BIOS interface

All too often we’ve come this far only to see the motherboard manufacturer falter on their BIOS implementation for their board. They’ll deck the board out with all kinds of cool features, and wrap it around an intelligent, well-thought out board layout, only to compromise when it comes to the BIOS.

Often times, OEM considerations come into play here, as few OEMs outside of Alienware and Falcon Northwest really want to see their customers tweaking their BIOS. After all, if you go too far with overclocking, or set your board’s memory timings too low, the system can become unstable, or it may not even boot at all. Next thing the OEM knows they have to deal with a support call, and when you’ve got millions of customers out there, these support calls can add up quickly. Therefore, many OEMs go straight to the source -- the motherboard manufacturer -- and have them remove access to settings in BIOS that could lead to potential trouble down the road for them. This is why you don’t see bus speed adjustment in Intel motherboards, which are frequently used by Tier One OEMs such as Dell, or an OEM like Gigabyte only provides the “Advanced Chipset Features” menu in BIOS if you press the F1 key (something only an enthusiast would know to do).

As a motherboard partner to many OEMs, ECS has given in to these OEMs wishes in the past, many of their value-oriented boards feature little if any BIOS settings for making system adjustments such as voltages and bus speeds. But since the KN1 Extreme is designed from the ground up for the enthusiast crowd, this shouldn’t be the case right? At least that’s what we were hoping while the board was in transit to us.

BIOS main menu

Integrated peripherals menu

Advanced chipset features menu

For the most part, ECS gets everything into the KN1 Extreme’s BIOS from a pure settings perspective, but for each setting they only give you enough options to get your feet wet, rather than do any extensive tweaking.

For example, you’ve got bus speed adjustment from 200MHz-250MHz, with increments ranging in 0.5MHz increments from 200MHz-210MHz, then 1MHz increments from 211MHz-230MHz, and 2MHz increments from there. Getting your board to run above 250MHz will often require an unlocked Athlon 64 FX CPU, so technically ECS provides the settings you’re most likely to need if you’re an Athlon 64 user, but enthusiast-level boards typically offer settings well in excess of 300MHz.

Adjusting bus speeds

DRAM config menu

Memory bus speeds

The HyperTranspot and memory bus speeds can be set individually which is good, but the board’s BIOS provides no settings for adjusting the PCI Express interface. Again, on a typical enthusiast-level board, you’d expect PCI-E settings ranging from 100-150MHz in 1MHz increments.

Adjusting CPU voltages

For voltage adjustment, CPU voltages of up to 1.825V are provided in 0.025V increments, which is pretty good, as we’ve seen some boards stop as early as 1.65V. ECS provides memory settings ranging from 2.55V-3.11V in increments of 0.08V. Again, this is pretty typical for an enthusiast board; however, ECS doesn’t provide a chipset voltage setting in the KN1 Extreme’s BIOS. Also absent is the ability to control the CPU multiplier – this isn’t a big deal if you’re an Athlon 64 user, as your multiplier is locked anyway, but Athlon 64 FX users would definitely want to have access to their CPU’s multiplier for overclocking.

Overall the KN1 Extreme’s BIOS is easy to navigate, as it uses Award’s familiar interface. All the settings you’ll need for setting up your system are there, including a wealth of options for adjusting memory timings, although the 1T memory command rate setting is absent from the board’s current BIOS. We just wish the board’s BIOS had a few more settings for overclocking, and just as importantly, a setting for dynamically or even manually adjusting the speed of the motherboard’s dual fans.