This document serves as a comprehensive manual for the Viotech 3200+ BIOS, detailing its setup, configuration options, and various features designed to manage system performance, power, and peripheral interactions. The BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) is a fundamental component that dictates a computer's basic input and output operations, including control over devices like the keyboard, mouse, serial ports, and disk drives. It plays a crucial role in the initial booting process, loading and executing the operating system, and offers additional functionalities such as virus protection, password management, and chipset fine-tuning.
Function Description
The Viotech 3200+ BIOS provides a robust platform for configuring and managing the motherboard's core functionalities. It supports the AMI BIOS Setup program, allowing users to modify basic system configurations and save these settings to CMOS RAM, which retains information even when the power is off, thanks to a battery.
Key functional areas include:
- System Overview (Main Menu): This section offers a snapshot of the system's basic information, including the BIOS version, build date, system memory size (excluding VGA shared memory), and allows for setting the system time and date. It also provides access to SATA configuration.
- Advanced Settings (Advanced Menu): This menu is dedicated to configuring CPU settings, Super I/O, Smart Fan controls, hardware health monitoring, power management, PCI Express, and USB configurations. It allows for fine-tuning various aspects of the system's operation.
- PCI and Plug and Play (PCIPnP Menu): This section focuses on configuring the PCI bus system and managing Plug and Play devices. It allows for clearing NVRAM, enabling or disabling Plug and Play OS support, setting PCI Latency Timer, allocating IRQs to PCI VGA, managing Palette Snooping, and configuring PCI IDE BusMaster. It also provides detailed control over PCI resources, including IRQ and DMA channel assignments.
- Boot Options (Boot Menu): This menu is essential for defining the system's boot sequence and behavior. Users can prioritize boot devices (hard disk, removable drives, CD/DVD drives), enable or disable Quick Boot, Full Screen LOGO Show, Addon ROM Display Mode, Bootup Num-Lock, Interrupt 19 Capture, and BOOT SUCCESS BEEP.
- Chipset Configuration (Chipset Menu): This submenu allows for configuring specific features of the chipset, which manages bus speeds, access to system memory resources (like DRAM), and coordinates communications with the PCI bus. It includes settings for NorthBridge (AGP & P2P Bridge, OnChip VGA) and SouthBridge (SATA Gen2 Support, OnChip HD Audio Device) configurations, as well as Onboard Peripherals (Realtek PCIE NIC, LAN Option ROM).
- Performance Tuning (Performance Menu): This menu is designed for advanced users to change voltage and clock settings for various devices. It includes options for Clock Control (Spread Spectrum) and detailed DRAM Clock/Timing Configuration, allowing for precise control over memory performance parameters such as CAS Latency, Precharge to Active, Active to Precharge, Active to CMD, REF to ACT/REF to REF, ACT (0) to ACT (1), Read to Precharge, Write to Read CMD, Write Recovery Time, DDR3 CAS Write Latency, and Tfaw - 4*Trrd.
- Exit Options (Exit Menu): This final menu provides options to save or discard changes made to the BIOS settings, load optimal default settings, and access security settings for password management.
Usage Features
The BIOS is designed for user-friendly navigation and configuration, primarily through keyboard input during the Power-On Self-Test (POST).
- Navigation: Users can navigate through menus and select items using arrow keys, and change settings using the
+ or - keys. ENTER or TAB keys are used to select fields, and SHIFT-TAB to select fields in reverse.
- General Help: The BIOS setup utility provides a "General Help" description at the top right corner, offering brief explanations for selected items. Navigation keys for each menu are displayed at the bottom right.
- Default Settings: The manual emphasizes that default BIOS settings are optimized for most conditions to ensure optimum motherboard performance. If the system becomes unstable after modifications, users are advised to load default settings via the "Load Setup Default" option in the Exit Menu.
- Plug and Play Support: The BIOS adheres to the Plug and Play Version 1.0A specification, simplifying the installation and configuration of new hardware.
- EPA Green PC Support: It supports Version 1.03 of the EPA Green PC specification, indicating energy efficiency features.
- APM Support: The BIOS supports Advanced Power Management (APM) Version 1.1 & 1.2, implementing power management features via System Management Interrupt (SMI). This includes Sleep and Suspend modes, and the ability to manage power to hard disk drives and video monitors.
- ACPI Support: It supports ACPI Version 3.0, providing ASL code for power management and device configuration capabilities as defined by Microsoft, Intel, and Toshiba.
- PCI Bus Support: The BIOS supports Version 2.3 of the Intel PCI local bus specification, enabling efficient communication with I/O devices.
- DRAM Support: It supports DDR3 SDRAM (Double Data Rate III Synchronous DRAM).
- CPU Support: The BIOS supports the NanoBGA2 CPU.
- Smart Fan Configuration: This feature allows for intelligent control of the CPU fan, with options for automatic detection, calibration, and various control modes (Manual, Quiet, Performance) based on CPU temperature thresholds.
- Resume Events: The ACPI Configuration includes advanced resume event controls, allowing the system to wake up from suspend modes based on events like Ring, PCI/PCI-E/LAN PME, USB, PS2 KB, PS2 MS, or RTC Alarm.
- USB Configuration: Provides control over OHCI (USB 1.1) and EHCI (USB 2.0) host controllers, legacy USB support for older operating systems, and selection of USB 2.0 controller modes (HiSpeed or FullSpeed).
- Security Features: The Security menu allows users to set supervisor and user passwords to restrict access to BIOS settings and includes a "Boot Sector Virus Protection" feature to warn against attempts to write to the hard disk boot sector.
Maintenance Features
The BIOS incorporates several features that aid in system maintenance and stability.
- Hardware Health Monitoring: The "Hardware Health Configuration" section in the Advanced Menu displays real-time information on system temperature (CPU and System), fan speeds (CPU and System Fan), and voltages (+12.0V, +5.00V, DDR Voltage). This allows users to monitor critical system parameters and detect potential issues early.
- Error Warnings: The manual explicitly warns users about the risks of setting inappropriate values in certain menus (Advanced, PCIPnP, Performance), as this can cause system malfunction. This serves as a crucial reminder for careful configuration.
- CMOS Clear: The "Clear NVRAM" option in the PCIPnP Menu allows users to clear the data in the NVRAM (CMOS), which can be useful for troubleshooting or resetting configurations.
- Load Optimal Defaults: Found in the Exit Menu, this feature allows users to revert to factory-optimized settings. This is a vital tool for recovering from unstable configurations caused by incorrect BIOS changes, ensuring system compatibility and stability.
- BIOS Updates: The manual notes that BIOS firmware is continuously updated, implying that users may benefit from updating their BIOS to improve system performance and compatibility, although specific update procedures are not detailed within this document.
- Boot Success Beep: The "BOOT SUCCESS BEEP" option in the Boot Menu provides an audible confirmation that the system has successfully booted, which can be helpful for diagnosing boot-related issues.
- CPU Power Management: The "VIA Processor Power Management" setting in the Advanced Menu allows enabling or disabling CPU power management functions, which can impact energy consumption and system heat.
- Data Transfer Modes: The SATA configuration allows for setting various data transfer modes (LBA/Large Mode, Block (Multi-Sector Transfer), PIO Mode, DMA Mode, 32Bit Data Transfer) and enabling S.M.A.R.T. (Smart Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), which helps in monitoring the health of SATA drives.
- Restore on AC Power Loss: This setting determines how the system behaves after a power failure or interruption, allowing it to remain off, power on, or restore to its last state, which is useful for maintaining system uptime or ensuring proper shutdown.
The Viotech 3200+ BIOS Manual serves as an essential guide for maximizing the performance, stability, and longevity of the system by providing detailed instructions for configuring its core functionalities.
To Next Page
Need help?
General
