![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , June 14, 2005
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Shuttle ST20G5
The ST20G5 is Shuttle’s latest Athlon64-based bare bones system that uses the ATI Radeon Xpress chipset. How well does this system stack up to the rest of the Athlon64 crowd in terms of stability and performance?
BIOS (continued)
The Advanced Chipset Features menu contains options and submenus for controlling the various chipset related devices, including the memory and Hyper Transport buses. The Init Display First option determines whether the integrated on chip video card or a PCI-Express video card in the onboard slot will be used by the system.
The DRAM Configuration submenu contains all system related memory bus and timing options. Manual control of the memory settings can be achieved by setting the Timing Mode option to Manual. The system memory speed is set using the Memclock index value (Mhz) option. This option sets the memory speed using preconfigured ratios based on the default 200MHz CPU FSB speed. The settings available map to the following ratios, with the ratios listed in the form DDR FSB:CPU FSB: 100Mhz is 1:2; 133Mhz is 2:3; 166Mhz is 5:6; 200Mhz is 1:1.
The following memory timing options can be customized: CAS latency; active to precharge delay (shown as Min RAS# active time(Tras)); RAS to CAS delay; RAS precharge delay; command rate (shown as 1T/2T Memory Timing); and memory register access and cacheability (shown as MTRR mapping mode). Note that in the memory timings listed, the numerically lower setting forces more aggressive memory operation.
The LDT & PCI Bus Control submenu contains all settings for configuring the operation of the HyperTransport bus. Both the upstream and downstream bus widths are user configurable, with the 16-bit setting giving the best overall system performance. The HyperTransport bus speed is defined through the LDT Bus Frequency option, using a series of predefined speeds. The listed speed settings are multipliers based on the default 200MHz CPU FSB. The allowed board multipliers range from 1x to 5x in whole numbers only.
The Frequency/Voltage Control menu is the centralized location where most configurable board bus speed and voltage settings are controlled. The CPU Ratio option defines the current CPU multiplier setting, with a minimum setting of 4x allowed. The CPU Clock option controls the speed of the base CPU FSB, with a maximum defined value of 255MHz. The actual CPU speed can be determined by multiplying the CPU Ratio value with the CPU Clock value. The CPU Voltage Selection option controls the amount of power supplied to the CPU, with a hefty 1.70V maximum allowed. The RAM Voltage selectable defines the system DDR voltage, with a not too shabby 2.90V maximum allowed. The board chipset voltage is controlled using the Chipset Voltage Selectable option, with 1.95V as its maximum setting.