[First look] Biostar TF560 A2+ (can do at least 355MHz HTT)

[Fr3ak]

Yesterday I spent some time to test what the new Biostar TF560 A2+ AM2+ mainboard is capable of.

It's the first time, I played around with a AM2 CPU and board. The board layout is something I really like. Has no flaws from what I can tell. For long video cards, there is just a small cap, which is no higher than a PCIe slot, so it should not be in the way, even for large heatsinks. The sata ports are not blocked either.

The CMOS clear jumper is below the last PCI slot and as long as no PCI card is in there, it is easy accessable. Like on other TFORCE models, there is also a RESET and POWER switch on the board.

The chipset is a single chip chipset and the NB (I call it NB, technically it is not a NB) is cooled by a tiny heatsink. I had my doubts that it could not cope with the heat at first, but later I found out that it is doing a fairly decent job. Even with overvolted VMCH it does not get that hot. You can still touch it. I was running it at max VMCH and the HTT I was able to archieve was the same than with using a 120mm fan to cool the NB. I used the fan later on anyway. I feel better the cooler my components run.
In a good ventilated case, additional cooling is not really necessary.

The bios is somewhat TFORCE standard. There are all kind of options and also enough overclocking and voltage options to satisfy me
I will post bios pics, once I have a digital camera again. I had to lend my cam to a mate for the next 3 weeks :/
The memory options are crazy, there is a lot of options and as I was short on time, I did not even touch them. There really is a lot of options and I have to play around with them first to see if the have an impact on perfromance or max oc of the board.

The maximum HTT I was able to boot into windows and run dual 32m was 355MHz. I never had a AM2 board before, but I would say thats pretty decent. The board is 80$ at newegg, so I would consider it a budget board.

I am using a X2 3600+ brisbane and the board is more than enough for that CPU. It might be that my CPU is the limiting factor here and not the board. Furthermore, playing around with the memory options might boost the max HTT even more.

I will post updates once I did more testing. I have to learn for exams, so I have no idea when that will be, but I wanted to share my initial testing.

So far I realy like the board. It resets itself to stock when a OC fails, reboots wihtout shutting down (unless current Intel boards ) and is easy to OC.

Booting at 355HTT sometimes doesn't work, but 350 is a piece of cake. All I did was upping VMCH a little, use a low multiplier, so that my CPU is not limiting me in terms of max clockspeed et voila 350MHz HTT rockstable in windows

If you want to see any benchmarks or have other questions, feel free to ask and I will try to do what you wish

[Fr3ak]

Some more pics and screenshots:

[Lightman]

Thanks for sharing Fr3ak!

This board really looks to be one of the best in its own class!

BTW can you post voltage ranges available in BIOS for CPU/mem/NB/etc? Thanks!

[Idaho]

Looks interesting, thanks for the photos!

[Fr3ak]

BTW can you post voltage ranges available in BIOS for CPU/mem/NB/etc? Thanks!

Sure.

chipset voltage: 1.250V, 1.275V, 1.300V, 1.325V
memory voltage: 1.95V, 2.05V, 2.15V, 2.20V, 2.25V, 2.3V, 2.4V, 2.5V
2.1V is missing for whatever reason. Maybe it will be available via bios update
vcore: up to + 0.787V in 0.012V steps

The CPU voltage circuit uses solid caps and vcore is very stable with the CPU I am using.

[Lightman]

Sure.

chipset voltage: 1.250V, 1.275V, 1.300V, 1.325V
memory voltage: 1.95V, 2.05V, 2.15V, 2.20V, 2.25V, 2.3V, 2.4V, 2.5V
2.1V is missing for whatever reason. Maybe it will be available via bios update
vcore: up to + 0.787V in 0.012V steps

The CPU voltage circuit uses solid caps and vcore is very stable with the CPU I am using.

Thats fair enough!
I like 2.5V memory voltage. Should be more than enough for micron D9GMH .
CPU voltage adjustment is also very impressive!

[leoftw]

this board looks impressive , is there any real cons to it ?

[Fr3ak]

Its a very good AM2 board, thats for sure, but I am don't know yet if it is really 100% a AM2+ mainboard, meaning I don't know if vcore and memory controller voltage of K10 can be adjusted seperately and if it really supports HTT3.0. I tried to run a HTT of 350*5 and it did not boot. 350*4 worked fine. I can't determine whether the CPU or the board is limiting here.

So far the only real cons is that the memory options are a little confusing, but I don't know if they are like that on all AM2 mainboards. But thats about it. The layout has no flaws from what I can tell and the bios seems to be working fine too and it boots very fast.

I will post all OC bios options as soon as I am home, later today, then you can decide if it has any cons.

[leoftw]

FYI: This board is 79.99 from newegg.com

Thank you for taking your time to do a review on this board

[SoulsCollective]

Its a very good AM2 board, thats for sure, but I am don't know yet if it is really 100% a AM2+ mainboard, meaning I don't know if vcore and memory controller voltage of K10 can be adjusted seperately and if it really supports HTT3.0. I tried to run a HTT of 350*5 and it did not boot. 350*4 worked fine. I can't determine whether the CPU or the board is limiting here.

That'll be CPU. 350x4 = 1,400, and even Opterons crap out at about 1,200. No K8 is rated for an HTT bus that high.

[Lightman]

Fr3ak this board is 'just' compatible with AM2+ and maybe can do split power planes, but I'm sure it can't do HTT3.0 (dependent on chipset). Non the less brilliant board.

[Fr3ak]

After having a discussion on a German forum about the board, I noticed that there are some minor things I didn't think of before.

-You cannot undervolt the CPU. You can only set higher values.

- Some people think that the PATA port and the gigabit lan port are connected via PCI, so they are slow. I only have a 5400RPM PATA drive which is slow by default, so I don't know if that is true.

-The PCIe port has some mechanism to lock/unlock the video card. Its way too small. I am using a short 7300GT, so unlocking it is easy. But if you are using a long vide card, unlocking it might be a pita as you cannot reach the slot easily.

-Most likely no real Am2+ board. From the marketing, one could think it is a full AM2+ board, supporting HTT3.0 and split power supply.

Then I set 347*4, CPU-Z reads 1041MHz for the HTT, so no idea if its being read out wrong or if the board does something weird.

[Fr3ak]

I was finally able to take some pics of the OC menu and the DDR2 settings. Sorry for the bad quality, but I had to use a mobile phone cam.

Either I am blind and cannot see the setting to adjust cas latency or there is really no option to set CL. If it is not, I will ask Biostar for more information why it is not there.

[Nedjo]

-Most likely no real Am2+ board. From the marketing, one could think it is a full AM2+ board, supporting HTT3.0 and split power supply.

it is kind odd about that clame, but then again we know for sure that mobo has "hybrid BIOS" that allow functionality of STARS CPU's. Lack of HT3 is lowdown but then again it's something that is acceptable for this price.

[Fr3ak]

We will see what AM2+ performance and settings will be like, once the CPUs are out

In the meantime, I got a new bios for the board. With the 612 bios there is Cas Latency and Command rate in bios, so my main cons are fixed

I will post new pics with the bios as soon as I have a cam again, but except the 2 new entries, nothing has changed. Max FSB/HTT is still 355MHz, which might be CPU limited in my case.

The board has been running great so far, crunching WCG for several days. I am running 333*8 with a LDT multiplier of 3.

I really like the board. Running that good without a single mod is great. I didn't even change the paste on the NB yet.

I am too busy to figure out some voltmods right now, but I am planning to do that once I have some free time. Will be interesting if the board clocks even higher with more VMCH.

[Wiggy McShades]

We will see what AM2+ performance and settings will be like, once the CPUs are out

In the meantime, I got a new bios for the board. With the 612 bios there is Cas Latency and Command rate in bios, so my main cons are fixed

I will post new pics with the bios as soon as I have a cam again, but except the 2 new entries, nothing has changed. Max FSB/HTT is still 355MHz, which might be CPU limited in my case.

The board has been running great so far, crunching WCG for several days. I am running 333*8 with a LDT multiplier of 3.

I really like the board. Running that good without a single mod is great. I didn't even change the paste on the NB yet.

I am too busy to figure out some voltmods right now, but I am planning to do that once I have some free time. Will be interesting if the board clocks even higher with more VMCH.

if you take the chipset heat sink off could you tell us what it says on the chip. if it supports htt3.0 it would have to read mcp72 on it somewhere i think.

[Fr3ak]

Here is what is written on the chipset. I still do not have a cam, so you have to trust me on this. The numbers are damn small, so they could be wrong.

NVIDIA
L7041041 07|7 A3
S TAIWAN
P24339 S4
NF560-A3

[Starscream]

it has a nforce 560 (cheaper version of 570) and thus does not support HTT3.0 or PCIe 2.0.
So the name is purely a marketing tool as they make people believe that it is a AM2+ motherboard.
Wierd bit is like said that the Biostar site claims it as being AM2+ but also says it uses the nforce 560 chipset and that chipset doesnt support the added Am2+ features.

but even if it isnt an AM2+ motherboard it stil clocks damn nice.

[Fr3ak]

Yes, looks like that is right.

It is a nice AM2 board nonetheless.

Btw under the chipset heatsink was a thermal pad. I replaced it with AS5, but it still does not clock higher than 355MHz. Above that it either says bios corrupt or does not boot, so maybe it is a bios issue or my CPU hits a wall.

[Fr3ak]

I have been asked about the bios several times, so I uploaded it.

I do not know if it is still in beta status because it is still not on the Biostar website. The bios works fine for me, but I cannot guarantee that it will work fine for you too, so download and use it at your own risk. Don't make me responsible if anything goes wrong.

Link:
http://media.online-racing.org/ftp_b...r/N56BA612.BST

[Starscream]

how warm does the chipset get at 24/7 use.
So without having them extra fans on it.

[Fr3ak]

Good question. Honestly I have no idea. I did not check that yet. I only installed the Biostar fan untility which only displays CPU and GPU temp. I will try speedfan.

But what I can tell by touching it, it doesn't get close as hot as the 650 NB gets. Even after 30mins of 100% load it can still be touched for quite some time. If you are using a CPU aircooler that cools the surroundings of the socket a little, cooling should not be a problem, even with increased chipset voltage.

I figured the chipset voltmod out today, but have to get the appropriate VR first. I have 2 exams next week. so I am really busy right now, which is why it could take a little longer. But I am quite positive that the Max reference clock/HTT/FSB can be improved by quite a bit. If not my CPU is definately limiting.

[CPLB]

I got this motherboard a few days ago, but my Team RAM died so I can't test it yet. Thanks for sharing your results Fr3ak.

[Jimmer411]

I just ordered this motherboard today, hope to have it thursday so Ill post my results as well. Im hoping for 350+ HTT

[Starscream]

btw Fr3ak were did u buy the board?
cant find it on geizhals.