Performance Comparison

Now it is time to check out the performance numbers and perform the comparison in two different system modes. First of all we would like to see the boards’ results in nominal mode, when the boards set the most optimal parameters on their own, without any help from the user. Due to Turbo Boost technology the clock frequency multiplier of our Intel Core i7-860 processor could increase to 26x. The second comparison was performed during maximum processor overclocking. This time we disabled extended processor power-saving modes in the mainboard BIOS using “C-STATE” parameter, which limited the maximum processor clock frequency multiplier setting with 22x. In this case the CPU could work at higher base clock than with 26x multiplier, which means that we end up with higher resulting performance although it happens at the expense of higher power consumption in idle mode. Our today’s hero will be competing against previously tested ASRock P55 Deluxe, Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 and Asus P7P55D Deluxe. The mainboards are listed on the diagrams in the order in which they were tested. The results of Biostar TPower I55 mainboard are marked with a little darker color for your convenience.

In the previous part of our today’s review we have explained why Biostar TPower I55 falls behind its competitors in nominal mode but performs just as fast during processor overclocking, that is why we are not surprised with the obtained results. Lower performance and lag are no good, but we are not discouraged by these results. We know that Biostar TPower I55 will perform just as fast as other mainboards even in the nominal mode if we enable protection against processor voltage drop under heavy load. However, our power consumption tests showed that things are in fact not so simple.