ASUS P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi-AP Edition Motherboard Review :: BIOS and Overclocking

ASUS uses the American Megatrends BIOS that's common to many motherboards on the market today. There are a few modifications to the BIOS that are ASUS specific. ASUS calls their Overclocking utility in the BIOS AI NOS (Artificial Intelligence No-delay Overclocking System). If you want to use Crossfire, make sure you download the latest BIOS released on 10/4/2006, as it will check for Crossfire. This version also adds support for Intel's Kentsfield CPUs that are upcoming (Quad Core).

Battery

The Advanced tab is where ASUS places all of their controls for their tweaking on the board. Here you can set the CPU frequency from 100-650MHz in 1 MHz increments. Note that no CPU can handle a 650Mhz FSB, but it's a cool addition. Memory frequency can be set from 533-1066 (533, 667, 800, 1066MHz). The PCI-Express frequency can be set from 90-150MHz in 1MHz increments (with 100MHz being default).

Voltages can be set for the Memory (1.80V to 2.45V in 0.05V increments), CPU Vcore (1.20V to 1.70V in 0.0025V increments) , FSB Termination Voltage (1.20V to 1.45V), Northbridge Core Voltage (1.25V to 1.55V in 0.05V increments), Southbridge Component Voltage, SATA/PCI-Express voltage (1.50V to 1.80V in 0.1V increments) and SouthBridge Core Voltage (1.057V and 1.215).

Overclocked

CPUZ Overclocked

I was able to get a over 15% overclock with the Intel 670 CPU we use for testing to 4.346 GHz. As you know, Intel did not release the planned 4 GHz CPU due to issues and to the Dual Core CPUs being released. The 3.8 GHz Pentium 670 is not normally a good overclocking CPU, with limits of 10% in most motherboards, so a 15% overclock is a good indication of how well this board operates.

BIOS