The fun begins in the Advanced Menu
CPU Internal Frequency
Just a hint, "Clock Speed" would be even better as a description. The field offers variety of settings from manual to settings between 1300 and 1600 MHz in 100 MHz increments. If any of the preconfigured settings is selected, the multiplier and FSB settings are not available. Needless to say that, with the unlocked P4 engineering sample supplied by Kyle Bennett from [Hard]OCP, changing the multiplier works but with any multiplier-locked production P4 nothing is going to happen.
CPU Front Side Bus Frequency
I just love this setting, a Mecca for any overclocker. Keep in mind though, that the FSB runs in Quad Data Rate, meaning that, with every clock cycle, 4 data are transferred at the rising and falling edges of a stepping voltage. This makes the system much more sensitive to timing issues than any SDR or even DDR system and, consequently, limits the overclocking capabilities. Nonetheless, there is quite some potential for overclockers as we will show below. Keep in mind that you can only access this setting if "Manual" is selected in the CPU Internal Frequency field.
CPU Vcore
Overclocking stands and falls with the possibility of fine-tuning the core voltage to the CPU. Settings offer increments in 0.025 V increments, enough to achieve optimal performance without thermally compromising the CPU.
RDRAM Frequency
There are three settings, Auto, 3:1 and 4:1. The "Auto" setting actually runs the RIMMs at their designated speed ratio. RIMMs are, unfortunately, though, not too stable when overclocked. The P4T offers the workaround by allowing to run PC800 RIMMs as PC600 RIMMs by specifying the 3:1 setting in the BIOS. This way, the FSB can be overclocked beyond the limitations of the memory bus (provided that PC 800 RIMMs are used, more below).
CPU Fast String
Basically this setting specifies DMA capabilities for the CPU. I didn't know that there was any other way but if the BIOS description says so ....
FPU OPCODE Compatible Mode
If enabled, the FPU unit runs in compatibility mode, that is software emulation. Thus, the performance setting is Disabled.
Chip configuration
RDRAM Pool B state
The i850 chipset uses dual channel Rambus technology. Often, the second channel is not used and, in order to safe power and reduce risk of thermal runaway of the RIMMs, the BIOS offers the possibility to specify either Nap or Standby mode. In standby mode, the RIMMs remain powered up and ready to function after the initial latencies. In Nap mode, the RIMMs go into power-saving mode which increases the latencies in case data stored in the second channel are requested.
PCI Configuration
Slot 1 / 4 IRQ, Slot 2 IRQ, Slot 3 IRQ, Slot 5 IRQ
IRQs can be hard assigned to individual PCI slots, courtesy of the ASUS ASIC chip that further handles the IRQ sharing between slot1 and slot 4. For effective usage, PnP OS installed should be enabled in the BIOS.
PCI Latency Timer
The default setting is 32 cycles but for better performance this value should be increased to 64.
More detailed explanations on these and the rest of the standard settings are described in the LostCircuits BIOS Guide. Like all versions of the Award Medallion BIOS, overstepping the limitations of the hardware by too aggressive entries will reset the BIOS to failsafe settings, thus preventing boot failure and allowing to enter the BIOS for corrective measures.
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