The BIOS:
As far as the BIOS is concerned, at first glance, we can recognize that we are at Asus. Those who are used to the brand will find it without any difficulty. As a reminder, the tab that will interest us the most is “Extreme Tweaker”. We are on a BIOS almost identical to that of the ROG Crosshair X670E Gene.
Before starting, we remind you that it is essential to regularly update your BIOS. The advantage of a ROG card is that the team of engineers and overclockers behind it is very active. To illustrate, during the week of testing this Gene, I received no less than five different BIOS. Optimizations and fixes are made very quickly. The bios were captured with the EXPO profile enabled on our GSKill Trident Z5 NEO 6000 MT/s CL30 kit.
The ” Loadline calibration ” is in auto mode for the comparative tests but we will come back to its function when overclocking the Ryzen 9 7950X on page 6. The other sections are present since the previous generations and allow you to flash your motherboard, control the fan speed and create test profiles.
Note the arrival of a very interesting option, eCLK mode, which allows to desynchronize the CPU frequency of the PCIe. It will now be possible to push the frequency of your processor via the BCLK.
Also new for an AMD motherboard, the BIOS now indicates a SP for your processor, but also for each core and for the CCDs. The SP is an indication that gives an idea of the overclocking potential of your processor. The higher the value, the better it should perform, for example by requiring less voltage to run. Our Ryzen 9 7950X is rated at SP 118.
We will see in the ” overclocking ” section, the essential voltages for the CPU as well as for boosting the DDR5 memory. Finally, saving profiles is highly recommended when performing tests. It saves time. You can also save them on a USB stick.
We find a LN2 mode, which must be activated via a jumper placed on the PCB. Be careful, this one is really dedicated to cold tests, so don’t activate it for air/water tests because some safety devices will be automatically disabled. Once this one is activated, there is a LN2 CPU profile.
Once we have finished our tour of the Z690 motherboards in the lab, we will be sure to test our CPUs under liquid nitrogen. Don’t hesitate to ask for advice on our forum and discord if you have any problems with your BIOS settings.
