On Boot

Lost in POST

K7 at 550MHz

Award BIOS Setup

Upon boot, we could see a standard POST procedure: memory count, CPU speed, Award BIOS 4.51PG. The CPU clock speed shows up as 550Mhz, yet an entry called "clkmul" (most likely Clock Multiplier?) displays an enigmatic "5." The "CPUID" field displays "605," relating to Family/Model/Stepping.

I hit the Del key to take a quick look around the BIOS. This is what we saw.

L2 Cache Settings

Irongate AGP Setup

BIOS Analysis

While fairly standard in most regards, the Award BIOS showed some major customization, as would be necessary with a brand new chipset and CPU.

The Northbridge consists of AMD's Irongate AGP4X, a consumer implementation that will be shipping with the K7. Currently the Irongate/AGP settings only allow for a transfer rate of 1x or 2x through the AGP bus. There is no selection for 4x AGP, even though Irongate supposedly has built-in support for it. This could be an video card autosensing function however.

Also of interest are the wide variety of SDRAM timing variables, and the ability to enable or disable AGP. Some of these options could easily be transient debug settings, and may or may not appear in the final product.