by Doors4ever
10/21/2008 | 03:45 PM
According to the production volumes, BIOSTAR Microtech Int'l Corp. is considered to be a second-tier manufacturer. However, Biostar mainboards in fact stand out among other similar solutions. The company didn’t fear the responsibility and took over the inexpensive overclocker mainboards segment after EPoX disappeared and abit almost left this market. Therefore, they created the whole mainboard series called T-series and this year launched T-Power series targeted for computer enthusiasts.
Let’s take a quick look at the entire lineup of Biostar solutions based on Intel P45 Express chipset.
Strange as it might seem, but we couldn’t find a “common” mainboard on Intel P45 Express among Biostar products. Even the junior model in the lineup – Biostar TP45D2-A7 – belongs to the T-series, i.e. features some overclocking-friendly functions.
However, Biostar TP45D2-A7 doesn’t look like an overclocker legend. The simple aluminum heatsinks on the chipset and the four-pin ATX12V processor power connector are not really impressive, and the solid-state capacitors in the CPU voltage regulator circuitry are no longer a distinguishing feature of elite mainboards and can very often be found on regular mainstream solutions, too.
Another T-series solution – Biostar TP45 HP – seems to be much more interesting. This mainboard has an 8-pin power connector instead of a four-pin one, 8-channel sound instead of 6-channel sound, heatpipes chipset cooling system and a second PCI express x16 graphics card slot.
Of course, the most advanced board from the functionality and features standpoint is the first solution from Intel processors in the T-Power series. It is called Biostar TPower I45.
Space-Pipe chipset cooling system now comes with a larger heatsink with a fan aka Cooler Harbor, so the whole system is now called Hybrid Space-Pipe. This mainboard has only solid-state capacitors, acquired several eSATA ports on the rear panel and had ICH10 South Bridge used on two previous models replaced with ICH10R.
So, what solution shall we pick for the introduction of new Biostar mainboards on Intel P45 Express chipsets to you? Of course, Biostar TPower I45 looks most impressive. However, all hardware reviewers out there will evidently focus on it and Biostar Company will put most of their marketing efforts into promoting this particular board. Therefore, we decided to take a closer look at Biostar TP45 HP that may be overshadowed by its senior counterpart.
Biostar TP45 HP is shipped in a unified box designed for all mainboards of this series. The stickers with the mainboard model name and logos of supported technologies quickly personalize this box for this particular mainboard:
There is a photograph of the board on the back of the box, alongside with a brief list of technical specifications and illustrations of its key features:
The mainboard comes with a user’s manual brochure, IDE cable, a CD disk with drivers and utilities, a rear panel I/O Shield, four Serial ATA cables with metal connector locks and a pair of power adapters for SATA devices.
So, the box and the accessories bundled with Biostar TP45 HP are quite common.
Biostar TP45 HP mainboard makes a very good first impression. It doesn’t look cheap or low-quality at all.
Almost all mainboards are the same. Even if you haven’t seen the real board or its picture, you can assume with quite a bit of certainty that there will be a CPU socket at the top and the memory DIMM slots nearby. The chipset North Bridge is closer to the center of the board, and beneath are the expansion card slots. The South Bridge – if there is a South Bridge in this core logic set - is slightly to the right. Of course, the manufacturers always try to make their solution stand out among others in one way or another. They use different color textolite, connectors and ports, however, the best way is to implement a unique cooling system. Therefore, we usually start discussing the mainboard design peculiarities with the cooling. Although, not all the time. There are a few exceptions. Take, for instance, Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6: we started with its rear panel, because we have never come across 4 integrated network controllers before. And in case of Biostar TP45 HP, everyone asks one and the same question: what are those strange red things between the PCI Express x16 slots?
When we took a closer look at them, they turned out to be a set of jumpers. When we were talking about the top mainboards from the leading manufacturers, we may have forgotten that with two graphics cards installed into an Intel P45 Express based mainboard, PCI Express x16 slots switch to PCI Express x8 mode. We are used to these operational modes being switched automatically, however, it turned out that on some Intel P45 Express based mainboards they should be switched manually with a special dual-sided board. We have already seen it many years ago on Nvidia nForce4 SLI based boards. Biostar implemented it differently, using several jumpers that need to be reset in order to enable the second graphics card slot. It is a little inconvenient, however, you will have to do it once. If you are going to use two cards in Crossfire mode, then you don’t have to worry about it at all.
Space-Pipe chipset cooling system using on Biostar TP45 HP mainboard is pretty ordinary. It is a thoroughly made cooling solution using one heat-pipe.
The heatpipe starts at the bottom of the chipset North Bridge heatsink, just where it is supposed to:
It ends in the middle of the MOSFET heatsink on the processor voltage regulator. We believe Gigabyte engineers could actually take into account this simple and efficient solution of their Biostar colleagues.
As for the heatsink on the chipset ICH10 South Bridge, it does well without any heatpipes and without active cooling.
Biostar TP45 HP mainboard uses four-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry built with solid-state capacitors. 8-pin ATX12V power supply connector is located nearly, the 24-pin connector – on the right-hand side. Overall the upper part of the PCB layout is pretty well put together and we don’t have anything to complain about here.
The only thing I cannot remember seeing is the BIOS chip placed right above the 24-pin power connector. That is why the ClearCMOS jumper also appeared very high up, above the IDE connector. Long graphics cards will make it hard to reach and use. However, you will be able to replace the memory DIMMs without any problems, the graphics card will not be in the way.
When it comes to lower part of the PCB, there are a few things that could have been made better. Biostar TP45 HP mainboard will not let you create RAID-arrays: Intel ICH10 South Bridge doesn’t support this functionality, and JMicron JMB368 controller only turns one PCI Express lane into one Parallel ATA port supporting up to two Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 devices, adding no Serial ATA ports. With a long graphics card installed into the second PCI Express x16 slot, some SATA ports will be blocked. The FDD connector is also not in the best place, right below the last PCI slot. Moreover, the closest fan connector is too far from the right side of the PCB. Not all the fans on the case front panel have cables long enough to reach that far.
We have listed a few but before we turn to advantages, we have to say a few words about Rapid Debug technology. This technology includes two LEDs between the FDD and the closest fan connector that perform diagnostic functions. If both of them light up, it means everything is OK. If only one of them is lit, there must be a problem with the memory or graphics card depending on the LED that is out. If both are out, you can’t tell what has happened, but one thing is certain: there is a problem.
LED D1 | LED D2 | Message |
ON | ON | Normal |
ON | OFF | Memory Error |
OFF | ON | VGA Error |
OFF | OFF | Abnormal: CPU / Chipset error |
Of course, Rapid Debug is hardly a drawback, however, there is not much benefit from diagnostics like that. As for the indisputable advantages of the Biostar TP45 HP board, we should point out large Power On and Reset buttons that are highlighted when the board is on, color-coded front panel connectors and laid out COM and LPT ports, even though they are not on the connectors panel.
The mainboard rear panel has PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse, 6 USB 2.0 ports, network RJ45 port and six audio-jacks. Gigabit network support is implemented via Realtek RTL8111C controller and the sound is provided by Realtek ALC888 codec. It’s a pity there are no eSATA or S/PDIF, although there is more than enough free room on the connector panel for them.
That seems to be all we can tell you about the design of Biostar TP45 HP mainboard. However, if you take a look at the schematic components layout, you will see that there are only three fan connectors.
We are going to conclude this part of our review with a traditional specification table for Biostar TP45 HP:
Biostar TP45 HP | |
CPU | LGA 775 |
FSB | Support 800 / 1066 / 1333 / 1600 MHz |
Chipset | Intel P45 |
Super I/O | Fintek F71887F |
Main Memory | DIMM Slots x4 |
ID E | JMicron JMB368 |
SATA 2 | Integrated Serial ATA Controller |
LAN | Realtek RTL8111C |
Sound Codec | ALC888 |
Slots | PCI slot x2 |
On Board Connector | Floppy connector x1 |
Back Panel I/O | PS/2 Keyboard x1 |
Board Size | 244 (W) x 305 (L) mm |
OS Support | Windows 2000 / XP / VISTA |
At this point we can say that Biostar TP45 HP mainboard seems to be a pretty ordinary solution, just like most similar boards out there. It has its advantages and drawbacks, but nothing super good or super bad about it. A good board with sufficient functionality.
Biostar TP45 HP mainboard uses BIOS based on American Megatrends, Inc. (AMI) that is why we are going to see a lot of familiar things that we have already seen by other previously discussed mainboards. However, the BIOS has been modified a lot and features a lot of traits typical only of Biostar solutions. During our test session we used the latest available BIOS version P45BA710 from 07.10.2008.
The Main section contains only the initial minimal information. Here we can also access IDE/SATA Configuration section.
Advanced section contains a few sub-sections.
The first is called CPU Configuration.
SuperIO Configuration comes next.
Hardware Health Configuration page offers sufficient monitoring options. It registers two temperatures, rotation speeds of all three fans that can be connected to the board, and such overclocking-related voltages as CPU Voltage, NB/SB Voltage, DDR2 Voltage and FSB Voltage that can be adjusted. First pleasant surprise.
The rotation speed of the fans can be adjusted in a separate sub-section called Smart Fan Configuration. And this is where we find the second pleasant surprise. In order to set the most optimal rotation speed offering comfortable acoustics and sufficient cooling efficiency, you don’t have to use variable resistors or install any utilities. All settings are available right there in the BIOS. Unfortunately, there is one small drawback: the processor fan has to be connected using a four-pin plug, otherwise you will not be able to adjust its rotation speed.
PM/ACPI Configuration section contains parameters dealing with power consumption and power-saving technologies:
USB Configuration section doesn’t need any explanation as well:
The last sub-section in Advanced section is Config Onboard PCI/PCI-E Devices.
The next section of the BIOS is called PCIPnP.
The Boot section again contains a few sub-sections.
The first one is called Boot Settings Configuration.
The contents of other sub-sections is pretty evident, we simply specify the boot sequence from the available devices. Therefore, I would like to draw your attention only to one thing. You can select not only the FDD but also a USB Flash Drive as removable boot-up device. As a result, if there is a boot-up flash-drive in any of the available USB ports during system boot-up, the mainboard will boot from it. Another pleasant surprise!
Unfortunately, none of the leading mainboard makers have implemented this function yet. However, the boards from such makers as ASRock or Biostar can do it just fine, for some reason. These are smaller companies without large buyers standing behind, they are more dependent on the consumer demand that’s why they take into close consideration what the users want. I think industry leaders should be ashamed :)
Chipset section contains two subsections that offer parameters for chipset North and South Bridge configuring.
We have finally got down to O.N.E. (Overclocking Navigator Engine) section that offers most overclocking related options. At first, Memory Test is the only one available to you. If you set it to Enabled, then on the next boot-up the board will automatically run integrated Memtest86+ v.2.01 memory test right after POST.
By setting Over-Clocking Navigator to Automate OverClock we can select one of the three available automatic overclocking modes.
Depending on the mode you select, the CPU can be overclocked while the memory frequency will remain as close to “standard” DDR2 frequency of 800MHz as possible. Of course, we have checked out automatic overclocking immediately and saw that the board acted quite adequately. In the most advanced V12-Tech Engine mode our Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor overclocked from 333MHz to 360MHz FSB and the memory frequency was 864MHz.
The processor power-saving technologies continued working in this case lowering the processor frequency and core voltage in idle mode.
It is really cool, but in order to fully reveal the overclocking potential of this board and our test processor we had to set Over-Clocking Navigator to Manual OverClock. Only in this case we will be able to enjoy the rich functionality of Biostar TP45 HP mainboard.
If we disable Intel SpeedStep technology, we will be able to change the processor clock frequency multiplier and set the fractional multipliers for 45nm CPUs. The CPU Frequency Setting parameter sets the FSB frequency in the interval from 100 to 800MHz with 1MHz increment. Over Clock Retry Count sets the number of times the board tries to boot during over-overclocking or incompatible parameters settings (from 1 to 7).
Everywhere - on the web-site, on the mainboard box, in the user’s manual and marketing materials - they stress that Biostar TP45 HP supports CPUs with 1600 (400) MHz FSB. However, we can only set FSB(Bsel) To NorthBridge Latch parameter to FSB 800, FSB 1066 or FSB 1333. This parameter determines the list of available memory dividers. If you leave it at Auto, then you will get access to all dividers.
I would like to say that if the FSB frequency changes, so will the DRAM Frequency parameter. In other words, we will always know the expected memory frequency without any manual calculations.
DDR2 Enhance Mode parameter may be set to Auto, Enable or Disable. DRAM Timing Configuration will move us to a separate page with memory timings.
DDR2 RCOMP Configuration parameter is pretty interesting. It allows selecting one of the four preset profiles or let the board decide one that in Auto Config mode. Another advantage - Static tREAD Value(PL) parameter that sets the Performance Level and even when the timings are set from SPD we can still see all the current values. Unfortunately, there is no Auto setting for each of the individual timings: so you either set all of them to Auto, or adjust all of them manually.
Clock Gen Configuration parameter opens a sub-section with chipset settings: CPU Clock Skew Control, (G)MCH Clock Skew Control, CPU Clock Driving Control. Here you can also set PCI Express bus frequency from 100 to 150 MHz with 1MHz increment.
Voltage Configuration parameter let’s you change the voltages. Here we can also point out a few implementation advantages as well as a few drawbacks.
First of all, some of the monitoring data from Hardware Health Configuration are duplicated here, which makes finding the most optimal settings simpler and faster. Moreover, there is an illustrative color-coding involved: safe values are highlighted green, higher values – yellow, and dangerously high values – red.
Note that some parameters are set to Auto by default. In other words, the smart mainboard BIOS will increase these parameters during overclocking on its own. It is a good thing, however, there is no Normal settings here, so you can’t leave these parameters at their nominal values: either the board will increase them automatically, or you have to increase them yourself.
Another not the most convenient solution: the board sets the voltages not in absolute values (1.2, 1.3, 1.4 V...), but in relative values (+0.1, +0.2, +0.3 V...), without mentioning the nominal values anywhere. The supported voltage intervals are pretty wide, but it is not always convenient to use a variable increment. The only exception is the CPU Voltage parameter: we can have up to +0.7875 V sent to the processor with a fixed increment of 0.0125 V. However, Vmem first changes with 0.05 V increment, starting from +0.3 V the increment increases to 0.1 V, starting from +1.1 V – to 0.2 V, and after +1.5 V it drops back to 0.05 V and remains like that up until we reach the maximum Vmem of +1.85 V.
The supported intervals and increments are similar for the Chipset Voltage and FSB Voltage parameters, however, they are not the same. The increment equals 0.025 V up to +0.35 V value and then increases to 0.05 V. FSB Voltage changes with fixed increment up to maximum value of +0.75 V. And the increment for Chipset Voltage increases to 0.1 V starting from +0.4 V and remains like that up to the maximum of +0.7 V.
CPU Core1 GTL Ref Voltage, CPU Core2 GTL Ref Voltage and MCH GTL Ref Voltage support similar value ranges and increments.
CPU PLL Voltage may be set to one of the following four values: 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, or 1.8 V. Biostar TP45 HP mainboard uses four-phase Intersil ISL6322 voltage regulator, which operational frequency can also be adjusted.
Exit is the very last BIOS section. It contains standard options such as saving changes, discarding changes and loading optimal settings. Security subsection allows setting passwords and disallowing BIOS updating. We, however, are going to dwell on CMOS Backup Function sub-section.
You can save and quickly load the full BIOS settings profile. Seems like there is only one…
In fact, you can save up to 10 profiles and give each of them a description of up to 50 characters. The time and date will be automatically recorded for each profile.
Even everything we have already mentioned is not all the Biostar TP45 HP BIOS can do. Like ASUS and Gigabyte mainboards, Biostar solutions also have a convenient built-in updating utility that recognizes not only FDD, but also such storage solutions as USB Flash Drive. The only requirement is that should be formatted for FAT16 or FAT32 file system. If you wish to launch BIO-Flasher Utility, press F12 on boot-up.
Now it seems to be all we wanted to mention about Biostar TP45 HP BIOS features. We can’t say it is an ideal BIOS, we have pointed out quite a few things during this part of our review. However, I was sincerely amazed at the amount of options and settings that Biostar TP45 HP BIOS has to offer. And in most cases Biostar didn’t invent anything new: we have already seem most of these parameters implemented on other mainboards. Biostar, however, deserves due credit for gathering all the best functions together and implementing them in their mainboard BIOS. And even though some implementations are not the best ones, we have never seen a more brilliant combination of features before. We have seen them separately or in groups, but never all of them at the same time. And Biostar TP45 HP mainboard has everything one may wish for. Therefore, despite a few issues we pointed out, we give Biostar our highest mark for the BIOS functionality and uniqueness.
However, we have already seen situations when excellent mainboard functionality didn’t prove that great during practical experiments. It is high time we checked out how well Biostar TP45 HP mainboard will cope with practical processor overclocking.
We ran our tests in an open testbed configured as follows:
During the first run of tests Biostar TP45 HP mainboard didn’t really impress us with its performance. Our Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU can overclock to 4.05-4.1GHz, which we have already proven in numerous previous test sessions. With the nominal clock frequency multiplier of x9 it means that the FSB speed will be increased to 450-455MHz. we also increased the processor Vcore, Vchipset and Vmem and set the minimal memory frequency using 1:1 divider. The mainboard would start fine and load the OS, but would fail all stability tests. We tried increasing the voltages a little more to stabilize the system, but nothing helped. However, the problem turned out to be in the DDR2 Enhance Mode parameter. Once we changed it from Auto to Disable, all stability tests at 450MHz FSB were passed with flying colors.
Now that we know the settings for the board to successfully overclock our processor to 4.05GHz frequency, we decided to find the maximum FSB frequency when the system would remain stable with the CPU overclocked to its maximum. At first we have to find out the maximum bus frequency at which the board can boot and work normally. We lowered the processor clock frequency multiplier to the minimal x6 setting and set the FSB at 510MHz…
From that moment on our experience with Biostar TP45 HP turned into some kind of overclocking frenzy. Every time I was setting the FSB frequency at a higher value I expected that the board wouldn’t boot any more or if it booted, to fail loading Windows. When my expectations didn’t come true, I launched stability tests expecting to see an error message. But, things were going smoothly. And even is there were a few glitches they could be cured by raising the voltages a little bit. It was a really outstanding experience.
I believe I don’t have to describe all the details here. I just have to say that we stopped at 600MHz FSB –my personal record so far. This is when the system failed to pass our stability tests. The most important thing is that it was not the limitation imposed by Biostar TP45 HP mainboard. The board performed very confidently and everything indicated it could keep going. What prevented us from the triumphal continuation were our DDR2 memory modules that couldn’t work stably at 1200MHz. This is one of those situations when we wished the boards could support DDR3 SDRAM, which can easily go past this frequency.
As you remember, our Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor worked with x6 clock frequency multiplier, i.e. was only partially overclocked. A few quick calculations showed that we could overclock our CPU to the maximum frequency of 4.05GHz by setting the FSB to 579MHz and the clock multiplier to x7. However, the board would slightly lower the bus frequency, so we set the FSB to 580MHz.
We were very pleased to see that the system passed our stability test.
It is interesting that processor power-saving technologies usually get completely or partially disabled when you increase the processor Vcore or change its clock frequency multiplier. However, despite both these factors Biostar TP45 HP lowered the processor core voltage and reduced the multiplier to minimal x6 in idle mode! Looks like Biostar can provide training to all other mainboard developers out there who can’t implement this feature in their products yet.
However, despite the inspiring success, we still had some doubts about the reliability of the system in this mode. And again our concerns were connected with the Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-9136C5D memory modules we were using. We have already tested these modules before and with 5-5-5-15-2T timings they could only work at 1155MHz maximum. Now the frequency was 1161MHz. To see if our concerns were justified, we launched Prime95 utility and the results turned out quite predictable:
We tried several times with different memory settings. The screenshot above shows the “best” results, when the error message appeared 9 minutes into the test. Usually we could last 5 minutes tops and sometimes the system couldn’t run even for a minute. In other words, Intel Burn Test utility may be a good stability testing tool for an overclocked processor. Due to extremely high CPU temperatures during the test it may suit perfectly for processor coolers testing. However, when it comes to memory stability, it is not efficient enough, so it can’t be used to evaluate the overall system reliability.
This was a great opportunity for us to check out OCCT utility as well, as we were not quite happy with it before. Yes, our concerns proved absolutely justified: this program reported that the system was completely stable and a 30-minute test run was successfully completed.
The screenshot above shows that the processor frequency has been lowered by the processor power-saving technologies after the test has been completed. Unfortunately, OCCT is also not an ideal application for complex stability tests.
We have slightly increased the processor frequency by setting the FSB to 580MHz. However, we couldn’t achieve stability even when we lowered this setting.
When we set the FSB to 579MHz in the BIOS, the board lowers this setting a little bit and in fact the FSB speed is 577MHz. the CPU frequency also appears a little lower than the 4.05GHz we promised you, and the memory frequency is at 1155MHz, which is the maximum it successfully passed the tests at before. At that time, however, we had an Nvidia nForce 680i SLI based mainboard. Despite various issues with Nvidia chipsets, they are known to be more flexible when it comes to memory than Intel chipsets. So we failed to repeat the former success.
Well, looks like we will have to reduce the FSB frequency and increase the CPU multiplier because of the memory this time. With the multiplier set at x7.5 we had to increase the bus speed to 540MHz in order to overclock our processor to the promised 4.05GHz.
This time the memory should do just fine and all the test applications we use including Prime95 confirmed that system was absolutely stable.
So, Biostar TP45 HP mainboard demonstrated truly phenomenal results during dual-core processors overclocking. However, quad-core CPUs turned out a serious problem for it. And not just in terms of overclocking, but in terms of regular operation, too.
Before we installed Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 CPU we used the jumper to clear CMOS, but the board didn’t start. The power was on, fans were spinning, but the board didn’t star. We checked the contacts at the bottom of the CPU and the socket pins, we reinstalled the processor, but nothing changed. Sometimes the mainboards get stuck like that and nothing helps except replacing the CPU. The same happened this time: we returned back Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU for a few seconds, merely enough for the board to boot, and the next moment it started working just fine with Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300. So, at first we didn’t pay any attention to this matter.
Our quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor can overclock to 490MHz FSB on very few mainboards, such as Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 or ZOTAC nForce 790i-Supreme. However, on most mainboards quad-core processor overclocking stalls at 450MHz FSB or close to that. Keeping in mind how remarkably Biostar TP45 HP mainboard performed during dual-core processor overclocking, we decided to start a little higher than the average: at 460MHz FSB. That appeared too much, the board rebooted automatically, but then refused to boot again with exact same symptoms.
Another round of joggling the CPUs and we were ready to give it a try at 430MHz FSB: the board booted Windows with a few graphics artifacts. At 440MHz FSB the board could only boot and at 450MHz it would get back into the dead freeze that could be cured only by replacing the CPU. It was interesting, however, that the board booted just fine with Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor, which meant it didn’t like 45nm CPUs in general or our Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 in particular. It was impossible to replace CPUs after every failure that is why we decided to give up our quad-core CPU overclocking experiments on Biostar TP45 HP mainboard.
If you have autorun enabled and you inserted the CD disk bundled with Biostar TP45 HP mainboard into the drive, you will get a window with the board model name, driver and utility set version and the OS name you are using:
Instead of names the sections on the right-hand side use icons. The icon with a chip on it will open the driver section:
The gear wheel icon will open the section with utilities and programs:
The book with a question mark opens a section with user manuals for software tools, mainboard and its BIOS:
Everything is there, nothing excessive, but a little more information could be nice. For example, I would love to see small windows with explanations regarding the icons or utilities that would pop up once you roll the mouse pointer over the name or the image. The name “eHot-Line for T Utility” doesn’t suggest what it is for, so it may be hard to decide if you really need to install it. This program turned out to be necessary if you want to get in touch with Biostar tech-support. We decided not to install it.
The first program in the list, Hardware Monitor, doesn’t pose any questions. It serves to monitor voltages, temperatures, fan rotation speeds. It also displays the current processor frequency and usage.
I can’t say that it is very convenient to use, however, it does its job right. We used it to monitor the voltages the mainboard set during automatic overclocking or those that were left at Auto. The program doesn’t report the correct processor frequency if you lower its multiplier, however, it is not too bad. The slider at the bottom allows to adjust the transparency of the interface window to your taste.
There is a button in the lower right corner that allows switching between voltages and fan rotation speeds.
By clicking the right mouse button in any part of the window you get access to a few more options. For example, you can minimize the window and it will only display processor fan rotation speed, CPU temperature and CPU usage. The program doesn’t let you change the parameters displayed in the minimized window or at least change the colors.
By pressing the right mouse button you also open a settings panel where you can adjust the critical parameter levels, when the system will send you a warning message or even shut down the system.
It was great to be able to disable the warning system during our tests of the overclocked processor using Intel Burn Test utility, when the temperatures were very high.
We also liked the short and sweet BIOS Update tool that allows reflashing the BIOS from Windows:
The program reports the current BIOS version, allows you to save it and update with a new one. An AFUWIN utility window will open and the BIOS will be updated automatically. After that you just need to reboot and load the default BIOS settings.
Over Clock III utility is designed for overclocking from Windows. When you launch it, the main window displays the current processor, FSB , memory, PCI Express and PCI bus frequencies.
Green triangles on the left, right and bottom blink inviting you to click on them. If you give way to temptation, you will get access to all the options this utility has to offer.
The window on the left allows you to use preset overclocking profiles or adjust the FSB frequency manually. The window on the right allows changing the processor Vcore, Vmem, Vchipset and FSB bus voltage. The window at the bottom displays the information about the mainboard, BIOS version and utility version. This utility offers to save and load overclocking profiles, however, you will not achieve any significant results without working in the BIOS. At least, you will have to lower the memory frequency and change the DDR2 Enhance Mode setting to Disable.
Overall, Biostar’s brand name software seems to be quite OK, but doesn’t really impress. Good tools for fast and easy work without any extras.
If we recall all the preliminary conclusions that we made in different sections of this review, it will turn out that Biostar TP45 HP mainboard has common package and accessories, good design and bundled software. These are neutral scores. We were sincerely impressed with the BISO functionality. Although not all the functions have been implemented ideally, they collected all the best in one place and this way offered a unique combination of parameters and options. Then we were even more impressed with phenomenally successful dual-core CPU overclocking experience. We haven’t ever reached such higher FSB frequencies before and I am sure that the board could have done even better if it hadn’t been for the DDR2 memory potential.
These are very significant, simply gigantic advantages of Biostar TP45 HP mainboard. But the board’s inability to work with a quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor has a very serious effect on the final score. We would be a little bit upset if the board couldn’t overclock quad-core CPUs. We could have found an explanation, something like “economical enthusiasts do not buy quad-core processors” and justify this drawback. But the fact that board couldn’t work with one of officially supported CPUs is unforgivable.
Besides, it is not the first time we test Biostar mainboards and not the first time we try to disregard a few issues. No wonder, we really like these boards. First of all, because this is practically the only second-tier manufacturer that dares challenge the world famous leaders and does it quite successfully. ASUS and Gigabyte release extremely large mainboard lineups on every worthy core logic set. It is fairly easy to find one that will suit your needs and be within your budget. But none of them will compare even close to Biostar when it comes to features and functionality you get for one low price. That is why these boards are so popular among enthusiasts with limited budget.
Biostar mainboards have one small but very serious drawback: unpredictability. When buying a board like that you are playing a shell game. If you are lucky, you won’t have any problems and will insist that Biostar boards are the best. If you are unlucky, you will be facing all sorts of problems until you change the configuration completely. And you will have to pay a price for that: having saved some money on a Biostar mainboard, you risk having to pay back with your time and nerve cells. Until they do something to change this, the company will remain a second-tier maker and their mainboards will be popular only among economical computer enthusiasts.