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ABit uses the Phoenix - Award V6.00PG BIOS with the typical modifications we know from ABit. A "Trademark Feature" of all ABit boards in the past few years has been the "CPU setup" SoftMenu(III) featuring all possible and impossible tweaks, some of them good, some bad but as long as everybody has enough to play with ....

In the case of the NF7 (-S), the options are pretty much predetermined by the chipset, that is, regardless of whether it is an ASUS Medallion or a Soltek BIOS or in this case, the ABit, there are not too many differences.

For the CPU frequency, what is available is either the "User Define" setting or simply going with the CPUID and the inherent standard settings. One related parameter that we would still like to see changed is the CPU FSB/DRAM ratio. This is a little bit dicey here since ABit does in fact the "correct" thing by going with the "By SPD", meaning that the chipset reads the electronic data sheet of the DIMMs and adjusts the timings and DRAM clock accordingly. However, in most cases, that also means asynchronous operation of the DRAM which, unfortunately, causes a performance hit even compared to a 133 / 133 MHz synchronous operation. Synchronous operation can, of course be selected so it is not a big deal but we still think that ABit are selling themselves short here. The only drawback would be that there are DIMMs that are not capable of running at e.g. 166 MHz in combination with a CPU that can and will by default.

Another feature sets the ABit SoftMenu III apart from what we have seen with other boards and that is the fully functional multiplier selector. Even with the Athlon XP2800+, there were no issues, whatever selection was picked in the BIOS was what the system POSTed with after Save and Exit.

Another setting that we have heard and read about in the past is the CPU interface enable/disable. This setting has nothing to do with enabling multiplier selection or overclocking what it does is to enable/disable fast decode.

Last not least, the SoftMenuIII features a number of voltage adjustments with a Vcore range from 1.1 to 1.85, VDDR Range from 2.4 to 2.7V, chipset voltages from 1.4 to 1.7V and AGP voltages from 1.5 to 1.8V.

CPU shutdown temperature can be set from 85 to 110 centigrades

Advanced Chipset Features

As in most other boards we have seen, the memory latency settings are in the Advanced Chipset Settings and follow the same templates as anywhere else. Bottom line is to select the "Expert" setting and then change the latencies according to the capabilities of the DIMMs used.

It is still not clear what purpose the Row-Active delay (tRAS) range from 1-15 clocks would serve since the MINIMUM necessary RAS pulse width to avoid loss or corruption of data is the sum of tRCD + CAS latency.

Spread Spectrum Modulation

Just for those who are not aware of the function of this setting for either FSB or AGP, all it does is to oscillate the base frequency in order to reduce peak EMI emission and pass the FCC test. At the same time, enabling SSM will cause performance fluctuation and stability problems, especially under overclocked conditions. More details here

Everything else is pretty much standard.

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