BIOS and Overclocking

BIOS

Seeing as the P4G8X isn’t being marketed as an enthusiast board, we weren’t expecting much in the way of customization within its BIOS. Nevertheless, ASUS has enabled what we’d consider to be vital BIOS functions. In the ‘Advanced’ screen, front side bus settings are available between 100MHz and an astonishing 400MHz. The PCI and AGP busses can be locked down at 33 and 66MHz respectively to avoid taxing components on an overclocked platform. A slew of voltage modifications are also selectable, including: 1.55-1.7V AGP, 2.5-2.7V DDR, and 1.55-1.975V processor voltage.

Adjusting CPU parameters

Plenty of settings for tweaking memory timings

I/O Device Configuration Menu

The ‘Chip Configuration’ sub-menu allows the adjustment of more specific memory timings – standard ASUS fare. We were actually able to run our board perfectly stable with aggressive CAS 1.5 latency settings. Next, the ‘I/O Device Configuration’ page provides switches to enable or disable serial and parallel ports, as well as the onboard audio. Finally, the ‘PCI Configuration’ page can be used to turn the integrated LAN, IEEE 1394 and Serial ATA devices on or off.

Assigning IRQs to PCI slots

Hardware monitoring

BIOS Power Menu settings

The only other interesting property sheet is the hardware monitor that monitors three temperatures, three fan speeds, and relevant voltages. It also hosts the Q-Fan feature, which adjusts fan speeds according to system loading for quieter operation.

Overclocking

The P4G8X offers plenty of overclocking potential, to be sure. Using incremental front side bus adjustments, we managed a 153MHz front side bus effectively running at 612MHz. The result was 3.52GHz from our 3.06GHz processor operating at 1.7V. We also ran 1.7V AGP and 2.7V DDR in order to run our memory at the same CAS 1.5 setting used for our other benchmarks.