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BIOS Features

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• The CPU VID voltage can be adjusted for a LARGE range 25mV increments up-to 1.8 Volts for our E6600 processor.
• The Memory voltage can be adjusted from 1.825V to 2.5V in 25mV increments.
• The HT CPU to nForce SPP voltage can be adjusted from 1.225V to 1.4V in 25mV increments.
• The HT nForce SPP to MCP voltage can be adjusted from 1.325V to 1.5V in 25mV increments.
• The nForce SPP voltage can be adjusted from 1.25V to 1.4V in 50mV increments.
• The nForce MCP voltage can be adjusted from 1.525V to 1.7V in 25mV increments.

And so on. Obviously you can auto-overclock with SLI-OC functions in combo with SLI memory. The lovely Memory Expert mode allows the memory timings to be adjusted for best performance. Set these as low as possible to achieve the best benchmark scores. Along with the memory speed setting, the following parameters have the most influence on system performance:

• Tcl (CAS Latency)
• Trcd(RAS to CAS Delay)
• Trp (Row Precharge)
• Tras (Active-to-Precharge Delay)
• Addressing Mode 1T/2T (Command Per Clock)
• MaxAsyncLatency

There are many more features, functions, settings we can discuss. Pretty much anything you need for a good tweak can be found and set to the maximum. You can really go nuts in there from the average to the advanced user.

NVIDIA nTune 5.0 & new control panel

With a new chipset series also a new nTune has been launched. First let me say that the entire NVIDIA control panel had an overhaul. EVERYTHING that needs to be monitored or setup AND is an NVIDIA product can be adjusted through the new control panel. We'll show you a couple of pictures in a minute. First nTune.

For those that don't know it, nTune is a tool for NFORCE based mainboards only and offer a very large set of features in the form of system tuning and monitoring your hardware. So with NVIDIA nTune your system can automatically adjust to maximum performance settings or even vice versa, it can actually detect that youve inserted a DVD and will set the system to quiet operation. This nTune series software offers through a windows GUI the option to change bus speeds, memory timings and even tweak voltages. Changes are made easily within a simple-to-use windows interface and thus you no longer need to make changes to the BIOS or for that matter reboot your system as the GUI application can access BIOS settings directly from windows. It's all done on the fly. There's some new stuff in there that you must checkout like dynamically load saved settings for different performance states. For example if you startup notepad and continue to work in it your system could be down clocked based on a set of rules that you define. Everything is regulated by you and can be monitored, which includes voltages and bus speeds for the SPP and MCP chip, GPU(s), CPU core, memory and even HT link.

It's a little too abstract to explain, yet the true geeks will love this stuff for sure. Be certain to check it out yourself and to get a better idea.

Once selected this is the "main-menu" for your mainboard, network and graphics settings. Let's click performance to see what selections we now get. NTUNE for this Beta mainboard wasn't working 100% and a lot of functions became disabled due to that. My bad luck, we had to tweak from the BIOS.

Let's have a look at some performance results shall we.