The BIOS
As do nearly all other Asus motherboards, the Asus P7H55D-M uses the American Megatrends BIOS, a tabbed BIOS for easy navigation. Push the I/O switch, start tapping the Del key about once per second, and you will end up on the BIOS’ Main menu. Here we find date/time, detected drives, and a couple of submenus. The System Information submenu shows BIOS version (I always flash the latest BIOS), CPU model, and memory size.
Next we have the AI Tweaker menu, where all overclocking will take place. This menu is laid out very well, with only memory timings in a submenu, where they should be. Of great note is the display at the top of the menu, “CPU Target Frequency” and “Memory Target Frequency”. All motherboards advertising overclocking capabilities should show the approximate frequency you are clocking to so you don’t have to use a calculator to figure it yourself. The trend of late is for this information not to be displayed. I am proud to see it here and hope it has returned for good. Thank you Asus!
The Advanced menu contains submenus with settings for the CPU and most motherboard components. The Onboard Devices submenu enables/disables some of the board’s data ports.
The CPU Configuration submenu shows detailed info about the CPU and enables/disables various CPU functions and features. I always disable Intel SpeedStep and any sleep features before overclocking and running benchmarks. It is a little strange that the setting for Intel TurboBoost doesn’t show up for this processor, it is supposed to support TurboBoost. Anyway, I also recommend disabling TurboBoost when overclocking and benchmarking.
The Power menu contains settings and submenus relevant to power, and includes the Hardware Monitor in a submenu. The Hardware Monitor displays temps and voltages, and controls fan speeds for fans connected to the motherboard.
The Boot menu contains submenus for boot drive priority and relevant boot settings. The Boot Configuration submenu contains various boot settings including enabling/disabling of the POST splash screen, which I always disable.
