![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , September 04, 2007
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
EVGA 680i SLI Black Pearl
Nearly a year ago NVIDIA and EVGA released their 680i SLI motherboards. The 680i SLI proved its worth and has become one of the premiere choices for enthusiasts and gamers. EVGA has re-released the same board with a slew of native water cooler features. Meet the Black Pearl.
BIOS
The EVGA 680i SLI Black Pearl uses the Phoenix Award BIOS. Version P30 was used for testing.
The CMOS is laid out in the familiar Award BIOS style that has become so familiar over the years. Little has changed over the last 10 years that isn’t board specific. The BIOS is broken down into sub menus or sections that contain the settings specific to that section and even often contain additional sub menus or sub sections. The first section found on the main screen is the Standard CMOS Features page which contains the time and date settings, floppy drive configuration settings and basic hard disk configuration information.
The Advanced BIOS Features section contains a multitude of options most of which relate to basic drive configuration and device boot ordering. There are three sub menus here each of which is for the boot ordering of specific types of drives that correspond to the name of the submenus. For example: Hard Disk Boot Priority is used for configuration of the hard disk boot order. Third down from the top left on the main screen is the Advanced Chipset Features section. This contains several sub menus all relating to CPU, memory and motherboard performance settings. Here you will find the NVMEM test software as well as settings for saving and loading various configuration profiles. Finally there is the GPU Ex setting for NVIDIA GPU based graphics cards. The first sub menu I’ll cover is the System Clocks Menu. This menu is named somewhat erroneously as the settings in here have little to do with most of the clock speed settings for the system. Here there is the CPU multiplier which can be adjusted under certain circumstances. Generally this is adjustable downward alone, but in any system where an Extreme Edition CPU is used, this is adjustable upward as well. Here you will find clock speed settings for the PCIe bus as well as the MCP clock reference. PCIe Spread Spectrum settings are also present here.
FSB and Memory Config is the next section found under the Advanced Chipset Features menu. This contains most of the actual clock speed settings and memory related settings which have a real bearing on overall system performance and over clocking in general. The first adjustable setting is the SLI Ready Memory setting. This is always set to disabled unless there is SLI Ready Memory present. Additionally this setting also offers several choices ranging from CPU OC 0% to Expert and several settings in between. Once set to expert several settings that were previously grayed out will be adjustable and displayed in white. FSB Memory Clock Mode has three settings: Linked, Unlinked and Auto. When set to Linked, another setting becomes available and that setting is the FSB – Memory Ratio. That can be set to a number of dividers or set to synced. FSB (QDR), MHz is the actual FSB over clocking setting. You can adjust this in 1MHz increments or simply type in the number you wish to use. I am unsure what the limit is off hand but I do know that it will accept the input of values well into the 2000+ range. When the FSB Memory Clock Mode is set to Unlinked the MEM (DDR), MHz setting is also adjustable. Below each of the clock speed settings is a display of the actual clock speed setting. To the right of that is the current value. This is only displayed when changes are being made. Lastly we have the memory timing section. Once into the memory timings settings submenus, you can adjust all your memory timings manually or set the system to automatically adjust memory timings based on the memory modules SPD values. The first setting here is Memory Timing Setting, which defaults to Optimal, which essentially uses your memory modules’ SPD values to determine the correct settings. Once set to manual you can adjust the following settings : tCL (CAS Latency), tRCD, (Row Address to Column Address Delay), tRP (Row Precharge Time), tRAS (Row Active Time), and Command Per Clock (CMD) Under the Advanced Memory tab, you’ll find the following settings: tRRD (Row Active to Row Active Delay), tRC (Row Cycle Time), tWR (Write Recovery Time), tWTR (Internal Write to Read Command Delay). And finally, tREF (Refresh Rate).
CPU Configuration is the third sub menus found in the Advanced Chipset Features section of the BIOS. Here is where various configuration settings pertaining to the CPU are found. Speedstep, C1E, Thermal Management, Execute Disable Bit, and Virtualization Technology are all present here. Also you can enable and disable CPU cores here as well. It has been my experience that you need to manually enable the third and fourth cores when a quad core CPU is used after a dual core CPU has already been installed. This may not be the case if the clear RTC or clear CMOS function has been done prior or directly after the installation of the quad core CPU. The final sub menu under the Advanced Chipset Features section is the System Voltages. There are six settings and in order from top to bottom they are: CPU Core, CPU FSB, Memory, nForce SPP, nForce MCP, and HT nForce SPP <-> MCP. By default these are all set to automatic and when raising the FSB and memory clock speeds these will climb to higher settings as the board deems fit. Oddly the board rarely ever provides too little voltage to itself while over clocking. That makes over clocking relatively easy but since the board opts to use more voltage than is necessary on its’ own it is best that these settings be manually adjusted as needed. Just as fair warning over voltage of the Memory is quite common on 680i SLI chipset based boards and as a result damage to memory can be a common occurrence as well.
Integrated Peripherals is the next section found under the BIOS main page and is the fourth from the top left. This contains configuration settings for the onboard devices. Most notably the hard drive, RAID controller, eSATA functions and of course network controllers and boot ROMs. This page also leads to several sub menus of its’ own including the IDE Function Setup RAID Config, USB Config, MAC Config, and eSATA Config. Legacy ports and various I/O can be enabled or disabled here also. The last section of importance is called System Monitor. Here all the voltages and temperature readings are displayed along with settings for fan speed based on a threshold type model that allows you to control fan speeds by defining the behavior of the fan in regard to speed based on thermal thresholds that you define.