Foxconn 925XE7AA-8EKRS2 Intel 925XE Motherboard

BIOS Configuration:

At first glance the BIOS looks like any other Phoenix-Award BIOS configuration, however Foxconn has always added a few tweaks for their motherboards that enthusiasts will be happy to see.

Under the BIOS Features menu are the SuperBoot, SuperBIOS-Protect, SuperRecovery Hotkey, and SuperSpeed options. These settings have been on all Foxconn motherboards we have reviewed in the past, so we won't go into details about each of the settings except for the SuperSpeed.

The SuperSpeed menu is essentially the main overclocking page, with a full set of options for tweaking the motherboard & CPU.

The memory divisor, CPU clock, PCI Express clock, PCI Bus clock, CPU voltage, Memory voltage, and Chipset voltage are all adjustable.

Under the Advanced Chipset Menu are all the memory timing adjustments, a necessity for any enthusiast.

All of the onboard devices can be enabled or disabled via the Onboard Device sub-menu. If the extra RAID controllers are not being used it is always advisable to disable them in the BIOS. Notice that one of the gigabit Ethernet controllers is on the PCI Express bus, while the other is on the regular PCI bus. For most people this really isn't an issue, however the channel on the PCIe bus should have theoretically slightly higher maximum throughput.

Lastly the PC Heath Status page reports various voltages, temperatures, and fan speeds. Warning & shutdown temperatures can also be set (always recommended) incase of a fan failure or other problem that would cause the CPU to overheat. I did notice that even though the maximum memory voltage is supposed to be +.10V over default (meaning it should be 1.9V max), the BIOS was reporting 1.96V.

Overclocking:

The main limitation in the BIOS is the 265MHz maximum FSB speed. There was a choice for "Ratio Free" in the BIOS, however the manual states that it is only for CPUs that are 3.4GHz & above and it will fix the multiplier to 14x if enabled. Since we used an Intel 640 (3.2GHz) processor, we couldn't verify this setting, however we were able to reach the maximum FSB of 265MHz quite easily.

If an EE processor was used, then obviously the stock FSB speed would be 266MHz, the maximum speed the BIOS would allow from there is unknown.