BIOS
ABIT uses a Phoenix Award BIOS, which is very standard in the industry. ABIT differentiates their board's BIOS with the OC Guru and ABIT Fan EQ settings. OC Guru allows you to tweak the multiplier, the FSB speed, the memory clock speed, the PCI Express clock speed and the voltages of the system. The Advanced Chipset Features area of the BIOS allows you to change the memory settings, the SLI Broadcast Aperature and the LDT Frequency.
Overclocking with the standard 3.4GHz Extreme Edition we use for testing is mostly limited by the fact the CPU gets extremely warm even at default clock speed and settings. The CPU got over 58C with the standard Intel reference cooling, making overclocking a hit-or-miss thing. The NI8-SLI overclocked to a 212MHz FSB, not bad for the CPU we use in testing.
Stability with the NI8-SLI board is excellent. I tested the board with a ASUS 7800GTX TOP card for video card testing as well as our standard 6800GT, with no problems with stability or with compatibility. Unfortunately, I do not have 2 like 7800GTXs to try SLI with. Burn-in tests passed without error or issue. One issue with the ASUS 7800GTX TOP card is the card may have issues with length on some boards.
