![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , June 04, 2009
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Foxconn Flaming Blade
The Flaming Blade amounts to a cut down version of the BloodRage we looked recently. Both are similar in appearance, but that's where the similarities end. Despite being stripped down and having a really gay sounding name, the experience we had with it was a far better one than the BloodRage provided.
Aegis Panel
The Aegis Panel is Foxconn's bundled overclocking utility and hardware monitoring suit. Version 2.1.2.37 was used for testing. This version of the software sports some kind of medieval theme. I'm as baffled by this as I was when I first saw this utility on the Blood Rage. I don't have anything against the theme exactly, but I do think that the interface leaves much to be desired. It is difficult to figure out what the icons mean without actually clicking on them. There are several icons which don't correspond to anything logically. You are left to figure out what they hell they are for. Highlighting each icon and looking at the rollover text appearing at the top of the tool bar will clue you in though.
With the BloodRage the same application was included. So here we have the return of the medieval Cylon head/helmet thingy! Below the Cylon-styled helmet you'll see a shield, plate armor, and a Kukri Machete-looking knife-sword thingy. 
Then afterwards an axe appears! In order they mean: Hardware Monitor, Overclocking, Quantum Force OC Panel, OC Gear panel, and the Configuration menu.
The hardware monitor has three additional icons. On the main screen it shows Vcore, CPU_VTT, +3.3v, +12v rails and so on. There is another machete icon that when clicked brings up adjustment sliders for all values shown in the hardware monitor. The fan propeller blade icon shows the fan speeds (This is actually the only icon that makes any sense here, but is way out of context for the theme of the software and whoever designed the icon decided to make it look like an antique propeller blade thing in order to cover for the fact that the icon is out of context for the theme.) When clicked it shows fan speed values for the CPU, north bridge and system fan speeds are become adjustable. The firewood icon (well when you think about it, I guess the firewood almost makes sense) indicates temperature monitoring. You can see north bridge, system and CPU temperatures. When you click on the firewood icon, you can adjust thermal thresholds for each of the represented values.
The shield icon represents the overclocking page. Basic processor information such as Clock speeds is displayed in large text. The bus clock is of course adjustable via the slider. Foxconn categorized the CPU, chipset and memory settings separately. Within each category you'll find adjustable values for voltages for several settings also represented in the BIOS. The Quantum Force OC Panel is represented by the armor icon. The real time clock shows a display of hours, minutes and seconds. Other than that, the real time display does nothing else. I'm not really sure why it is even included. There are several icons at the bottom with some dots underneath them that you'd think would highlight. Oddly enough, clicking anything in this window does absolutely nothing as far as I can tell. Just as it was with the Blood Rage article, I experienced the Aegis Panel as being very slow and cumbersome to work with. The design is only semi-intuitive and I believe that it would be far easier to understand and work with if the medieval theme were scrapped and something more elegant using the same principal layout with icons that actually made sense or had text indicating their function were used. For whatever reason the screen capture shows the window as having no options, but when seen on the actual test system, this isn't the case. The version number of the application is shown at the bottom of the window.
As is typically the case with most of the software bundles included with the motherboard, it is of little real value to the enthusiast. Enthusiasts typically use their favorite applications to accomplish what the bundled software might be capable of doing, but with a more consistent and easier to use interface. I've seen plenty of these applications from ASUS, Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI and so on, but found them all to be lacking in one way or another. The Aegis Panel is no different.
BIOS
Foxconn used the Phoenix-Award BIOS with the Flaming Blade. Version P05 was used for all screen captures and overclock testing. The Award BIOS and its appearance are largely unchanged since the mid to late 1990's. However, the menus it uses often differ greatly depending on the board using it. It uses a menu style that harkens back to the DOS days. Often blue, easy to read, and all you need to use it is a simple keyboard.
The standard CMOS Features menu contains settings for the time and date, floppy drive configuration, and halt on error settings. Next is the boot settings menu which allows for adjustments of boot device priority among other things. Among those other things are sub menus for AHCI configuration, HDD Boot Priority, Removable and CD-ROM boot priorities. APIC, MPS, Full screen logo, and summary screen settings can be found here. The AHCI Configuration Menu is nice because it allows you to stagger drive spin-up and hot-plug settings. Attached AHCI complaint devices are listed at the bottom of this screen.
Advanced Chipset Features show PCI-Express lane configuration settings along with PCIe compliance mode for legacy hardware. This is adjustable to allow backwards compatibility for PCI-Express 1.0 or 1.0a complaint devices. Next we have the hardware monitor which is usually self-explanatory. CPU, NB, and System FAN speed control is found here. Shutdown temperatures can also be managed here. Displayed in this menu are voltages and temperature readings from various zones being monitored by the system board.
The next point of interest is the Quantum BIOS. This is where the overclocking and performance settings are located. From the top are the following sub-menus: CPU Features, Memory Settings, All Voltage Settings, OC Gear. There are a few settings here, but most of them remain grayed out and therefore non-adjustable until you set CPU Turbo to Always On, and Enable System Turbo. I'm not really sure why Foxconn chose to do things this way. I found it confusing initially. CPU BClock, QPI Link Fast Mode, QPI Multiplier, CPU Core Multiplier, CPU Uncore, Memory Bus Multiplier, CPU and I0H Clock Skew settings are all found here. For the rest you have to go into the submenus. The first of which is the CPU Feature submenu. This contains PPM, EIST, CxE, Execute Disable, Virtualization, Hyper threading, and a Active Processor Core setting. Next we have the memory settings sub menu. Contained here are basic memory controller settings such as IMC Configuration, Channel Configuration, and Interleaving settings. Settings specific to memory such as XMP support, DRAM Timing Control, and CAS latency settings are all here.
Here we have the All Voltage settings menu which allows you to adjust CPU VCore, CPU VDroop, VTT (UnCore) voltage and so on. DIMM Vref voltages are adjustable per slot. Chipset voltage adjustment is also present here. Finally the OC Gear menu is used for creating save slots of your BIOS settings as well as controlling some of the board's "Foxconn" features such as Smart Boot, Smart Power LED, and overclock recovery settings. Lastly we have a Board Information menu which just shows various information concerning the board itself, board BIOS version, build date, and CPU information. Compared to some other boards I've worked with the Flaming Blade seems abstract, but everything you really need can be found relatively easily with a bit of familiarity.