EVGA X58 Classified - First Look

BIOS Breakdown

Extreme Cooling

This function is only to be used when the CPU is cooled to subzero temperatures. Three settings are available depending upon the temperature range the CPU will be operating at for benchmarking. An alternative to this BIOS function is to move the onboard X-Cool jumper to pins 2-3, although the effects can be a little different to those offered in the BIOS. Our particular i7-920 CPU prefers the X-Cool jumper left at position 1-2, needing no change in the BIOS to reach the limits of thermal shutdown conditions. On the other hand, our i7-965XE processor prefers the X-Cool jumper at position 2-3. For us, we found we were able to boot and run our i7 processors another 10~15 degrees lower on the Classified than the cold boot limits imposed by other boards with these same CPUs.

PCI Express Frequency

This is useful when pushing the board beyond 222 BCLK. A setting of 102MHz will allow the BCLK frequency to be ramped past 222MHz using the E-LEET tuning program in the OS. For speeds past 230 BCLK, we used a setting of 114MHz. You can then boot into the OS at 220 BCLK and apply BCLK changes to take you directly to the desired CPU frequency. The use of high PCI-E bus frequencies does affect 3D stability however; too high and 3D benchmarks will lock mid-run. Settings over 117MHz or so give rise to SATA problems at times, so it's a case of edging up slowly and keeping your fingers crossed if you're going for an all out attempt at a maximum BCLK setting.

Profiles

Eight CMOS profile slots are available for saving your settings. Unfortunately, there is no way to name the saved profile for easy reference, which would have been a nice touch. Still, having these banks on hand makes it easy to re-apply previous settings when experimenting.

Memory Control Setting

Enabled: Allows manual control of Memory Frequency, Channel Interleave, and Rank Interleave.

Memory Frequency: This is the memory multiplier ratio to BCLK. It's self-explanatory based on the ratios and speeds listed. For those just starting on the i7 platform, a memory ratio of 10 (1333) and a base BCLK speed of 133 will result in a DDR3-1333 (10x133) memory speed as one example. As you clock up bus speeds, you will need to lower the memory ratio to keep your memory operating within specifications.

Memory Timing: EVGA has managed to find a number of memory controller presets based on the applied memory frequency. Our testing to date has shown no real performance gains between any of the presets other than stability, so we're veering towards calling this a signal timing offset rather than a latency adjustment. At stock processor speeds (133 BCLK), one can use the appropriate memory divider and MCH frequency setting to obtain the stock memory frequency. If you intend to experiment with individual MCH frequency settings then do note that if using the 1867 and 2133MHz presets that memory frequency must be close to the speed of the MCH preset. As an example:

BCLK 133MHz
Memory Multiplier 2:14
Uncore Multiplier 28
MCH "strap" = 1867
MemFreq =1867MHz
…POSTs

BCLK 133MHz
Memory Multiplier 2:10
Uncore Multiplier 20
MCH "strap" = 1867
MemFreq =1330MHz
…Fails to POST.

But:

BCLK 186MHz
Memory Multiplier 2:10
Uncore Multiplier 20
MCH "strap" = 1867
MemFreq =1860
…also will POST.

If memory frequency is below MCH "strap" frequency using the 1867 preset, then the minimum consistent boot up memory frequency is in the region of 1770MHz. Memory speeds over the MCH preset frequency are not as susceptible to non-post situations. The 1600MHz preset seems to be the most scalable and stable preset in our testing to date. Values in between the presets are catered for using the "by DRAM ratio" setting, which scales signal timing offsets in conjunction with memory frequency and BCLK.

Channel Interleave: Higher values divide memory blocks and spread contiguous portions of data across interleaved channels, thereby increasing potential read bandwidth as requests for data can be made to all interleaved channels in an overlapped manner. For benchmarking purposes when using three memory modules, a 4-way interleave may surpass the scoring performance of setting 6-way interleave depending on the benchmark and operating system used (32-bit vs. 64-bit). We did find however that a 6-way interleave was capable of a higher overall BCLK for Super PI 32M than using a 4-way interleave setting (unless of course you run single- or dual-channel and appropriate channel interleaving thus decreasing load upon the memory controller).

Rank Interleave: Interleaves physical ranks of memory so that a rank can be accessed while another is being refreshed. Performance gains again depend on the benchmark in question. For 24/7 systems using triple-channel memory configurations there is no advantage to setting this value below 4 while Channel Interleave should be left at 6 for best overall system performance.

The rest of the memory parameters pretty much default to optimum levels; moving away from these values can in some instances make matters worse in terms of system stability rather than performance. The current BIOS defaults are just about optimal for most overclocking. The highest performance advantage comes from changing the primary memory timings. There's little to no gain in fiddling with any of the secondary timing ranges, other than moving tRFC out to a value of 88 or more if running 12GB (6x2GB) of memory.