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The BIOS

We've seen improvements in Gigabyte's BIOS implementations lately especially with regards to the number of memory options available but unfortunately it seems that they have taken a step back with the GA-K8VT890-9. Our test sample had revision F2G loaded on it. The default options on Gigabyte boards are usually fairly spartan by default and that is fine by us. There are a lot of options that a lot of people probably should not be playing with and hiding them is not a problem. Unfortunately, even after the CTRL-F1 trick on this board, the BIOS remained bare.

BIOS Overclocking Settings Summary

• Memory divider - Auto, 200 (1:1), 166 (5:6), 133 (4:6), 100 (1:2)
• DRAM Timing - Auto, 2T, 1T
• Processor Ratio - Auto, [4x - CPU Max]
• Processor Frequency - 200-255
• Processor Voltage - Stock, +5%, +7.5%, +10%
• DIMM Voltage - Stock, +0.1 - +0.3V

The BIOS In Detail

The Standard CMOS Features are just that. Both the SATA and IDE channels are listed here.

Advanced BIOS features houses drive boot order as well as options to turn on S.M.A.R.T. I don't understand why S.M.A.R.T. is hidden by default or why is set to off. I don't think that it really affects boot times at all.

In the recent Gigabyte boards we looked at there were a good number of memory related options under the Advanced Chipset Features and this was also true with the Soltek SL-K890-Pro which is why it was a disappointing to see nearly no memory tweaking options here. There is a memory divider and an option to set command rate but that is it. No settings are available for CAS latency or anything else. There seemed to be an issue with the Auto setting for 1T/2T - Auto would default to 2T even with 1T capable modules. A submenu has options to change some of the LDT (HT) bus settings.

Within the Integrated Peripherals menu are few things of note. A couple quirks that we noticed with our board included the SATA controller being disabled by default as well as onboard audio. Users probably want to double check these two settings. Toggling between RAID and single disk mode for the SATA controller is also done here.

Power Management for those who use it.

There should be nothing that needs to be changed under the PnP/PCI Configuration menu.

The PC Health status menu has the current CPU temperature and fan speed listed. Specific voltages are not displayed, only an OK (or not).

Frequency / Voltage Control houses some sparse overclocking options. The CPU multiplier can be adjusted though the range is smaller than what we saw in the DFI board and there are no half multipliers. FSB can be set between 200 and 255. One thing I do like is that it is not one of those scroll style listings. Type in what is wanted and bam, hit return. Some very limited voltage options are available for both the processor and memory modules.