Asus P4S800D-E (SiS 655TX) Motherboard Review
BIOS
The board's BIOS is based on AMI BIOS.
Now on to the section dealing with the RAM operating parameters.
It offers only the most essential parameters: "SDRAM Cas Latency" and "Precharge to Active"(Trp), "Active to precharge" (Tras) and "Active to CMD"(Trcd). To facilitate setting the latency timings, you can use the "DRAM Timing" parameter.
The "Fast+" mode is the fastest. Besides, the "Performance Mode" can be used to slightly boost the performance. The "Aggressive" mode is the speediest.
The nice feature about the board is its compatibility to various memory modules. In particular, it was running absolutely trouble-free with both Corsair TwinX PC3200 and Transcend PC4000. But with Kingston HyperX PC2700, the system was running stably only when the memory speed was set to 166MHz (DDR333). In so doing, the stable operation was both at the latency timings 2-3-6-3 and at the minimum possible 2-2-5-2 timings. At that, Asus P4S800D-E is preeminent over Gigabyte 8S655TX Ultra.
A few notes on the system monitoring.
The board allows monitoring the temperature of the processor and system, current voltages, as well as the rotational speeds of the three fans. Using the Q-Fan, the user can reduce the speed of the processor cooler in case the processor is idle or is relatively poorly heated (clearly, the most effect from Q-Fan can be gained from processors built on the Northwood core, which are less heated than Prescott).
To monitor the system condition, there is the PCProbe utility run from within Windows.
Then, the P4S800D-E offers support for the MyLogo2 which allows changing the boot-up image.
You can update the BIOS from both DOS (with the afudos.exe utility) and from within Windows. There is the Asus Update utility for the latter OS.
By the way, if the power disengaged during the BIOS update, there is no reason to be upset. The board offers support for the CrashFree BIOS 2 which allows restoring the BIOS with a diskette or a CD on which there is a file with the respective update flash file.
And lastly: like the vast majority of Asus motherboards, P4S800D-E supports the InstantMusic which allows listening CDs without loading the operating system. The utility is updated at the BIOS level, and all that the user has to do is simply fit the sticker on the keyboard (comes in the bundle) with the image of the virtual player keys.
Anyway, we do not recommend to do that, because in future there may be problems with upgrade. This also holds true for other stickers, on any other boards.
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