![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , June 24, 2003
- Author:
- Keith Dugger
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Chaintech 9CJS ZENITH
Chaintech has included almost every imaginable feature with the 9CJS ZENITH including Envy-24 sound. Will it compete with the other i875P-based motherboards by offering the performance and stability we have come to expect from the Canterwood?
BIOS
The 9CJS ZENITH uses the Phoenix AwardBIOS. Upon entry, the main screen displays a list of available menus and functions. The Standard CMOS setup and Advanced BIOS features enable users to configure drives, boot priority, enabling or disabling Hyper-Threading Technology and, among other standard features, set the date and time.
The Advanced Chipset Features submenu offers settings that control how the system RAM operates. Changing the DRAM Timing Selectable to Manual will allow user control of memory system parameters.
Available adjustments specific to DRAM are CAS Latency, Active to Precharge Delay, RAS to CAS Delay, and RAS Precharge. The available ranges satisfy users wanting to improve RAM performance and, as always, lower settings are more aggressive.
The Integrated Peripherals submenu gives the user an opportunity to adjust OnChip IDE, Onboard, and SuperIO devices.
IDE and SATA controller settings are options available in the OnChip IDE Device submenu. Here you can disable or enable IDE functionality and controllers. The On-Chip Serial ATA setting must be set to Enhanced and the SATA Mode must be set to RAID to enable this feature. Other SATA Modes are Disabled (to turn off the SATA controller), Auto (Auto arrange by BIOS), Combined Mode (IDE and SATA are combined allowing only 4 total drives), Enhanced Mode (enable all available controllers allowing 6 total drives), and SATA Only (supporting SATA legacy mode).
Inside the Onboard Device submenu, you will find the ability to disable or enable USB controllers, USB keyboard and mouse support, on board IEEE1394, audio, and the Realtek 10/100Mb/s and the Intel CSA Giga-LAN controllers. If you should choose to use a USB keyboard, you will need to first attach a PS/2 keyboard and modify the USB Keyboard Support in this submenu. Both USB keyboard and mouse are disabled by default.
The PC Health Status submenu only has one configurable setting and that is to disable or enable Shutdown Temperature. Here you see the available temperature shutdown options in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. Otherwise, this submenu will display current statistics concerning the health of your system. This also shows the speed of the three system monitored fans, various system voltages, and temperatures.
Finally, we come to what enthusiasts' view as one of the most important features of a BIOS: the Frequency/Voltage Control. These options, when paired with decent DRAM timings, allow for a very configurable system. This submenu allows the users to overclock the system by adjusting the CPU clock and ratio. The ranges available in these pictures (using a Pentium 4 2.6) are 16-26 for CPU Clock Ratio and 100-132 for the CPU clock. This limitation might be of interest to those interested in pushing this board far beyond normal limits with a 100MHz CPU. In testing, I noticed that a P4 2.53MHz chip opened the CPU Clock settings up to 199 and a P4 2.4C increased that limit quite a bit further as you will see.
Often, such overclocking will require more than the default voltage, and this is where you would increase the CPU, AGP, and DRAM voltage settings by changing Voltage Fine Tune to Enabled.
The CPU Voltage can be adjusted from 1.5357 to 1.6750. While this is not extraordinarily high, it is enough for a decent overclock.
Both the AGP and DRAM Voltage can be set to any of 3 settings above Default and increases the voltage by +0.10V, +0.20V, and +0.30V. The manual is very scarce on the details of these settings and only suggests that Voltage Fine Tune remain its default setting of Disabled for stability. Without knowing the default voltage for AGP and DRAM on this motherboard, I can only report the above.