![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, April 22, 2009
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Foxconn BloodRage Motherboard
The Foxconn BloodRage was one of the most anticipated X58 boards made. The board comes packed with innovative features seemingly poised for "extreme" overclocking. Whether these statements are hype, marketing fluff, or fact remains to be seen. Read on as we separate the fact from fiction.
BIOS
Foxconn went with the Phoenix Award BIOS. Version G16 was used for testing. The Award BIOS is pretty standard. Well it pretty much is the standard. All the Phoenix and AMI BIOS ROMs seen on DIY motherboards today actually emulate the appearance and layout of the standard Award BIOS which has been around since the 1990's. It remains largely unchanged from those days outside of customization required for different motherboard technologies, product branding and specific chipsets.
The standard CMOS features menu contains settings for only the time and date, halt error handling and floppy configuration. Next is the boot settings configuration menu which obviously contains boot settings information. Also found here are numlock, full screen logo and MPS control for OS settings.
AHCI Configuration is actually interesting. Staggered spin up support for hard drives is actually handled in the CMOS on the BloodRage. This is a type of functionality normally lacking in onboard RAID solutions. Advanced chipset features contains some basic PCI-Express lane configuration settings and PCI-Express compliance settings. Vt-D I/O Virtualization is also controlled here. Integrated Peripherals contains settings for all the boards’ integrated hardware. LAN Boot ROMs, onboard sound, USB devices control, and floppy drive controller settings are all present here. OnChip IDE Device is the menu that allows for control and manipulation of the RAID controllers modes. AHCI, IDE, RAID etc.
Power management setup contains your basic ACPI settings and HPET mode support. Also present is the PnP/PCI configuration utility which allows the control of the display ordering. So if you have multiple graphics cards installed, you can alter this setting and change the order in which these cards are initialized. The hardware monitoring section gives you all your temperature and voltage readings and allows you to adjust thermal thresholds, fan speed settings etc. The fans have several settings such as Smart fan, or can be set to full speed, half speed etc.
Next is the Quantum BIOS section. This section contains numerous settings for overclocking and tweaking the performance of the motherboard and all related components. This BIOS is robust and full of features. As is expected from a motherboard of this caliber, the BloodRage's BIOS incorporates all the required enthusiast settings. You can adjust CPU features, enabling and disabling desired or undesired features as you choose. If you need virtualization support, turn it on. Going for that maximum overclock? Turn Execute Disable bit and virtualization support off. From the CPU Features menu you can also enable or disable Intel's Hyperthreading technology and disable individual processor cores if you so desire. (Not sure why you would, but the option is there.) Next are the memory settings which again are numerous, but this is expected and required of enthusiast class boards. Memory controller and memory timing related settings are divided here nicely. The ICM Configuration setting, when enabled, allows you to adjust memory channel mode operation. That's about the only purpose it serves.
The Memory Timings of course can have a large impact on performance and overclockability. XMP support, DRAM Timing control, and CAS/RAS/ and other latency timing settings are all found here. While complete for the most part, I've seen these settings handled better on other boards. No where are the current or SPD values for the installed RAM displayed. This is something that has spoiled me with many newer boards I've seen in recent months, especially with the X58 boards. It makes tweaking things much more pleasant as you know what you've got or at least where you started from without resetting the defaults or looking up the RAM spec's. Also I've seen FAR more memory settings on other boards, and while that's nice, I don't think Foxconn is short changing you here. I say this because frankly most of those settings aren't really needed as far as performance tuning is concerned. Still the general rule of thumb is more options are better right? Well even if you don't use them, I'd say yes, most definitely. The voltages are broken up by category. CPU voltages, memory voltages and chipset voltages. I found the voltage controls are well thought out. They are all categorized appropriately, and there isn't anything else here in this section, just the voltages. All of them are in one place, which is something I'd like to see other board makers do. It gets annoying to have to jump around in the BIOS to set all your voltages.
The OC Gear section is unique to the BloodRage. Or at least Foxconn boards. It has been a while since I worked with a Foxconn board, so it could be present on other boards as well. In any case the CMOS backup section is relatively easy to understand and use. You can backup your BIOS ROMs with this utility. Under the Foxconn features section, you can adjust the selection of BIOS ROM 1 or BIOS ROM 2. You can also adjust some of the LED's and other settings. What I like about this is you can disable all your spread spectrum settings here which are often unnecessary and can limit your overclock. Additionally the overclock recovery behavior of the board can be controlled here. Lastly, we have the Board Information screen. Like the name implies, it provides board information. It does so in the form of model information and BIOS information. BIOS ID, BIOS Version, build date, and LAN MAC addresses are displayed here along with RAM and processor information. While basic, I find these information screens useful when you need to look something up in a hurry.
All in all the BIOS is one of the things I actually liked the best about this board. It really is one of the strong points the BloodRage has. It is a pleasure to work with for the most part and it is laid out in what I'd almost call a "Common Sense Fashion." Something often lacking on other boards I've seen.