![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, October 29, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
EVGA 790i SLI FTW Motherboard
EVGA brings us their latest in its “FTW” motherboard series. EVGA promises that this one is engineered For The Win! Is this marketing fluff or is it the truth? A trip to the “cooker” will tell us how tough it is.
BIOS
EVGA chose the Award BIOS for the EVGA 790i SLI FTW. Version DZ13 was used for testing and at the time of this writing was the newest BIOS version available.
The BIOS for the EVGA 790i SLI FTW is largely the same as it ever was. Meaning that it has the familiar layout common to all Award BIOS equipped boards and more specifically it features a very similar BIOS to that of earlier NVIDIA reference boards based on the nForce 600 and 700 series chipsets. That's actually a good thing as the BIOS for these things is relatively easy to use and features a ton of options without appearing daunting to most users. Some BIOS' on some boards seem to have too many options (as if there is such a thing) and sometimes confuse the end users. The hardcore should find this BIOS adequate for serious overclocking while still being relatively easy to work with.
The BIOS is laid out in a DOS menu style fashion by category. Standard CMOS features contains hard drive setup information, time and date settings and some really basic system information. The Advanced BIOS Features menu contains hard disk boot priority, CD and network boot priority and so on. This is where you set Full Screen Logo options, APIC mode and MPS table versions. The Advanced Chipset Features menu contains System BIOS Caching and HPET function settings.
Integrated peripherals menu contains basic settings for your onboard hardware. You can enable or disable the hardware or in some cases make configuration changes to it. The RAID controller settings can be found here and are one example of something that can be configured beyond just turning it on or off. There are several submenus here as well. The first of which is IDE Function Setup which contains IDE settings for things like PIO and UDMA modes. The RAID configuration allows you configure individual SATA ports for use by the RAID controller. Each port has an address which you can match up in the Standard CMOS Features menu. This will help you configure the right ports for RAID use. Power management contains settings for configuring ACPI and basic power related settings. You can also configure the power button functionality here as well.
PnP/PCI Configuration contains settings for choosing the graphics adapter priority and legacy settings for IRQ resources and older devices where PCI/VGA Palette snooping might be needed. PC Health Status contains basic health information on voltages and fan speeds. CPU, motherboard, and north bridge temperatures are also listed here. You can also access dynamic fan control from this menu which allows you to set thermal thresholds and fan duty cycles. Frequency and Voltage control is where things get interesting as that's where all the overclocking settings are found. First among them is the Dummy O.C. setting which is a feature that basically uses profiles in the form of percentages to overclock your processor by that given percentage. It goes up to 25%. This feature was hit or miss in my testing. It only went to 10% with my E6300 and worked perfectly for the E8500 and Q9300 processors.
System Clocks contains CPU multiplier settings as well as PCI-Express clock speed adjustments and HT multiplier settings for adjusting the link speed between the north and south bridges. Spread spectrum settings are also found here. FSB and Memory Config contain settings for adjustment of the FSB and memory buses. EPP memory detection status is displayed at the top along with the CPU speed and current setting. Here you can adjust memory clock mode from Auto, to linked and unlinked. You can also adjust your memory ratios here. The P1 and P2 settings are found here along with a submenu for memory timing. Within the memory timing submenus you'll find all the CAS latencies and other memory related settings. Once the Memory Timing Setting is set to Expert mode, the settings are adjustable and current values are listed to the side. Adjustments for memory settings are robust but not obtrusively complex as some boards tend to be. New users and veterans alike will find the BIOS easy enough to use, but hardcore enough to please most enthusiasts.
The CPU Feature menu contains settings concerning the processor's features such as Intel Speedstep, CPU Thermal Control, C1E Enhanced Halt State, Execute Disable Bit, and Virtualization Technology. You can also manually activate and de-activate CPU cores from this menu. Finally we have the System Voltages menu which contains EVGA VDroop control as well as CPU Core, FSB, Memory, nForce SPP, MCP, and CPU PLL voltage settings. Additionally GTLVREF voltages are adjustable here. The EVGA VDroop control is of course the most exciting feature found here as it virtually eliminates VDroop that so many of us have had to deal with at one time or another. Voltage adjustments are generous and are color coded grey for standard settings that should be harmless, to green which are less harmless, and of course the red which indicates your warranty is probably going out the window if you configure your system like that.