DFI Infinity NF4 Ultra

BIOS:

DFI's motherboards in recent years certainly have been well received by the enthusiast and overclocking world, thanks to the great deal of tweaking options available with the BIOS. One of the masterminds behind DFI's award-winning BIOS features is Oscar Wu, who had originally worked at Abit. Shipping with the DFI NF4 Ultra Infinity is a Phoenix Award Workstation BIOS. The main pages when entering the BIOS are standard CMOS features, advanced BIOS features, advanced Chipset features, integrated peripherals, power management setup, PnP/PCI configurations, PC health status, and Genie BIOS. Many of the existing configurable options inside of the Phoenix BIOS are going with the status quo; however, there are always a few important things worth mentioning. Moving first onto the PC health status area, the VCC3. +12V, 3.3V Dual, 5V Standby, and Voltage battery values are displayed. In addition to the voltages, the CPU and inside/outside temperatures are displayed in Celsius as well as the system, Chipset, and CPU fan speeds. Furthermore, the PC health status area controls the CPU shutdown temperature as well as the CPU fan power. The CPU fan power values are 20%, 35%, 50%, 65%. 70%. 85%, and 100% -- for adjusting the CPU cooling to maintain the proper balance of cooling as well as the noise level. Moving next onto the heart of DFI's BIOS -- the Genie BIOS options. The main Genie BIOS page consists of the clock and ratio settings along with the voltage options. From the clock and ratio area, the CPU frequency can be altered as well as the Hammer Fid control, HT frequency, HT width, PCI-E clock, and then a DRAM configuration page. The CPU frequency can be manually adjusted from 201MHz to 450MHz in 1MHz increments, in addition to the default selection. The HT frequency supports 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, and automatic modes while the HD width varies from 16-16 to 8-16, 16-8, and 8-8. Temporarily moving off to the DRAM configuration page, there is a wealth of various options (as can be seen from the BIOS images below) and remains practically anything an enthusiast would be interested in tweaking for optimal performance. The memory clock index value has options of 100MHz 1:0.5, 133MHz 1:0.6, 150MHz 1:0.7, 166MHz 1:0.8, and 200MHz 1:1 (CPU:DDR). The DDR voltage can be adjusted from 2.5V to 3.2V in 0.1V increments, which should adequate for most in the overclocking crowd. The Chipset voltage supports options of 1.5V, 1.6V, and 1.7V. Onto the CPU voltage, the minimum voltage was 0.80V while the maximum was 1.850V. The NF4 Ultra motherboard supports controlling AMD K8 Cool 'n' Quiet as well as monitoring the CPU, Chipset, and memory voltages. Overall, the Phoenix AwardBIOS is loaded with overclocking potential, and it will certainly be enticing to see how well it comes to overclocking as the nForce4 LAN Party series is certainly well respected. Outside of the overclocking options, the Infinity BIOS is relatively standard.