| BIOS
& Software |
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Chaintech opted to go with their usual Phoenix Award bios. Not only does
this provide a well laid out feel to all the options in front of you, but
it also contains a few nice surprises. One of the most notable is that it
automatically unlocks the multipliers on Athlon XP’s by default, now
isn’t that considerate of them.
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Jumping right in, we can see the plethora of FSB frequencies available to
us and the equally long list of CPU ratios (albeit a little out of order).
With settings like these at your fingertips, you should be able to hit just
about any multiplier you set your little heart to.
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The System performance, CPU Interface, and Memory timings can all be set
by simply choosing your desired level of performance. These will then lock
out the appropriate areas and set your system to perform at the level you
chose. Of course if you wish to take a little more hands on approach, you
can simply choose the Expert setting to unlock everything.
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Here we can see all the options available to change the memory frequency
proportional to the FSB frequency. Available are such choices as 5\6 120%
all the way up to 1\2 200%.
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Finally we get down to the usual voltage screen. Chaintech has made sure
they don’t fall short in this area either. The Dimm voltage can be
pushed to an extreme 3.2Volts, the AGP to 2.0v and the Processor to 2.15v.
These settings are surely catered to the most extreme of overclockers. Now
if we’re going to be running these voltages off the chart, we’ll
need a place to monitor them. Here’s yet another disappointment I
ran across. As you can see in the picture above, the voltages on my Antec
550 seem a little loopy. Let me assure you, the voltages are just fine and
it’s actually the board that’s reporting the wrong readings.
You may also notice the CPU temp looks a little high. This isn’t a
bug but may concern some of the more ill informed out there. The 7njs reads
its temps directly from the inside of the processor, not the commonly used
diode mounted to most boards. This means the temperatures will seem much
higher than you’re used to, but are actually just much more accurate.
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Just when you thought we had covered them all, there’s one more bios
on top of all this, the Promise bios. Here is where you define, delete and
repair your Raid Arrays. You must also use this utility if you only plan
on using the third IDE channel for a regular drive. In this case, you’d
need to set up a single drive array.
One of the most concerning problems I came across when
testing this board was the rigmarole of flashing the bios. It seems that
you have about a 30% chance of successfully flashing the bios and not
having to reinstall windows. The other 70% of the time, your looking at
a nice blue screen and a never-ending loop of failed boot attempts. If
you’re going to flash, I highly recommend waiting until its time
for your next fresh install. For those who want to take their chances
anyway, I’ve heard that the windows based flash programs have a
much higher success rate with the 7njs.
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Once you have your OS up and running, the software and drivers bundled with
the board seem more than adequate. Installation of all the components went
smoothly and only took about 10 minutes to complete. The DigiDoc software
was a nice thought as it enables the CPU temperature to be displayed on
the CBOX3, however, it seemed a little ill thought out. You must keep the
software displayed or at least minimized to the taskbar (not tray) in order
to keep the temps displayed externally. This tends to get in the way and
usually finds me closing the software and staring at an uninformative “FF”
on the Cbox. |
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| CONTENTS |
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