BIOS Setting Guidelines
I have re-written DFI's BIOS guidelines to try and make them a little more easy to understand for most people.
Exit Setup Shutdown: Mode1/Mode2
Intel boards are well known for shutting down unexpectedly after changing settings. DFI has given us two modes for this.
Mode 1 - If the FSB hasn't changed too much (value unknown at this time) the system will run a quick self diagnostic test and if everything is ok, it will skip the shutdown stage and rewrite the clock generator directly.
Mode 2 - Regardless of how much the FSB has changed, the system will shut down and reboot after you have changed any settings.
Shutdown after AC Loss: Enable/Disable (This setting is not on the later X48 BIOS)
If enabled, this will cause the system to automatically restart after a power failure.
OC Fail Retry Counter: 0~3 times
If the system fails to boot because of a bad overclock, this setting determines the amount of times that the system will attempt to restart before it reverts the FSB back to default to boot the system. If you set it to 1, it will attempt to restart once before resetting the FSB.
CPU Feature:
For maximum stability at higher overclocks, disable everything except "Core Multi-Processing" - If you disable this on a quad core CPU, you will run with two cores, similarly, if you disable this on a dual core, you will run with one core - may be useful for squeezing every last drop for a superpi run. PU VID Special Add: +100.23% - 130.00% - This will allow you to fine tune the CPU voltage. A calculator will be handy (unless you are good at maths. All this does is add voltage in very fine increments. An example would be if you set 1.6v and you wanted 1.68v - you simply multiply the set vcore (1.6v) by the percentage value (104% in this case) and that gives you 1.68v. You don't have to use it for higher voltages either, and it can give you finer increments than the standard Vcore settings allow. I have also been doing some tests and it would appear that the CPU special VID when set to AUTO adds a small amount of vcore, so it may be best to set this to it's lowest value if you aren't using it, and I will update this when I know for sure.