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ASUS
CUSL2 Socket-370 i815E ATX Mainboard
Manufacturer
: ASUS
Reviewed
by:
Date
: July 20th 2000
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The
Bios
The CUSL2 uses
Award's Medallion Bios 6.0, same as what they have been using in
their recent boards. The Bios consists of five main menus- Main,
Advanced, Power, Boot and Exit. The Medallion Bios features all
of the tweaking options we would expect from an Award Bios setup.
With Bios updates offered virtually every week ASUS's Bios support
is one of the best.
One minus point
we noticed with this Bios was that ASUS has failed to include many
of the  information
needed for Bios settings in their Help menu. If you have owned a
ASUS board in the recent past you would have noticed that the Help
menu offered a great deal of basic information and recommendations
for several settings as well. However the CUSL2 only offers some
basic information for overclockers, for example, say you overclock
your CPU too high, then once you reboot the system the CUSL2 changes
back to safe mode settings and the BIOS opens the CPU setup menu
letting you know that the settings have to be changed. This is in
fact a great feature for all those budding overclockers out there.
 Going
into more detail of the Bios, you'll find ASUS's JumperFree CPU
setup under the Advanced Menu option. This is a dream come true
for most of you overclockers out there who really don't fancy medalling
with your motherboard. However if you fancy doing it the hard way
ASUS has included DIP switches on the board, yet all FSB speeds
aren't available as in the JumperFree setup. As far as the JumperFree
menu goes it is by far one of the easiest and extremely flexible
CPU setups I have ever come across. Don't take my word for it, just
take a look at the amount of available FSB speeds it offers; it's
way more than any board I have come across. The great thing about
the ASUS CUSL2 is that it allows independent selection of SDRAM:
PCI ratio and the FSB speeds, giving it a total of 155 combinations
in all. Not bad huh..!
 There
are four available FSB: SDRAM: PCI ratios to choose from, depending
on your system. They are 66:100:33, 100:100:33, 133:100:33, 133:133:33.
What makes the CUSL2 unique is due to its flexibility of FSB speed
options. The above ratios can be changed in 1Mhz increments, which
makes it ideal to get every last drop of power from your system.
With some ratios having up to 32 settings themselves, it's very
doubtful that you'll fail to find the ideal combination to get the
most out of your system. The independent selection of FSB: SDRAM
and PCI ratios is an incredible feature we could really get used
to. Due to this system you can find out the outer limits of your
processor and memory. Users with Celeron processors no longer need
to be trapped by a 66Mhz memory clock; by selecting the ideal combination
as I mentioned before you can dig out that last ounce of power.
CPU and VIO
voltages can also be played with within the Bios interface in order
to get the best frequencies as possible. One thing's for sure, the
ASUS CUSL2 is truly an overclockers delight. Users with 133Mhz CPU's
get the privilege of using additional FSB speeds, which reach an
incredible 216Mhz (yes, you did see it right), yet the practical
problem is that no one would be able to use these high speeds in
the real world. (yet it's a cool feature to boast about)
If you still
fancy configuring the FSB speeds through the DIP switches located
near the IDE interface, then below are a list of options available
to you.
Table of
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