![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , March 04, 2004
- Author:
- Keith Dugger
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
AOpen AK86-L
Powered by an Athlon64 and a VIA K8T800 chipset wrapped in an AOpen package, the AK86-L offers an additional choice in the Athlon64 market. Can the AK86-L keep up with the top competition?
BIOS
The Phoenix – AwardBIOS is AOpen’s choice for the AK86-L. The main screen offers navigation to the more advanced features as well as options to save and exit.
The Advanced Chipset Features submenu brings support for manipulating various chipset functionalities.
The DRAM Configuration section of the Advanced Chipset Features submenu presents us with granular control over DIMM operation. Users can gain access to these advanced settings by changing the “DDR Timing Setting by” option to Manual (as shown).
The CAS# latency option offers a range of Auto, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 and will satisfy most needs available in the DDR266/333/400 category.
Other options here are: Row cycle time (tRC) with a range of Auto or 7-22 Bus Clocks; Row refresh cyc time (tRFC) with a range of Auto or 9-24 Bus Clocks; and RAS# to CAS# delay (tRCD) with available settings from Auto or 2-7 Bus Clocks. As you can see, the wide number of settings in each of these categories is ramping up to make the AK86-L keep pace with any memory timings a user might need.
Still more memory timing tweaks are available in the AK86-L: Row to Row delay (tRRD) [Auto, 2-7 Bus Clocks]; Min RAS# active time (tRAS) [Auto, 5-15 Bus Clocks]; Row precharge Time (tRP) [Auto, 2-6 Bus Clocks]; and Write recovery time (tWR) [Auto, 2-3 Bus Clocks].
And finally: Write to Read delay (tWTR) [Auto or 1 Bus Clock]; Read to Write delay (tRWT) [Auto, 1-6 Bus Clocks]; and Refresh period (tREF) [plethora of settings; see screen capture].
It’s been a while since I have seen all of these options in a single BIOS implementation for tweaking. Memory settings should not stand in the way of a decent overclock.
The Lightning Data Transport (LDT) bus of the Athlon 64 is an important feature to its performance; however, peak settings can prove to be unstable for some systems and this is where you would adjust the LDT as necessary for your operation. It’s not hard to realize that lowering the LDT will have a dramatic impact to overall performance, but might be acceptable during a quest to achieve a high Athlon 64/VIA K8T800 overclock. The available settings are shown.