Chaintech 9CJS Zenith

Company: Chaintech
Product: 9CJS Zenith
Street Price: ~$280 USD
Date Reviewed: May 5, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey C. aka Chong345
Overall Rating: (9/10)

BIOS Configuration:

Since this board is not yet retail and this is only an engineering sample this BIOS that we have for our testing may not be the one released with the final version of the board. With that said, let us take a look at the BIOS options. The options available on the 9CJS are fairly nice for the overclockers out there. The users who are not afraid to go into their BIOS will be pleased to see that they have almost full control over their system. This BIOS has most of the options other motherboards do so we want to take a look at the overclocking options first. UPDATE: A new BIOS was released prior to us posting this review, however we have not had a chance to test it out yet.

The first menu we want to talk about is the Advanced Chipset Features menu. The is the section where the memory timings can be found. SPD values or manual values can be entered here. Tweaking the memory timings can enhance performance but if the timings are set to aggressive, it can cause system instabilities. Another option in this menu is the Memory Frequency. Changing this option allow the memory to be run asynchronously from the FSB but it is best if it is left at AUTO. One item in this menu that we did not find was the option for the AGP speed. This motherboard does support 8x AGP and since the options are not available in the BIOS, the BIOS sets the speed automatically based on the video card. So if a Radeon 9700 Pro is used, 8x AGP will be enabled.

The next menu that is very important to overclockers is the Frequency/Voltage Control. The options to change the CPU clock and voltage are placed in this section of the BIOS. This will for the most part be the most important menu for overclocking the system. The CPU clock can be changed from 200 to 255 MHz in 1 MHz increments. The interesting thing about this menu is that it only allows for a minimum of a 200 MHz FSB. The specifications show that the board does in fact support the 533 MHz FSB CPU's but how can this be if the FSB only goes to as low as 200? We can only assume that the motherboard must auto-detect the settings from the CPU but we were not able to test this since we do not have the older 533 MHz CPU's in our testing facility. The maximum setting of 255 MHz FSB should be adequate for most overclocking, however it could potentially be a limitation as the 800FSB CPUs come out in lower speeds. Having a lower multiplier means you will need to raise the FSB even more.

The CPU voltage can be set to default or changed from a minimum of 1.5625V to a maximum of 1.6750V. The increments start out at 0.0125V but then increase after 1.6V to increments of 0.025V. We truly feel that these voltages are not enough. It would have been nice to see options up to around 1.85V, which is a little extreme, but 1.65V is definitely not enough voltage to achieve an good overclock. It may be enough to get a decent overclock but not much more. Hopefully in the final version of the board, we will see higher options.

The memory voltages allow for default or up to +0.30V in 0.1V increments. This set of voltages is ok but we know that in order to achieve very high memory speeds, higher voltages are needed. Most of the memory we have tested does well using 2.9V but there are a few modules that require 3V or more. Even still 2.9V isn't all that bad.

The last set of voltage options available in this BIOS are the AGP voltages, which can be set from default to +0.30V in 0.1V increments. Honestly, most people will not even change this option from its default setting. From our testing it is not necessary to change this voltage to overclock the AGP card, or the rest of the system.

The rest of the BIOS is what one would expect. There are options to disable the onboard features such as audio, FireWire, and Serial ATA. Other menus like the PC Health Status are also present in the BIOS. Overall it is user friendly but it is not the best overclocking BIOS we have seen. As we said earlier, the voltage options could have been higher but they are sufficient for decent overclocking. Some of the more hardcore overclockers might be disappointed.