GIGABYTE 965P-DS3 Motherboard Review :: BIOS and Overclocking

When first looking at GIGABYTE's BIOS, it seems that there are a lot of options missing. To get the advanced features of the BIOS you need to hit Ctrl+F1 to get all of the options this board supports. GIGABYTE uses the Phoenix Award BIOS that's common to most motherboards on the market today.

Battery

The FSB can be set from 100MHz to 500MHz in the BIOS. No CPU will tolerate a 500MHz FSB, but it's a nice option giving the tweaker more room. The Voltage options allow you to overvolt the CPU by up to 2.0V above stock. PCI Express voltage can be adjusted only up to 0.1V above stock. FSB voltage can be modified up to 0.3V and the MCH voltage can be modified by up to 0.3V above stock.

Overclocked

Using EasyTune, I was able to overclock the GIGABYTE board quite successfully. The 3.8GHz Pentium 4 670 we use for motherboard testing overclocked to 4.2GHz, from a 3.8GHz stock speed. I was able to run the motherboard at that clock speed through our gamut of tests without a crash. This is about the highest clock I've gotten stably from the 3.8GHz CPU.

BIOS