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BIOS

Like with all of Gigabyte's BIOSes, some of the more advanced options are hidden from the end user. By hitting CTRL+F1 on the main BIOS screen, an additional menu for Advanced Chipset Features can be brought up.

A lot of the jazzy features are hidden by default. Hit CTRL+F1 at this screen to bring up Advanced Chipset Features

This enables the adjustment of memory timings and HyperTransport speed amongst other things. The BIOS on the K8NSNXP is a standard Award Phoenix BIOS.

The BIOS options are a bit of a mixed big. The CPU ratio range is very good and the half step is a nice touch that a lot of other boards do not have. The FSB adjustment range is simply huge- MSI's K8N Neo maxes out at 300mhz by comparison.

Gigabyte also chose to support DDR300 for whatever reason so those who have older performance memory could put it to good use in this board. The biggest problem is the CPU voltage adjustment range topping out at 1.7V. If a 455 Mhz FSB speed is offered, Gigabyte should really consider upping the limit on the CPU Voltage into the 1.8 range and maybe even higher for the more adventerous group.

Another gripe for the CPU Voltage is that the current voltage is not displayed at all in the BIOS. The PC Health screen has an uninformative "OK" listed beside Vcore. The best approach would be to show what voltage the CPU is set at on the same screen as the voltage adjustment one.

Integrated Peripherals

This particular section of the BIOS could use a bit of redesign. The two seperate places to disable onboard SATA can be a bit confusing for those who are not familiar with the NForce 3 250 chipset as it is hard to differentiate between On Board Serial ATA and Serial ATA 2(Internal PHY). For future reference the PHY are the pair of SATA ports that are supported by default by the NForce 3 250 series. On the 250Gb reference board, the MSI K8N Neo and here on the Gigabyte K8NSNXP, the first pair of MCP supported SATA ports are located above the AGP slot and not at the bottom of the board where the connectors usually are. The other set of SATA ports on the K8NSNXP are supported by a Silicon Image SATA controller. It might also be a good idea to move the Giga-RAID and Serial ATA Function options to the IDE Function Setup submenu with the rest of the RAID options instead of having them all over the place.