BIOS Setup

It is not an easy task to find an optimal mainboard for a high-performance system. However, one of the most important components that determines if the board can be considered an enthusiast solution or not is certainly its BIOS. The features and functionality of any beautifully designed mainboard may be completely diminished by a sloppy BIOS that contains errors and offers no functions for successfully CPU overclocking. The opposite is also true: an inexpensive mainboard that seems to be of no immediate interest to computer enthusiasts, like Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P for instance, may easily turn out an excellent platform that will suit many advanced users’ needs. GA-MA770T-UD3P may become twice as interesting in this case, because it doesn’t have any obvious drawbacks in terms of features and specifications. Besides, due to high-quality electronic components it promises to be very stable in overclocked mode.

In fact, the idea of this review came to us after we checked out the BIOS Setup of Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard. The thing is that at first glance it offers exactly the same settings and options as the BIOS Setup of more expensive Socket AM 3 mainboards. And taking into account that Gigabyte has a lot of inexpensive but very high-quality solutions in their product range, we decided to see how good the features of GA-MA770T-UD3P will prove during practical experiments. But before we get down to tests, let’s take a closer look at the tools that we will have given to us by the BIOS Setup of this mainboard.

The BIOS of Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard, just like the BIOS of all other Gigabyte mainboards for Socket AM3, is based on Award microcode. At the time of tests the latest available BIOS version was version F2b from May 18, 2009 and this was the one we worked with. However, the BIOS interface of Gigabyte mainboards has long been shaped up that is why everything we will say about it later in this review will most probably be true for other BIOS versions as well.

The most important section of the Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P BIOS is called MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) and it is proudly positioned at the top of the list in the Setup interface. All options in this section are responsible for basic processor and mainboard configuring. Therefore, the list of parameters available there is pretty long. Besides, some of these parameters have been moved into a sub-menu.

The processor clock frequency is set using a clock frequency multiplier and clock generator frequency. The multipliers for the North Bridge integrated into the CPU and HyperTransport bus frequency are set separately. It is pretty convenient that once you change any of these parameters you immediately get the resulting frequency displayed to you. The memory frequency is obtained the same way using a special multiplier. It is also possible to switch between Ganged and Unganged memory controller modes.

Computer enthusiasts should be pretty pleased with the extensive functionality in terms of voltage adjustment offered by Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard:

As you can see, there are all the major voltages that can possibly be of interest to computer enthusiasts. Moreover, the supported value ranges are big enough to make GA-MA770T-UD3P suitable even for extreme overclocking experiments (after the corresponding modifications of the cooling system, of course). The only thing w were a little upset about was the rather large voltage increment, however, this drawback is also typical of more expensive Socket AM3 mainboards from Gigabyte.

Note that processor voltages, unlike other voltage settings, are set in relative and not absolute values. But this is hardly a drawback, because the mainboard reports all the info about the default processor Vcore as well as current settings. Moreover, all above listed voltages can also be set to Normal. As for Auto setting that should let the board take care of the voltage adjustment on its own, there is nothing like that here – Auto is only available on more expensive mainboards. However, it could be for the better, because manual overclocking is always more successful than automatic one.

All settings related to memory timings are gathered on a page called DRAM Configuration:

As you can see, although more expensive Socket AM3 mainboards from Gigabyte offer more options here, none of the major timings are missing. They are pretty easy to adjust manually thanks to meaningful hints offering you the timing settings from the modules SPD or as used by the mainboard. The only minor inconvenience is that you can only set them to Auto all at once, but not each of them individually. Moreover, the mainboard doesn’t know how to take parameters from the XMP profiles, which is, in fact, not surprising at all, considering that they are formally designed for systems on Intel processors.

Another second-tier sub-section is dedicated to ACC (Advanced Clock Calibration) technology:

When AMD launched Socket AM3 processors, ACC technology lost its initial purpose of improving overclocking. However, its side effect acquired some serious significance, as it allowed unlocking the disabled cores of triple- and dual-core Phenom II CPUs. And despite AMD’s objections against the use of this function, Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P allows unlocking processor cores, that is why there is EC Firmware Selection function in its BIOS. By setting it to Hybrid, you can enable the old CPU firmware version allowing the use of ACC for unlocking the disabled cores.

Once all the BIOS Setup options that could possibly be of interest to advanced users have been moved to MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) section, other BIOS setup pages started to look pretty empty. However, they still have quite a few useful options. Take, for instance, Cool’n’Quiet technology management that can be performed from the Advanced BIOS Features page:

You can manage the interfaces implemented on Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard from the Integrated Peripherals page:

Hardware monitoring section offers you control over major temperatures and voltages as well as rotation speeds of all four fans that can be connected to the board.

The mainboard can automatically adjust the rotation speed of two fans out of four depending on the CPU and system temperatures. Moreover, this feature works just fine not only for fans with four-pin power connectors, but also for the ones with three-pin connectors. Nevertheless, we wish there were a little bit more functionality here: the list of monitored voltages and temperatures is a little too small. But, we have to point out once again that it is one of those things typical of all Socket AM3 mainboards from Gigabyte, and the fact that Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P is a low-cost solution has nothing to do with it.

The BIOS Setup of our today’s hero also has Gigabyte’s traditional utility for saving settings profiles. It allows saving up to eight profiles with individual names into the mainboard ROM or a file.

I would also like to say that if the board can’t start because of incorrectly set parameters, it doesn’t hang or enter an endless loop of reboots. Instead, it restarts in safe mode and offers to load one of the saved settings profiles or the latest known working configuration when the board could pass POST successfully.

In other words, the BIOS functionality of GA-MA770T-UD3P mainboard definitely allows us to rgard this solution as a product for computer enthusiasts, even though it is quite inexpensive. Yes, we did find a few things that could have been better, but they have nothing to do with the price of this board and are typical of all Gigabyte mainboards for Socket AM3 platform.