A7V and VIO setting...

[MiracleMan]

I never read about the benefit's of using or not this setting. So, there's any gain to set it to 3.69V, or just leave it to the default 3.56V ???

[Rob Cork]

VIO is the voltage supplied to the pci cards, amongst other things, so raising it can help stability when ocing the fsb. It's supposed to be 3.3V, but asus set the A7v's default to 3.54V, I guess to compensate for the unstable fsb of the KT133 chipset at slightly oc'ed speeds. Seeing as the components are specced to run at 3.3V 3.69 is too high for my liking, and you shouldn't need it that high anyway (you won't get much higher than 110MHz fsb on a KT133 board anyway).

[MiracleMan]

Well, and about the other possible benefits, like dram, chipset and CPU I/O buffer? They are also increased with the VIO voltage. No gain there?

[Rob Cork]

The only gain you will see is better stability - but like I said, the KT133 chipset won't get much above 110 regardless of the state of your memory/pci cards etc. It's a deficiency of the chipset itself. And you shouldn't need 3.69V to get a 110 fsb, 3.54 ought to be sufficient - that's why I don't think it'd help much. It might get 1 or 2 more MHz on the fsb, but at that stage you might as well crank up the multiplier and start raising the fsb again.