BIOS

DFI uses an Award WorkstationBios which is heavily customized. I am missing a feature to load a fail-safe configuration on the main page.


On the Standard CMOS page you can change date/time, configure your harddisks and floppies.


Advanced Bios lets you change the order in which drives are tried at bootup, keyboard settings and also disable the full screen logo if you want to see what's going on during POST.


Under Advanced Chipset you find options to enable certain chipset features. Spread spectrum is a feature to reduce EMI interference on the clock signals. When enabled, it varies the actual clock very slightly and so distributes the actual EMI energy on a broader frequency range. Sometimes it makes your overclock more stable, sometimes it does not.


On this page you can change several USB settings, enable/disable certain devices like floppy, onboard audio and serial port. The subpage IDE Function setup lets you tweak your IDE controller. If you want to use the integrated RAID controller of the nForce4 chipset you can enable it on the RAID Config page.


Nothing special is to be found under Power Management and PnP/PCI Configurations.


The Hardware Monitoring page shows the essential temperatures, fan speeds and voltages. Also you can define temperatures at which the fan outputs are completely off or running at maximum.

Memory Timings

Memory timings and related options can be configured under Genie BIOS Setting, DRAM Configuration. DFI has done a great job here, every memory related timing, no matter how unimportant it might seem to the average user is configurable here.


DRAM Frequency Set lets you change the divider your memory is running at. The options are very complete and range from 1:2 up to 1:1. A 233 MHz setting (7:6) to run your memory faster than the FSB is also listed, but may not be supported on all CPUs.


You can change the major timings CAS Latency (tCL), Active-to-Precharge Delay (tRAS), Rad-to-Cas Delay (tRCD), and RAS Precharge Time (tRP). What is new here is that you can tighten the timings even further. Usually 2-2-2-5 is the fastest setting, DFI allows setting down to 1-0-0-0. Not many memory modules can run at CAS 1.5 for example, but there are some in the hands of the hardcore benchmarking people who will sure love these settings.