![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Sunday , October 26, 2003
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS K8V Deluxe
As ASUS’ forerunner in to the Athlon64 fray, the K8V Deluxe looks to be a fine competitor, packing the power of the VIA K8T800 chipset along with a hoard of other features…
BIOS
For the KV8 Deluxe, ASUS chose to implement the BIOS based on an American Megatrends (AMI) design. The BIOS itself is organized in to a series of pages driven by a top menu bar. ASUS also took the liberty of enhancing certain areas of the BIOS for more enthusiast friendly use. Note that BIOS version 1002 was used in testing and for all BIOS screen shots.
The Advanced page contains numerous submenus for configuring all aspects of the system, including CPU, chipset, and onboard device options.
The CPU Configuration submenu contains a number of submenus itself, for configuring the HyperTransport link between the CPU and the system, and the system memory.
The HyperTransport Configuration submenu contains various options for controlling the speed and functioning of the HyperTransport channels themselves. The HT Tristate Enable and CRC Flood Enable options control the behavior of the HyperTransport channels when a CRC type error occurs. The HT Frequency option controls the physical speed of the link, with options from 200 to 800 MHz. The faster the link operates, the faster data will transfer between the CPU and everything else. The HT DATA Width(Upstream) and HT DATA Width(Downstream) options control the physical size of the HyperTransport channels themselves. It is highly recommended to set both of these to 16 BIT for optimal system performance.
The Memory Configuration submenu contains a real time display of the current memory settings, as well as 2 more submenus: Memory Configuration and ECC Configuration. The Memory Configuration sub-submenu contains various memory speed and timing related options. The ECC Configuration sub-submenu contains various ECC memory related options. However, these options would only come in to play if your system memory has built-in ECC support.
From within the Memory Configuration sub-submenu, setting the Memclock Mode option to Limit enables the Memclock to CPU Ratio option. The Memclock to CPU Ratio option allows for manual configuration of the memory speed based on the current CPU speed, with the supplied ratios allowing for a good amount of flexibility when dealing with higher CPU FSBs. The Bank Interleaving option can only be set to enabled or disabled, with specific bank interleaving timings being handled internally by the system. The following memory timing options are available for configuration, with the lower number being the more aggressive setting: active to precharge time (TRC); refresh row cycle time (TRFC); RAS to CAS delay (TRCD); write recovery time (TWR); read to write delay (TRWT); precharge to active delay (TRAS); and RAS precharge delay (TRP). The DDR Clock Delay option defines the physical delay between individual memory clock cycles with a lower value being the more aggressive setting.
From within the ECC Configuration submenu, the ECC related options become user configurable with the Master ECC Enable option set to Enabled. The DRAM ECC Enable option configures the memory itself for self-correction in the event of a hardware related failure. The L2 Cache BG Scrub and Data Cache BG scrub options controls the time allotted for the L2 and L1 caches to be corrected when in an idle state. For both options, the lower value is the more aggressive setting.
The Onboard Devices Configuration menu within the Advanced tab contains options for configuring the various integrated peripherals on the motherboard. The VIA VT8237 SATA controller is configured with the OnChip SATA BOOTROM option. If the option is set to enabled, then the hardware RAID BIOS for the VT8237 SATA ports is active. When the option is disabled, the VT8237 SATA ports act as standalone ports only. Note that you with the BOOTROM enabled, you are able to operate connected SATA drives in standalone mode. The OnBoard Promise Controller option controls the state of the Promise RAID controller. When the OnBoard Promise Controller option is set to Enabled, the Operating Mode option becomes user configurable. With this option set to RAID, the RAID BIOS becomes accessible during system startup, but only RAID arrays are accessible through the OS. With the option set to Onboard IDE Operate Mode, single SATA and IDE drives become accessible through the OS. Both settings require a different device driver to be installed to the OS to function properly.
The Hardware Monitor menu within the Power tab of the BIOS displays various statistics corresponding to BIOS monitored system temperatures, BIOS monitored fans, and system voltages. ASUS did not provide any means for an automatic system shutdown based on CPU or system temperature. However, the Q-Fan Control option automatically adjusts fan speed for all header connected fans based on system determined factors.