BIOS

Asus gives you many different ways to get more performance out of your system depending on your preference. The BIOS offers complete control through the "Manual" method, or dynamic overclocking through AiNOS. The following table summarizes the different options and their effects.

Manual	Your traditional manual adjustments of frequencies, multipliers, and voltages.
Ai N.O.S.	Dynamic overclocking that automatically adjusts bus speed according to load. Higher the CPU load, the higher the bus speed will be adjusted. You can specify how quickly the frequency changes (sensitivity), and how high the overclock will be. More infomation on the Ai N.O.S. system later in the review.
Overclocking Profile	Predefined overclocking settings of 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%.

If you decide on going with the manual route of overclocking, you have many options.

CPU Frequency	100MHz - 400MHz
DRAM Frequency	DDR - 333MHz, 400MHz DDR2 - 400MHz, 533MHz, 600MHz
PCI Express Frequency	90MHz - 104MHz
PCI Frequency Synch	To CPU, 33MHz
Memory Voltage	DDR - 2.60V - 2.90V DDR2 - 1.80V - 2.10V
Chipset Voltage	1.50V - 1.60V
CPU Voltage	1.3625V - 1.5125V

In addition to the features in the above table, there is also a CPU multiplier adjustment allowing 8x - 28x.

 

LAN Cable tester (Left), and Q-Fan fan control (Right).

Other notable features of the Asus P5GDC-V BIOS is the LAN cable tester which diagnoses your cable before attempting to boot your OS, and the

Overclocking

In this section we try to determine the overclocking potential of the Asus P5GDC-V. After some feedback from readers, we now have performance results for synchronous CPU/Memory at the default 18x multiplier, as well as results at 14x running asynchronous.

In these tests we use two Corsair 512MB CMX512 DDR DIMMs  instead of the DDR2 since the DDR2 modules we have are Engineering Samples, and the Corsair DIMMs are more mature (i.e. better specs and overclocking tolerance). We are using stock air cooling, so heat will be a factor in how far we can go.

At 14x with asynchronous settings, the Asus P5GDC-V is able to achieve a respectable 258MHz overclock for a 1032MHz bus speed and 3612MHz CPU. When I try going beyond 259MHz the SATA controller gives-out and shows me a "no OS" boot error.

18x 225MHz was almost stable. Needs some better cooling.

At 18x with synchronous settings, the most stable overclock I achieved was 222MHz clock speed (3996MHz CPU, 888MHz bus). At 223-225MHz, I was able to achieve mixed results and with some stability issues. I¡¯m sure 225MHz is attainable if given better cooling.

All in all, the P5GDC-V overclocks very well, but not as well as the ABIT AG8 which scored 261MHz in asynchronous mode. Of course your mileage will vary depending on the parts you have and cooling.