BIOS interface

Both motherboards sport the familiar Award interface we’ve grown to love over the years. As a result, getting around in either board’s BIOS is a breeze. There aren’t a myriad of submenus hiding underneath the main menus to find, motherboard settings are all located under the appropriate menu. We should point out that Gigabyte hides the “Advanced Chipset Features” menu by default with the K8NSNXP-939, as they’ve been doing with all their motherboards for some time now.

MSI BIOS

Tweaking memory timings

Cell menu settings

Note dynamic overclocking setting

Adjusting the bus speeds

MSI provides multiple levels of dynamic overclocking

Voltages in red are dangerous on MSI board

As you probably know, the advanced chipset features menu is used to tweak memory timings. Lower memory timings yield better system performance, but if your components aren’t up to snuff, can lead to system instability, or prevent your system from booting up entirely. Because of this, Gigabyte apparently doesn’t want newbies digging around in this menu. Fortunately it can be brought up instantly by pressing “Ctrl F1”. This philosophy of limiting users access shows up in other areas of Gigabyte’s BIOS.

For instance, CPU voltages are limited to just 1.7V in increments of 0.05V. On the memory side, options of only 0.1V and 0.2V are present, while AGP and HyperTransport are limited to 0.1V, 0.2V, and 0.3V over default. This means you’re limited to just 2.7V for memory.

Gigabyte BIOS

Tweaking memory timings on the Gigabyte board

Advanced BIOS features

Gigabyte MIT is used for adjusting CPU settings for overclocking

Lots of CPU multipliers in current BIOS

In Gigabyte’s defense, the more voltage you add to these components, the more heat they generate, which over time can shorten their lifetime if the problem isn’t addressed appropriately. By limiting voltages, Gigabyte prevents this from occurring at the cost of you potentially overclocking your system even further. In essence, Gigabyte’s protecting you from yourself. This is probably a good thing if you’re an inexperienced overclocker, or your system is inadequately cooled, but experienced tweakers and overclockers probably don’t like this. Fortunately Gigabyte provides a ton of bus options, with settings ranging from 200-455MHz in 1MHz increments, so if you’re lucky and you happen to pick up a processor that scales to higher clock speeds without needing a lot of juice, the K8NSNXP-939 will suit you well. Gigabyte also provides AGP speeds of 66-100MHz in 1MHz increments.

For newbies or inexperienced overclockers, Gigabyte provides one additional setting “Top Performance”. We found that enabling this setting overclocks your processor 100MHz, so our Athlon 64 3800+ automatically became a 2.5GHz chip.

The hardcore crowd will feel right at home with MSI’s K8N Neo2 Platinum BIOS. In contrast to Gigabyte, this BIOS is built for tweaking. You’ve got the same bus speed options (provided you download the latest BIOS from MSI’s website), while the AGP interface can be configured to run between 66-100MHz in 1MHz increments.

Voltages are greater on the MSI board as well. CPU voltages range from 1.55V-1.85V in 0.05V increments, while memory voltages of up to 2.85V are available. For tweaking AGP voltage, settings from 1.5V-1.85V are present. HyperTransport voltage is notably absent, but that’s the only setting that isn’t available on the K8N Neo2 Platinum.

If manual tweaking isn’t for you, MSI also provides their Core Cell technology. MSI’s Core Cell chip monitors fan speeds, voltages, and temperatures. Based on this information, Core Cell can dynamically adjust the speed of your processor. Six presets for overclocking are available, offering levels of 1%, 3%, 5%, 7%, 9%, and 11%.

By providing more manual tweaking options for enthusiasts, and a more flexible implementation for less experienced users MSI gets the nod over Gigabyte in BIOS implementation.