BIOS & Software:

There are plenty of settings that allow you to modify and adjust system performance. You can obviously try various different frequency options to push the system. Personally, the thought of messing with frequencies or voltages belonging to other components other than the system's Front Side Bus, memory, and CPU, just seems pointless.

Logo	BIOS	M.I.T.	Recovered
MIT Voltages	Advanced Timing	Peripherals	PC Health

Here are a few screen shots of the many useful utilities and programs Gigabyte includes on the installation disc besides just drivers. There's Anti-Virus, BIOS Update Software, among software and utilities useful to the Gigabyte system. Some of the software can actually help new users figure out the next installation step. And if nothing else, the ever useful included BIOS update utility comes in really handy if your system just happens to encounter an issue.

Drivers	Gigabyte Utilities	More Utilities
Useful Programs	More Programs	And More Programs

One little cool feature I've noticed during operations on this motherboard are the little onboard LEDs. These LEDs work along with the DES software that measure and calculate power consumption which activates LEDs as the system uses more power. At first boot, you can see the entire row lit. As the system comes out of boot, the light green ones remain. As you put the system under a greater load, the orange LEDs light up continuing all the way up in to the red when you're going for some high end overclocking or extreme system loads.

Power Phase LEDs

Phase Action

The software monitors your system and can apply CPU Throttling on the fly. It does a pretty good job of accurately reporting CPU power such as CPU Power Phase, CPU Voltage, and controls the LEDs. Each little Piston represents the onboard LEDs in order.

Advanced Mode

Throttling On

Comparing chipsets can be a little boring when testing, but is necessary. Here you can see the P35 going against the P45. The new chipset affords a slight gain in memory bandwidth and overall CPU performance in SANDRA.

Let's have a look at 3DMark06 and 3D gaming performance on the ASUS 9800 GTX now that the two are playing nicely together.

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