by Doors4ever
08/27/2007 | 12:51 PM
I wonder if any company out there carries out regular overclocker surveys. It would be very interesting to compare the results of a today’s survey like that against the one made, say, three years ago. I assume a mainstream computer enthusiast uses mostly Asus or Gigabyte mainboards these days. In fact there is nothing surprising about it.
<%BANNER[article]%>While the majority of mainboard makers usually have one or two mainboard models on a new chipset, Asus and Gigabyte usually announce the whole line-up of solutions from the simplest and cheapest to the elite models. As a result, numerous choice options can satisfy almost any needs, and thanks to gigantic production volumes, these mainboards are available anywhere in the world: from cold Canada to scorching hot Australia.
With such cut-throat competition other mainboard makers have to find their own unique ways of survival. DFI Company, for instance, turned their back to mainstream users and bets on computer enthusiasts as their primary target group. Elitegroup, on the contrary, doesn’t focus on overclockers’ need and offers simple inexpensive mainboards without extended features. ASRock Company seems to be doing pretty well: they focus on using older chipsets for the platforms supporting newest CPUs and third-party chipsets.
Biostar Company also has its own unique path. Their mainboards are priced close to those from Elitegroup, however offer a much broader range of overclocking-friendly features. This is exactly why we are very much interested in taking a closer look at a few Biostar mainboards today. They will be two new solutions on Intel P35 Express chipset: one for DDR2 and another for DDR3 SDRAM.
We would like to start our discussion with the simpler model. Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard uses DDR2 SDRAM, which is still more acute these days.
Biostar TP35D2-A7 is shipped in a standard box. It is designed in the traditional way for T-Series Biostar products that boast extensive overclocking-friendly features. To personify each particular package the model name and logotypes of all supported technologies are stuck to the front of the box.
Despite the not very big size of the box, there was enough room inside for two separate smaller boxes with neatly arranged accessories. One of them contained a printed user’s manual and a CD disk with drivers and utilities. Another box contained an FDD and IDE cables, a pair of SATA cables, power converter for Serial ATA devices and an I/O Shield for the case rear panel.
From the moment I first saw Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that something about it was very familiar:
However, the intrigue didn’t last long, only until I opened our previous article called Biostar TForce P965 Mainboard Review. There are a few differences between these two solutions, but they are undoubtedly based on the same PCB design. Therefore, almost everything we said about the advantages and drawbacks of Biostar TForce P965 PCB layout in our previous article may be readdressed to the new Biostar TP35D2-A7.
Three-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry is built with solid-state capacitors. The 4-pin and 24-pin power connectors are positioned nearby. Maybe this location is easier to layout but it is not the best place from the convenience of assembly standpoint.
There are a lot of standing out elements on the reverse side of Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard, but all of them are quite far away from the processor socket spot and hence will hardly prevent you from installing any cooling backplates.
The chipset North Bridge is cooled down with a small aluminum heatsink that heats up a lot during work. However, there is a three-pin fan connector close to it, so you can definitely use it for additional cooling.
By the way, one of the drawbacks that we have pointed out in our Biostar TForce P965 mainboard review has been eliminated in this model. Biostar TP35D2-A7 still has only three fan connectors, including the processor one, but they are much more conveniently located this time. Two of the fan connectors used to be grouped together close to the chipset South Bridge. Now you can use the fan connector next to the chipset North Bridge for the case rare panel fan as well.
Except the fan connector that has moved closer to the center of the PCB and a USB connector that took its old place, everything around the South Bridge remained the same. The FDD connector is still not in its best place. Besides, there are only four SATA connectors onboard. As for the definite advantages, we should mention the color coded marking of the front panel connector set, a Power On and Reset buttons.
By the way, there are two diagnostic LEDs to the right of the buttons that I forgot to mention in my previous review. They can help to roughly identify the problem if it occurs. If both LEDs are on, everything is in order; if the first one is out, then the problem is with the graphics card, if the second one is out - there is a problem with the memory, and if both of them are out - it is the mainboard or the CPU. This is pretty primitive diagnostic tool, but it will certainly help in case something goes wrong: most mainboards do not have even this to offer.
The back panel of Biostar TP35D2-A7 features a COM-port, which is a pretty rare sighting these days. Other than that everything is pretty usual. By the way, there is a parallel port pin-connector behind the rear panel, but there is no LPT-cable among the mainboard’s accessories.
To sum up everything we have just mentioned and provide you with the complete list of Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard features and controllers we suggest taking a look at the technical specification chart from the user’s manual:
The board is version 5.0 but it doesn’t mean that the previous four revisions turned out bad. Biostar always designed a few modifications of the same mainboard that differ just a little bit from one another. Right now there is no mention of the other mainboard modifications on the company web-site, but the user’s manual contains specifications of Biostar TP35D2-A7 ver.6.0 that differs from the 5.0 version by the type of the sound solution. This model will have a six-channel ALC861VD codec instead of the eight-channel ALC888 one.
Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard uses Phoenix-Award based BIOS.
However this BIOS is not quite common, it has a number of unique distinguishing features, typical only of Biostar mainboard. For example, by pressing F9 you can access the so-called “Menu in BIOS” with a little bit of not very useful info.
The first BIOS sections offer pretty standard set of functions: you set the boot-up devices order, adjust processor power-saving parameters, keyboard work mode, logo display, etc. I had to dwell on the Integrated Peripherals section. As you can guess from the name, this section allows adjusting the work modes for USB devices, COM and LPT ports, and integrated onboard network controller. Here everything is fine, but when I got to the page with hard disk drive settings, I couldn’t find any options for SATA modes.
The Serial ATA hard disk drives are by default set compatible with IDE on most contemporary mainboards, i.e. the OS sees it as a regular Parallel ATA disk drive supporting standard set of commands. It hardly affects the performance, however, if you want to take advantage of some SATA’s unique features, such as plug-n-play connection, for instance, they should be switched to extended AHCI mode. Biostar TP35D2-A7 doesn’t allow it, because there is no corresponding item in the BIOS, so the hard disk drives will always work in compatibility mode.
As for other anachronisms, I would also like to point out primary initialization of PCI graphics cards. I doubt that any of the users out there have graphics cards like that in their systems.
PC Health Status section that may seem quite common at first glance contains a lot of interesting and even surprising features.
The first option worth mentioning is the Smart Fan Option tool for fan rotation speed management. If you select this option, you can access a window with additional settings.
Everything looks very nice, even three-pin fans are supported. However, do not attempt to change anything there: all these options are not for real – they are virtual. If you decide to calibrate a fan, for instance, then you will see no Smart Fan Option in PC Health Status section at all upon next boot-up – it will simply vanish without trace! It is the first time in my experience that the BIOS demonstrates illusionist’s capabilities like that. Certainly, the processor fan rotation speed couldn’t be adjusted in any way, no matter if the option could be accessed or not.
I would like to point out that Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard can display major temperatures, voltages and fan rotation speeds with the help of Show H/W Monitor in POST tool. I would like to stress that this feature should be pointed out, but not regarded as an advantage. Unlike EPoX mainboards that have had feature like that for a while now, the data chart is displayed after the system boot-up is complete. Even if you notice that the fan is not rotating or one of the voltages is too high, you will have no time to respond adequately by accessing the BISO and fixing the settings. Moreover, you can only see the table if the FDD controller is operational. If you disable it, the boot-up gets sped up so greatly, that you will simply be unable to notice anything at all.
So, looks like the only advantage of the PC Health Status section of the Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard is its pretty detailed monitoring data. Besides the main parameters, it also shows the chipset North Bridge voltage and memory voltage, which not every mainboard monitors these days (take the Gigabyte boards, for instance).
It is a very smart decision to place all processor and memory overclocking options of the Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard into one single section called OverClock Navigator Engine. A commencing overclocker can use automatic overclocking option to get the CPU to run 5-10%, 15-25% or 25-30% faster, but since processors on Core micro-architecture boast very good overclocking potential overall, this may not be sufficient in most cases. Our Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 test CPU, for example, can clock from 266MHz to 490MHz FSB, which is over 80%, therefore, we move on to manual parameters adjustment right away.
Everything looks pretty good and work fine. If you disable EIST technology the multiplier can be reduced to the minimal value of 6x. FSB frequency can be adjusted from the nominal up to 700MHz, and PCI-E – in the interval between 100 and 200MHz with 1MHz increment. The memory frequency can be set at 533, 677 or 800MHz. 677MHz is a typo that keeps moving from one BIOS version to the next one. In fact, the board sets the memory at standard 667MHz in this case. It is also very convenient that you can adjust only those memory timings that you need, leaving all other settings at their default values.
The CPU can receive up to 0.787V of additional voltage with pretty small 0.0125V increment. FSB Termination Voltage and MCH Voltage can be set at 1.35V, 1.45V or 1.55V. The supported memory voltage interval stretches from 2.0 to 2.6V with 0.1V increment.
The info-lines that report the current multiplier, PCI Express bus frequency, memory frequency and nominal processor Vcore are an indisputable advantage. Moreover, Biostar TP35D2-A7 BIOS also allows running the built-in MemTest86+ benchmark.
Well, we have already talked about a lot of things, but this is certainly not the end of the Biostar TP35D2-A7 features list. Now it is high time we discussed CMOS Reloaded Program section that allows saving and loading the BIOS settings profiles. The user’s manual claims there can be up to 50 profiles saved, but I managed to see only 10. Nevertheless, this is more than enough, because Asus mainboards, for instance, allow saving only two profiles, abit mainboards – only 6.
Each profile is dated automatically. You can also provide a description for each of them.
In conclusion to our BIOS discussion I would like to say a few words about BIOS update procedure. In case of our Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard we once again come across a situation when a guaranteed advantage turns into an obvious drawback because of faulty implementation. Unfortunately, the BIOS reflashing utility can only work with floppy disks and doesn’t save the current BIOS version anywhere.
To cool down pretty warm chipset North Bridge heatsink we installed an additional fan on top of it.
Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard booted without any problems the first time.
During boot-up the board reports the current processor frequency, FSB frequency, clock multiplier, number of cores, supported technologies, memory capacity, frequency and work mode. It is very convenient that by pressing F9 you can actually select any boot-up device other than the one set in the BIOS. This is pretty wide-spread feature of contemporary mainboards, although I have to admit that I was surprised to see nothing like that by abit IP35 Pro, which we gave very good review some time ago.
And after that I was pretty misled by the info available on Biostar’s web-site. As you can see from the screenshot above, the BIOS version on the mainboard that arrived in our lab was a little old and dated back to 06.25.07, while there was a newer P35BA521.BST version posted on 08.03.07 on the company web-site. Of course, I immediately reflashed the BIOS, but it turned out that the digits “521” in the name of the file stand for the date. The BIOS I reflashed appeared to be even older, dating back to 05.21.07. Luckily, I was cautious enough to save the original BIOS with the help of WinFlash utility, since Biostar TP35D2-A7 has no integrated tools for BIOS saving.
Later on the confusion cleared. It turned out that Biostar launched a new web-site recently, that is why the upload dates and the dates in the BIOS file-names were different. So, make sure that you identify the BIOS date by the name, not by the upload date.
At first I decided not to change anything and test Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard with the BIOS version that was posted on Biostar’s web-site. One of the differences I noticed was the absence of Smart Fan Option, that anyway didn’t work or disappeared from the newer BIOS. Also the older BIOS didn’t know to change Command Rate 1T/2T settings.
I have already mentioned above that our test processor can speed up to 490MHz FSB. At first everything went on smoothly - Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard booted just fine at this speed. However, that was about it: we couldn’t get it to operate stably no matter what settings we used. By playing with voltages we could get the board to run stable from a few seconds up to a few minutes at most, but it was not enough to pass the OCCT stability test.
So, we decided to waste no more time on the older BIOS version and reflashed the original one back. But the situation turned out even worse. Now the board could only boot at 490MHz FSB, but couldn’t load the operating system any more. We tried to increase the processor, memory and chipset voltages and were constantly monitoring them. As we noticed with the help of the monitoring tools the first voltage to go up was the memory voltage, then the processor voltage went up after we rebooted the system second time, and as for the chipset voltage it never increased at all. This could be the reason why the board couldn’t operate stable at 490MHz FSB, which is pretty high frequency for the nominal chipset voltage.
So, we had to go back to the older BIOS version again to find the frequency when the Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard would be running stably. It failed to hit 485MHz FSB, but worked fine at 480MHz FSB – not a record, but a pretty good result, overall.
At first we were going to compare the performance of Biostar TP35D2-A7 against that of an appropriate rival. However, before we started our performance test session we needed to optimize the work of the memory subsystem, especially since the predecessor, Biostar TForce P965, used to have some issues with correct timings settings back in the days. So, I got to the corresponding BIOS section to try lowering the memory timings and was amazed to discover that Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard allows setting the timings only to 5-5-5 or 6-6-6, but not lower than that! There is simply no way to set the timings to 3-3-3 or 4-4-4. Or maybe these timings also disappeared at some point, just like that fan rotation speed control options? Later on I reflashed the newer BIOS version one more time and checked that it doesn’t have any issues like that: the complete set of standard DDR2 timing settings is all there: from 3 to 6. However, this BIOS version is considerably less stable than the older one and doesn’t allow achieving the same high results during overclocking as the older one.
Moreover, I have later on discovered one more peculiarity of the Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard. The default memory timing settings on it are the same as those on any other Intel P35 Express based mainboards.
However, this turned out to be true only for the “cold start”. If you reboot the system, all memory timings will remain the same, but the Performance Level will increase from 8 to 12. The performance is known to depend on this parameter a lot: the lower is the Performance Level setting, the better. And in our case, the board slows down dramatically after rebooting. To check things out I ran Lavalys Everest Cache & Memory Benchmark:
Read | Write | Copy | Latency | |
Performance Level 8 | 9061 | 8714 | 8220 | 55.0 |
Performance Level 12 | 8340 | 8621 | 7932 | 62.7 |
Now we have no doubts that MemSet utility doesn’t make mistakes. It is true, the memory subsystem performance does in fact drop after rebooting the system, and hence the overall system performance drops, too.
I have to admit that this is one of the least stable mainboards I have ever come across in our lab so far. The memory subsystem jumps up and down and is hard to predict. However, we decided to give it another chance to redeem itself.
There are no overclocking utilities these days that could compete successfully with the overclocking-friendly BIOS options. However, if the BIOS features are limited, the users of non-overclocker mainboards may have to use universal or other special tools. Maybe Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboard performs better during software overclocking. Let’s find out.
The overclocking tool that we discussed in our Biostar TForce P965 mainboard review got a completely new look. Now when you start the T-Utility OverClock II a nice golden dragon greets you:
The reptile seems to have problems with math, so the processor frequency is displayed incorrectly. In reality the CPU was running at its nominal frequency of 1866MHz, but the power-saving technologies were enabled, so the multiplier was automatically dropped to 6x and the CPU frequency actually equaled 1600MHz and not 1921.7MHz.
The utility displays correct version number and controller types:
If you clock on the dragon’s right shoulder, a ball with some very strange info will emerge in one of its claws. The CPU temperature is evidently higher than 30 degrees and the CPU fan rotation speed cannot possibly be 0rpm as well as the system fan speed cannot equal 1.280V.
If you click on the dragon’s left shoulder, a panel with sliders will emerge from under its tail (!). These sliders allow adjusting FSB, memory, PCI-E and PCI frequencies and the “+” and “-“ symbols allow changing the voltages. The maximum FSB frequency you can set from here is 466MHz.
However, when we attempted to set the FSB to the maximum 466MHz, we got a scary warning and then the system froze dead.
Despite the promises, it never recovered. Unfortunately.
I believe that at this time mostly testers work with DDR3 mainboards and corresponding memory modules. And maybe those unsophisticated users who may not know that in fact they are paying a much higher price for the same or even lower performance. However, the future is in the hands of this particular memory type, so it makes a lot of sense to check out what the current DDR3 solutions have to offer us so far. Therefore, I would like to introduce to you a new Biostar mainboard on Intel P35 Express chipset - Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe.
The box this mainboard is shipped in looks exactly as the one we have just discussed. The only difference is that it is considerably larger and has a carry handle.
Large box promises richer accessories bundle, and this is indeed so. Besides the user’s manual and a CD disk with drivers and utilities, the mainboard comes with a round IDE cable, FDD cable, six SATA cables, 6 power adapters and an I/O Shield for the rear panel. I would also like to stress that it comes with a very useful but rare accessory: a bracket with an optical and coaxial the SPDIF ports.
Even at first glance Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe gives us to understand that the manufacturer pins a lot of hopes on this solution. This is a top model in the line-up, the so-called face of the company.
I have to say that this face is pretty handsome :) Unlike the previous model we have discussed today, Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe is almost ideally designed. Only one remark I have to make: the memory slots have been pushed too far down and are very close to the graphics card.
The chipset cooling system uses heatpipe technology. The first heatpipe is a very long one, it starts at the South Bridge heatsink and goes through the base of the North Bridge heatsink.
It ends on one of the MOSFET heatsinks. And this is where the second heatpipe starts: it connects both heatsinks with one another. When Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe works, all heatsinks heat up quite noticeably but are of practically the same temperature, which indicates very high quality of the implemented cooling system.
The CPU is powered from the eight-pin ATX12V power connector, the processor voltage regulator circuitry features eight-phase design and uses only solid-state capacitors, just like the rest of the Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe mainboard.
There are a few hanging elements on the reverse side of the PCB, but they are on the side and not beneath the processor socket, so they are very unlikely to hinder installation of processor coolers with backplates.
Unlike the previous BIOS mainboard we discussed today, Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe uses ICH9R South Bridge with RAID support and 6 Serial ATA connectors. Power On and Reset buttons light up, the front panel connectors are color coded and the IDE connector is now positioned sideways very conveniently. COM and LPT connectors are also in the same spot, as they haven’t been laid out on the rear panel.
Besides the keyboard and mouse connectors, 6 USB ports, 2 RJ45 network ports and 6 audio jacks, we also see a pair of eSATA connectors on the mainboard rear panel.
Note that even the FDD connector is placed in its “classical” spot. We could complain about only three fan connectors and only two PCI clots. But all in all the design of Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe is simply outstanding.
The traditional table with the Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe technical characteristics sums up everything we know about this product:
Since we have already discussed the BIOS of Biostar mainboards in great detail before, we would like to cut the long story short this time and focus only on the major distinguishing features of the Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe BIOS.
Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe mainboards arrived in our lab with BIOS version 31.05, however there was a version 15.06 on the company web-site already. This time, everything turned out to be as it was supposed to, the new version was really newer, but nevertheless, the surprised awaited us right from the start. The old BIOS revision displayed a pretty common Standard CMOS Features window:
However, in the new version we again discovered some vanishing features: two Serial ATA ports disappeared:
Unlike its younger sister, Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe allows setting the SATA-drives work modes manually:
This time they didn’t even include the processor fan rotation speed management option into the PC Health Status section, but all the other parameters remained the same:
OverClock Navigator Engine section also remained pretty unchanged, only the maximum FSB speed dropped to 600MHz, and the maximum additional memory voltage changed 0.35V with 0.05V increment.
The older BIOS version allowed setting the memory frequency at 677 (667), 800 or 1066MHz. The new version allows setting the memory frequency with coefficients, which haven’t really become more numerous at all:
I would only like to add that memory timings are still set independently from one another and support the same value intervals as the previous mainboard model we have just talked about.
The rest of the Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe BIOS features are the same as those of Biostar Biostar TP35D2-A7.
Overclocker experiments aimed at revealing Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe’s features in this field started with the new BIOS version. However, the board booted, but couldn’t load the Windows operating system even at 450MHz FSB frequency. We studied the monitoring data in the PC Health Status section and discovered that the processor Vcore doesn’t rise and remains nominal. I didn’t want to deal with this new BIOS version any more because it was “loosing” Serial ATA and couldn’t increase processor Vcore, so I returned to the old one, just like in the previous case. However, the situation with the older BIOS version turned out even worse, although all the voltages corresponded to the settings. The board couldn’t start at 450MHz FSB, 430MHz FSB and 410MHz FSB. At 390MHz FSB is finally booted, but failed to load Windows OS again.
You may be surprised, but after those issues I pointed out in the detailed description of Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe and Biostar TP35D2-A7 mainboards, I am still going to make a positive conclusion about these solutions. It is true, both Biostar mainboards we discussed today appeared unstable during overclocking, and revealed some strange feature disappearances. It is a pity that improper implementation turned some of their advantages into drawbacks. But at the same time, Biostar is actually one of the few companies that put a lot of effort into adding new features to their products. Of course, it is the results, but not the efforts that actually matter in the end of the day, but we should give Biostar due credit for working real hard and eventually this effort should pay back.
Hopefully, Biostar engineers will take into account our comments and make the overclocking and BIOS of their solutions as strong and thorough as their PCB design.