915P Chipset Roundup: ABIT AG8, ASUS P5GD2 Premium, and Foxconn 915A01-P

Once celebrated for the most innovative BIOS settings, most other motherboard manufacturers have now caught up and offer comparable options. ABIT is still striving for excellence in that department, though, which is why it developedmicroGuru. In the BIOS this is split between the OC Guru and the ABIT EQ. OC Guru enables definable CPU operating speeds through malleable frontside bus frequencies and multiplier settings, if you're lucky enough to have an unlocked Pentium 4. It's also capable of setting the PCI Express clock, setting the DRAM ratio, locking the PCI clock down to 33MHz, and setting a number of voltages. For example, our AG8 offers north bridge (MCH) voltages between 1.5V and 2.05V in .05V increments. It offers DDR memory voltages between the standard 2.5V to 3.20V in either .05 or .1V increments. Processor voltages are available between 1.3875V to 1.7375V in tiny
.025V increments. Unfortunately, it doesn't expand beyond DDR400 memory ratios, which many of the more advanced modules are able to tolerate.

The othermicroGuru component that resides in the AG8's BIOS is ABIT EQ, essentially a health monitoring tool. The ABIT EQ menu reads four temperatures, 10 different voltages, and relevant fan speeds. All of the other ABIT BIOS options are fairly standard, including boot configurations, peripheral device settings, and some minor memory timing tweaks.

ABIT uGuru & EQ Software

As described by Dave in his AA8 DuraMAX review, themicroGuru is complimented by a software component that enables overclocking from within Windows. It also monitors the same voltage, temperature, and fan speed settings that were available in the BIOS. These screen shots are from his evaluation, which can be found here.