This FAQ article takes a look at the various BIOS settings available on AMD 64-bit platforms. It covers settings relating to the CPU and RAM in particular.

If you were wondering what all those settings in the BIOS screens are for, then read on.

Guide: AMD Athlon 64 Motherboard BIOS Settings 

As many of you will already know, the motherboard's BIOS can be configured via a variety of settings which can be accessed during system boot-up. On most modern systems, pressing the delete key when the splash screen is displayed will force the system to enter the BIOS utility.

Consult your motherboard manual if you are unsure of how to run the BIOS utility. You will notice that detailed descriptions of the various functions are hard to come by in most manuals. This is where this guide will help you with clear explanations of settings which can be adjusted. This guide maily looks at CPU, AGP and memory settings and should be of help to those who are new to overclocking.

The screen-shots in this FAQ are taken on an EPoX 9NDA3+ motherboard which has a Pheonix BIOS. The exact appearance of the screens and settings available may vary on other boards. In essence, the functions will be the same on all AMD64 platforms.

The photo below shows the BIOS main menu. I won't be looking at "Standard CMOS Features", "Advanced BIOS Features" or "Power Management" in this guide. Those sections mainly relate to time/date, system power and drive configuration. If you should need help with setting-up disk drives just ask in AOA's forum. Click here for the General Hardware topic.