BIOS Walkthrough

First of all, we have to commend ASUS for one of the best EFI BIOS implementations out there, as nothing else we have seen currently can compete. Upon first boot you are met with a simple configuration screen containing several simple options, and easy boot drive selection, providing all the basics needed to get up and running. However, for those wanting a bit more, a quick mouse click on the exit menu, and from there the options available increase exponentially, and the pages resemble something that might be a bit more familiar to regular users of ASUS' AMI bios. A new feature, thanks to the EFI implementation, is the ability to capture screenshots of the BIOS itself and save them to an external drive, which is how we made the pictures you see here. Very nice ASUS, very nice.


From the AI Tweaker page, we are greeted with all the major tweaking options needed; frequency, voltage, timings, and every other thing, including full VRM customization, it's all available from this page. However, the aptly named Advanced page features access to several key items as well, however, because all of those options are accessible by both keyboard and mouse, navigation is almost as easy as it can ever get.


Pretty much every option we wanted was here, and a few more as well. Of course, the SATA drive page, as mentioned earlier, is by default set to AHCI mode, something to remember when installing your operating system.


The monitor page has access to fan control settings, automatically set to vary the fan speed in an effort to minimize both noise and power consumption. While there is only the option of customization of only two of the fan headers, we do feel this is far more than adequate.


Of course, after seeing all the other available options, we weren't surprised to find access to both profile saving and a BIOS flashing utility, but what really surprised us was a new utility that reads and displays memory SPD information, which can be a great help to getting memory properly configured manually.