Abit AN7 (nVidia nForce II 400 Ultra) Review
BIOS
The BIOS of Abit AN7 is based on the Award-Phoenix BIOS version.
Now looking into the section dealing with the RAM operating parameters.
The user can vary the standard memory latency timings customary for nForce II based motherboards ("SDRAM Cas Latency" and "Precharge to Active"(Trp), "Active to precharge" (Tras) and "Active to CMD"(Trcd)) within very wide ranges.
Now a few words on the system monitoring tools which due to the abundance of parameters are divided into four sections.
First off, the "Temperature Monitoring" group that displays the current temperature values of the processor, system and the power module. Also, the user can activate the processor overheat signalization and enable the automatic system power-off feature upon attaining a certain temperature.
The second section is purely informative and displays the current voltage levels.
Then, look into the "Fan Speed Monitoring" section responsible for the system fans.
On the board, there are 5 fan connectors, and all of them offer the feature for determining the rotational speed. Besides, there is a feature of emergency system power-off in case the processor cooler fails to operate.
Temperatures, as well as other parameters can be monitored from within Windows. For that, there is the Abit EQ utility:
The program is very nice to looks at, but is somehow awkward. In particular, there is no way displaying the processor temperature (or other parameters) in the system tray. Once we try to use the Motherboard Monitor software, we are in for disappointment: the latest version (v5.3.6.0) can't "see" the sensor chip on Abit AN7.
And finally the most interesting section - the "FanEQ Control".
With it, the user can flexibly control the speed of the processor cooler and the cooler on the chipset. In particular, you can set the low temperature threshold (this parameter in the BIOS is called "FanEQ Control Temp. Low"). Until the processor temperature reaches that value, the fan will be rotating at the minimum speed. That is, user-selected voltage will be applied to it (in the BIOS, this parameter is called "FanEQ DC Fan Voltage Low"). Once the temperature exceeds the bottom threshold, the cooler voltage will be smoothly going up. And if the processor temperature reaches the upper threshold ("FanEQ Control Temp. High"), the fan starts rotating at the maximum admissible speed. I intentionally highlighted the word "admissible" - the thing is the user can select the maximum possible voltage ("FanEQ DC Fan Voltage High") and thus calm down even the noisiest cooler.
For those users who are not interested in fine-tuning of the cooling system, the Abit FanEQ utility offers three possible operation modes - "Cool" (the most productive), "Quiet" (the quietest) and "Normal" (an interim option). Besides, there is the "User Define" mode which should hand the control over to the user. But programmers at Abit have fixed several bugs (which we mentioned in the review on Abit AI7), and now the "User Define" operates quite reliably.
A couple of words on the "Bus Disconnect" feature. Remember that this feature is responsible for disconnecting the processor from the bus during downtime periods.
This results in an essential reduction of the processor temperature (and thus the average system temperature). By the way, the function started operating properly after no earlier than version 15 of the BIOS. With the previous versions, enabling the "Bus Disconnect" feature resulted in some performance drop.
Now let's look into the FlashMenu, a program for BIOS update from within Windows.
The utility is very handy to use: the BIOS can be updated in a few mouse clicks.
Lastly, the most attractive feature - the mGuru. The idea behind it is about storing several BIOS setting profiles in memory. That is, all the BIOS settings can be stored in the mGuru memory as a named profile. For example, you can make two profiles: "Normal" and "Overclocked", respectively with the nominal settings and overclocking parameters. This feature is especially useful in case of frequent memory changes:
To store a profile, the F6 key is used, and F7 - for loading. Personally, I created a profile for the "cold" system. The clock speed for the Barton processor was set to 1000 MHz (200x5), while the supply voltage set to the maximum possible = 1.375V. In this mode, the processor emits some less heat, so to cool it down a cooler with the maximum decelerated fan would suffice (which means noiseless operation).
Anyway, to provide stable operation at 1000 MHz, it is quite enough to set Vcore to 1.1V (many motherboards support such wide range), which allows to build a system with fully passive cooling of the processor.
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