ASUS A7V8X (KT400): The Athlon Gets DDR400

BIOS Setup and Overclocking Features

The ASUS A7V8X comes with the AwardBIOS, which offers some pretty good overclocking features and just plain good features in general.

Some of the good overclocking features that separate this motherboard from most other motherboards are an adjustable FSB of up to 227MHz. This is actually overkill, but at least hardcore overclockers won't complain about the flexibility.

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We definitely weren't able to get anywhere near an overclocked 227MHz FSB, however, using a stock Foxconn HSF and thermal pad with ASII compound, we were able to hit 150MHz FSB without encountering any problems. Naturally, we used stock DDR333 memory (Kingston CL2.5), since DDR400 would limit your potential overclock because of the immaturity of this memory type.

ASUS adds some decent Vcore options in the BIOS, allowing for as high as 1.85V. This isn't all that much if you're running the newest 1.65V Thoroughbred processors, but acceptable for most people nonetheless. A max of 1.85V through the BIOS should be noticeably poor to those wanting to overclock 1.75V Athlon XP Palomino processors, even despite the fact that Athlon XP Palomino processors overclock better than currently available Athlon XP Thoroughbred processors due to the Palomino's better watts to square millimeter ratio. However, for the more "adventurous" users, ASUS kindly adds onboard overvolt jumpers, which go as high as 2.05V. This is plenty, especially for Thoroughbred overclockers.

Besides the onboard overvolting jumpers, there aren't any other special jumpers or switches on the A7V8X. As should be expected, there's a jumper located towards the bottom of the motherboard next to last PCI slot that's intended for clearing the CMOS.