![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , May 17, 2007
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
abit AB9 QuadGT
abit’s latest Intel P965 based board, the AB9 QuadGT, touts full support for both ATI CrossFire dual card configuration and the latest quad core Intel processors. But will that be enough to ward off the other top performing P965 based boards?
BIOS (continued)
The Advanced BIOS Features menu contains settings and submenus for configuring system initialization protocol, including those related to hard drive initialization access order. With a properly detected USB 2.0 hard drive attached to the system at initialization, the device shows as a valid item in the Hard Disk Boot Priority submenu. The priority of specific items in this menu can be changed using either the + and – keys or the PageUp and PageDown keys.
The Advanced Chipset Features menu contains chipset configuration settings, including the PCI-Express and memory timing configuration options.
All memory related timing options become user configurable when the DRAM Timing Selectable option is set to Manual. The following memory timing options are available for user configuration: CAS latency; RAS to CAS delay; RAS precharge delay; active to precharge delay (shown as Precharge Delay (tRAS)); command rate; and row refresh cycle time. Note that on the memory timings listed, the numerically lower setting forces more aggressive memory operation.
The Integrated Peripherals menu contains submenus controlling the operation of the onboard and system integrated devices. The On-Chip IDE Device submenu contains configuration settings for SATA 2 ports operated via the ICH8R controller chipset. The SATA Mode option controls the working state of the RAID chipset, with the boot BIOS automatically queued for startup with the RAID setting selected. Note that the Intel RAID boot BIOS will only show on startup with the On-Chip SATA Mode option set to RAID and one or more hard disks attached to the ICH8R controlled SATA 2 ports. The On-Chip PCI Device submenu contains USB 2.0 and audio related settings, while the Onboard PCI Device submenu contains the IEEE 1394, JMicron RAID controller and integrated NIC configuration options. The JMB363 SATA Controller options controls the main operating state of the connected e-SATA ports, while the actual mode of operation of those ports is configured via the Controller Mode option. Note that the RAID boot BIOS loads automatically during system initialization with the RAID setting active.
The PnP/PCI Configurations menu determines the configuration settings for system IRQ and PnP devices. While you are prevented from manually assigning interrupt and IRQ settings, individual IRQ devices can be assigned to specific resource pool from within this submenu.. The IRQ Resources submenu becomes user accessible with the Resource Controlled By option set to Manual.
From within the main BIOS menu, you have the ability to write to or read from 5 BIOS profiles. In order to save to a profile, the F6 key is used, while the load from profile command is toggled by the F7 key.