of devices listed in this submenu can be changed using either the + and – keys or the PageUp and PageDown keys.
The Advanced tab menu contains various submenus for controlling the all chipset and onboard device related functions.
The CPU Configuration submenu contains options for controlling CPU related functions, including SpeedStep, thermal control, and Virtualization Technology functionality.
The Onboard Device Configuration submenu contains options for controlling the operating state of the various system devices, including the IDE and SATA ports, the onboard audio controller, the NVIDIA LAN controller, the IEEE 1394 ports, and the JMICRON e-SATA port. All IDE and SATA port configuration options are contained within the IDE Function Setup submenu, while the NVRAID Configuration submenu contains the chipset raid related functions. Note that only the onboard SATA II ports are RAID capable.
The USB Configuration submenu contains settings for configuring all USB 2.0 system ports, with the option to set USB 1.0 or 2.0 functionality across all ports using the USB 2.0 controller option.
The JumperFree Configuration submenu contains a series of submenus for controlling all system device and bus speeds and voltages. The AI Tuning option allows for automated or manually controlled overclocking. With the AI Overclock option enabled, the Overclock Options setting becomes accessible, allowing for selection of various percentage overclocking pre-sets. Using the AI Overclock option forces the system to control the voltages and bus speeds to obtain the selected overclocking level. Setting the AI Tuning option to Manual allows for user control over all system device and bus speeds, as well as system voltages. The board also supports SLI memory, through the SLI-Ready Memory option. When this option is enabled, the BIOS automatically sets system memory speed and timing settings for optimal operation based on the selected overclocking value and data from the SLI coprocessor located on the seated memory modules themselves. If your memory modules are not SLI enabled, this setting will have no impact.
The System Clocks submenu contains bus speed configuration settings related to the onboard system buses. Using the NB PCIE Frequency (MHz) option, you can set the PCI Express bus to a maximum speed of 131 MHz.
The Voltage Control submenu contains all user configurable options related to system voltage settings. The CPU voltage is set via a combination of settings, both the VCore Voltage and VCore offset Voltage options. The VCore Voltage option allows for a maximum CPU voltage of 1.60V, which should be enough to fry any Core2 Duo CPU. However, the BIOS allows for an additional .100V over the CPU maximum via the VCore offset Voltage setting, meaning that the actual CPU voltage ceiling is a massive 1.70V. The Memory Voltage option configures the system memory voltage, with a maximum of 2.517V allowable. Note that it is highly encouraged to use active cooling on your memory sticks if you use more then 2.1V. The NB Core Voltage controls the Northbridge chipset voltage, with a ceiling of 1.740V.
The FSB & Memory Config submenu contains setting related to system memory speed and CPU bus speed operation. The FSB - Memory Clock Mode option sets up the relationship between the memory speed and the CPU FSB. With this option set to Linked mode, the FSB (QDR), MHz option is used to set the CPU FSB, with a maximum of 2600 MHz (650 MHz actual FSB speed) allowable. The system memory speed is set via the FSB – Memory Ratio option via predetermined ratios in the form memory speed : CPU FSB. The Sync Mode setting effectively corresponds with a memory ratio of 2:1. With the FSB - Memory Clock Mode option set to Unlinked, the CPU FSB and Memory speeds are both independently settable. The CPU FSB remains configurable using the FSB (QDR), MHz option, while the memory speed is set via the MEM (DDR), MHz option. The memory speed is settable to a maximum of 2600 MHz (which corresponds to a 1300MHz actual operating speed). In either mode, the screen shows the values of both the CPU FSB and memory speeds via read-only options, labeled Actual FSB (QDR), MHz and Actual MEM (DDR), MHz.