EVGA 780i SLI Motherboard Review :: BIOS And Overclocking

EVGA’s board uses the standard Phoenix Award BIOS found on many of the boards on the market today with specific settings for the NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI reference chipset that the EVGA board is based off of. There are Standard CMOS Features, Advanced BIOS Features, Advanced Chipset Features, Integrated Peripherals, Power Management Setup, PNP/PCI Configurations, System Monitor, Load Defaults, Set Password, Save and Exit Setup and Exit Without Saving. Advanced BIOS Features are where the removable and hard disk boot priority is situated. This menu is also where you enable the Quick POST (Power On Self Test) and what boot order the system uses.

BIOS Chip

BIOS and Battery

The Advanced Chipset Features is where most of the overclocking on the board is done. The submenus are System Clocks, FSB and Memory Config, CPU Config, System Voltages, NVMEM memory test, Load timing voltage set, Save timing/voltage set, System BIOS Cacheable, HPET Function, and NVIDIA GPU Ex. System Clocks is where you would set the CPU Multiplier, the PCIe slot frequencies, the SPP to MCP Reference Clock in MHz, nForce SPP to nForce MCP multiplier and nForce SPP to nForce MCP multiplier.

The FSB and Memory Configuration menus are where the changes to the FSB of the CPU are made in the BIOS. The SLI Ready Memory submenu gives you options of CPUOC 0%, CPUOC 1%, CPUOC 2%, CPUOC 3%, CPUOC 4%, CPUOC 5%, and CPUOC Max. Setting the CPUOC to something other than default the FSB-Memory Clock mode is set to unlinked. The FSB and Memory options are Auto, Linked and Unlinked. Auto sets the FSB and Memory clock automatically. Linked means that as the FSB is changed the memory is changed with. The Unlinked setting means that the FSB and memory settings are separate. FSB (QDR) MHz is where you would change the FSB of the CPU. MEM (DDR) MHz is where the memory clock is change, Memory Timing Setting allows you to set optimal timings or set them manually. Optimal sets them automatically with Expert Settings. The available memory settings for the board are listed below.

• tCL: CAS latency 1-6
• tRDC: 1-7
• tRP: 1-7
• tRAS: 1-31
• Command Per Clock: 1T and 2T
• tRRD: 1-15
• tRC: 1-31
• tWR: 2-7
• tWTR: 1-10
• tREF: Auto, 7.8uS and 3.9uS

CPU Configuration menu is where you set the CPUID MaxVal, CPU Thermal Control for TM1 and TM2, C1E Enhanced Halt State, Execute Disable Bit, Virtualization Technology, and enable or disable the CPU Cores. The System Voltages menu is where you set the voltages for the nForce 780i SLI board. Voltage ranges are listed below.

• The CPU VID voltage can be adjusted for a LARGE range 25mV increments up-to 1.8 Volts for our Core 2 Duo/Quad processors.
• The Memory voltage can be adjusted from 1.825V to 2.5V in 25mV increments.
• The HT CPU to nForce SPP voltage can be adjusted from 1.225V to 1.4V in 25mV increments.
• The HT nForce SPP to MCP voltage can be adjusted from 1.325V to 1.55V in 25mV increments.
• The nForce SPP voltage can be adjusted from 1.25V to 1.55V in 50mV increments.
• The nForce MCP voltage can be adjusted from 1.525V to 1.75V in 25mV increments.
• The CPU VID voltage can be adjusted for a LARGE range 25mV increments up-to 1.8 Volts for our Core 2 Duo/Quad processors.
• The Memory voltage can be adjusted from 1.825V to 2.5V in 25mV increments.
• The HT CPU to nForce SPP voltage can be adjusted from 1.225V to 1.4V in 25mV increments.
• The HT nForce SPP to MCP voltage can be adjusted from 1.325V to 1.55V in 25mV increments.
• The nForce SPP voltage can be adjusted from 1.25V to 1.55V in 50mV increments.
• The nForce MCP voltage can be adjusted from 1.525V to 1.75V in 25mV increments.

Overclocking

Overclocking on the EVGA 780i was ok but not spectacular. I was able to overclock to 3.1GHz on air a 10% overclock over the standard 2.66GHZ CPU speed. NVIDIA says that the 780i SLI chipset is designed to overclock with the best of them and I’m a bit disappointed in the results. There are a wide variety of overclocking options in the BIOS and the EVGA board just doesn’t seem to overclock as well as I’ve seen with the E6750 CPU we use.

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