Gigabyte uses a patented DualBIOS system that allows the backup BIOS to take over if the system has a corrupt BIOS on POST. Gigabyte has their version of the Phoenix Award BIOS which has the standard Phoenix features plus the Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker where all the overclocking is enabled and done.
BIOS
AMD’s Overdrive utility was used to overclock the 9850 we use for the AMD platform. The stock clock speed of the CPU is 2.5GHz, and I was able to get a decent overclock of the CPU to 2.8GHz using AMD’s Overdrive utility. Automatic overclocking is a great feature and with the ACC utility the 790GX chipset overclocks better than the 790FX or nForce 780a chipsets due to its ability to tie in with the CPU timings and voltages.
Gigabyte’s tweaking is done on their Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker program in the BIOS. They have the full gamut of tweaking options including up to 2000MHz for the video card (don’t even try this setting but it is there). Overclocking the integrated video card seems to be a bit of a waste as the chip is essentially a overclocked HD3200 from the 780G chipset. The CPU frequency range is from 200-500MHz which is excellent. Here’s the range of BIOS settings available to the user.
| Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H | Range |
| CPU Bus | 200-500MHz in 1MHz increments |
| PCIe | 100-200MHz in 1MHz increments |
| HT | 200-2600MHz in 200MHz increments |
| GPU | 200-2000MHz in 1MHz increments |
| CPU Ratio | 5x-25x in 0.5x increments |
| Memory controller ratio | 5x-16x in 1x increments |
| DRAM Ratio | 2, 2.66, 3.33, 4, 5.33 |
| CPU Voltage | +0.6- -0.6 in 0.025V increments |
| CPU NB | +0.6- -0.6 in 0.025V increments |
| DRAM | +0.05-0.55v in 0.05v increments |
| NB | -0.2- +0.3v in 0.025v increments |
| SB | +0.1-0.3v in 0.1v increments |
| Sideport | +0.1-0.3v in 0.1v increments |
BIOS Shots
