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| by 3oh6 | March 12, 2009 | ||
| Included Software: Automatic Boost System "ABS" Included Software Featuring: Automatic Boost System "ABS" The DFI LanParty X58-T3eH8 comes with a pretty complete software package including a couple unique features. The Auto Boost System (ABS) and Smart Guardian are DFI only pieces of software. ABS offers the ability for an automatic overclock in addition to allowing the sharing or saving of BIOS settings in a Windows environment. Smart Guardian is an old DFI favorite monitoring software that recently received a bit of a face lift. We will briefly cover both of these features as well as the standard software that is included with the X58-T3eH8.   The main interface we encounter after the autorun for the DFI driver/software CD fires up is very simple and straight forward. The icons along the top provide access to Chipset, VGA, Audio, Network, and SATA drivers. We also get a utilities section for installing Smart Guardian and ABS alongside a very useful list of links in the Software section. This list of links is for many popular overclocking and benchmarking software web sites. This is the first time we have encountered something like this from the manufacturer and were quite impressed.   The first piece of software we will look at is the DFI Smart Guardian monitoring software. The design is fresh and futuristic but the layout is bulky and not very screen shot friendly. It does do what it is asked and does it well. Major voltage readings are available as well as three temperature readings and fan RPM outputs. The CPU temp reading is what we would consider a surface diode reading and not an internal on-die temperature reading from the likes of RealTemp or CoreTemp. The System temperature reading is actually the PWM and the Chipset reading is the north bridge appropriately enough. In the second screenshot we show the fan control options Smart Guardian offers. We prefer to control fans from the BIOS and not software within Windows, but for those that do, SG is a great tool. There are two different methods for controlling fans and no matter how you want them setup, Smart Guardian will allow it.   The next item on the agenda is the highly marketed Auto Boost System. The DFI homepage has a whole flash section dedicated to explaining what ABS does and how it can help. Unfortunately, we could only figure out that it allows for a basic automatic overclock - which we aren't really fans of here at HWC - and the ability to save/load/share CMOS Reloaded BIOS settings. This last feature is a very nice feature that DFI is offering and other manufacturers like ASUS have for a while. The only difference is that DFI offers a Windows based interface for doing the BIOS backup/loading. Let's take a quick look and see how it works.   Essentially, all you have to do to load the appropriate ABS profile is to press F1 before POST. The system goes into the dialogue of what it is doing after recognizing which CPU you have installed and loading the appropriate ABS profile. The default ABS profiles can be seen below. Once it loads the profile the system reboots and Windows loads up saying the ABS profile for the i7 965 processor upgraded successfully. Essentially all it did was set the BCLK to 160 and raised vCORE to compensate for the rather steep overclock. To its credit, our processor easily handled the overclock to 3840MHz with the 1.325v vCORE that was set, but we suspect that not all CPUs are going to play nicely with this feature. Our suggestion is to still stick to overclocking the old fashioned way.  As mentioned, these are the default ABS profiles loaded into the CMOS Reloaded slots when you first receive the board. They all just raise the BCLK with the lower ranked chips going up to 166 and compensate with slightly higher voltages. Once you save over the CMOS Reloaded profiles, however, these are gone. Like we said, automatic overclocks won't work for everyone because in the world of overclocking, nothing is guaranteed and there are no stead fast rules to what a CPU/MB/RAM combination is going to be able to clock to. Guidelines are much more appropriate. What this software does allow us to do - as we mentioned and are really excited about - is provide an avenue to save and write CMOS Reloaded BIOS settings. So we can now back up settings and share them or use our working settings with others using similar hardware as a starting point for certain overclocks. The thing to remember is that when sharing CMOS Reloaded profiles, you HAVE to only share profiles using the same BIOS revision. Loading a CMOS Reloaded profile from a different BIOS than the one you are running can result in problems. | ||
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