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

[elfy_008]

I have this board, this is the first brand new mobo I have ever bought. It runs pretty smooth so far.

Opty 1210 stock HSF
2Gb pc6400 Crucial Ballistix
BFG 7900 gtx (borrowed so I should run and get an 8600 card soon I guess)
FSP 500 watt psu


As far as the advanced 2+ ability and/or HT3, I doubt I'll miss it, this is such a step up from my old rig its not even funny...(1.33 t-bird)

I think the monitoring programs that came with it are ok, but Motherboard Monitor spoiled me. I think I will look at speedfan and anything else and see what results I get.

I played around with the included overclocking program/settings and it was amusing, but I felt like I had as much control over it as I would attempting to steer an oil tanker with a canoe paddle. I think I topped it out at 2.3 Ghz, but I am really a novice overclocker anyway.

Its very cool to see folks buying this board, I dont feel quite so out in the cold.


Jimmer, I see you are in Wa. State, I am south of Oly a ways....

[Hawkeye4077]

Ordered this board to replace my TForce 6100-AM2. I probably wont get it till the end of next week. But it definately looks to be another winner. Ill be using a 65nm 4400 (2.3) that I run at 2.8ghz on 1.4 vcore. Hopefully this board has much more stable vcore as this TF6100 vcore fluctuates too much even with my Silverstone OP750 psu. I will be mating using water cooling on it with a 8800GTS as well in the short future.

[Fr3ak]

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

Oh I am sorry, I forgot to mention that in this thread. Biostar sent it to me, but I have been told it is a retail board and not cherry picked.

The OC tool that came with the board did not work for me. Seems like I am unlucky when it comes to that tool. It only worked once with my S754 TFORCE board and with all other boards I had it also doesn't work. I have no idea why that is the case. I am using a fresh install of XP SP2. I prefer overclocking from the bios anyway, so I can live with that.

[Jimmer411]

Oh I am sorry, I forgot to mention that in this thread. Biostar sent it to me, but I have been told it is a retail board and not cherry picked.

I hope your right, seeing as I have this board on the way lol.

[Fr3ak]

I am very paranoid when it comes to new mainboards, because I had some bad experiences in the past where online resellers sent me used boards. Since then I have been looking for marks of usage in every board I got and when I had evidence that it has been used before, I send it back.

On this board, I could not find a single thing that made me think it has been used and run before. No signs of thermal paste and the retention modul looks untouched too.

But don't point fingers at me when your board only does 349MHz HTT

I mentioned that I got the board along with a TP35D3-A7 Deluxe for testing on the German threads I started, but I forgot to mention it in this thread for whatever reason. I have been (and still are) very busy, which might be a reason for my stupidity.

[elfy_008]

Fr3ak, where did you find the 612 bios?

I had a complete shutdown last night, it was rather odd since I do not really stress the system much when I am web browsing. It just completely shut down, no warning or bluescreen. I had to sit and wonder if the house power was off, but I noticed my monitor was still on so I started it back up....

I do have the computer plugged into a small UPS. Maybe I need to use a larger one.

I cant get the included bios updater to work properly, either, but I wonder if that is because of my firewall. I am not in a rush to update, but to confirm that things operate properly. It did allow me to make a backup of the bios, so that was cool.

I understand this board is still pretty new, so it might be a little while before little bugs are smoothed out, I guess that is not a big deal as long as they are dealt with.

Is a 500 watt FSP brand powersupply enough for this board? I thought it would be plenty, but maybe I guessed wrong. I am also using a 7900 GTX video card so I guess I need to read up on how many amps/watts/energon twinkies it uses per hour.

I'll sit and do some reading later today, since its still early (3pm PST) now...got stuff to do for a lil while tho'. :-D

[Fr3ak]

The bios was sent to me by Biostar.

Your PSU should be more than enough for your components.

Were you able to power the PC up after it shut down?

By the way, welcome to XS!

[elfy_008]

Aww, thanks and yes, it powered back up fine...very odd to see it crash to completely, I guess I will shut down for now and then later check all connections and whatnot.

Got to run to town for a meeting @ work on my day off..damn them~

But Ill be back soon and right into goofing off mode...ahhh!

[Jimmer411]

Anyone else with this board care to post their results? Thursday is a long way away for me lol

[CPLB]

I only ran Orthos for 3 hours but it has been great so far.

[Jimmer411]

Very nice to see 333

Have you tried 355+ with a divider by chance? Just to see what the board maxes at?

[CPLB]

Very nice to see 333

Have you tried 355+ with a divider by chance? Just to see what the board maxes at?

I'll try it right now but I don't have time to stress test it yet.

Edit:
Alright, 355 HTT was no good I had to reset the CMOS. 350 Booted to Windows, and got it to pass 1M Super PI



I'm really happy with it at 333 HTT for 24x7 use.

[Jimmer411]

Sweet thanks.

Im starting to feel better seeing someone else get over 300 HTT (Minimum I need for 3ghz)

[elfy_008]

ok I was looking at the manual a little and I guess I need to find a decent tutorial about K8 overclocking for dummies..ha ha ha. At least the manual has some explanations for what some of the settings are, but I really dont want to just muck about blindly.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I overclocked my 1.33 t-bird to 1.52Ghz, is that any good?





made a quick grab of CPU-Z and the stock settings......

Have any of you guys blown up/fried a set of Crucial Ballistix, DDR2? I am scared about cooking mine, I read in a forum that a lot of folks did do just that.

[CPLB]

Have any of you guys blown up/fried a set of Crucial Ballistix, DDR2? I am scared about cooking mine, I read in a forum that a lot of folks did do just that.

I killed a set of Team Xtreem (800 D9s) w/2.35V on an Abit AW9D-MAX after about 3 months, that was with 2 80mm fans too. Now I got some Ballistix (1066 D9s) but I don't go over the rated 2.2V

[Fr3ak]

2.2V is a good enough voltage for D9GMH in terms of good speed and timings. I even try to run less than that 24/7. I use 2.05-2.15V depending on what speed I run them at.

CPLB: Nice to see that you could hit 350MHz too.
Set the LDT divider to 2 or 1 and see if you can get higher. You also have to set chitset voltage to the max (which is 1.325V if I am correct). With a LDT of 4 I cannot boot 350*4.

elfy_008: Overclocking is not that hard on K8. Lower the LDT multiplier, so that FSB * LDT <= 1000MHz. Then raise the FSB in 5MHz steps and run Orthos for half an hour or SuperPi 32M on each core. If it doesn't fail, raise the FSB another 5MHz (all in the bios) and run those applications again. If they produce an error, you have to either lower your overclock again or increase VCore by a little step. Use CoreTemp or any other app of your choice to monitor temp. +0.15V should be no problem in case you have decent cooling. At a certain point you will have to raise chipset voltage too. When you think you have overclocked enough, run Orthos for 15-24 hours. When it runs that long without an error, test 3D applications. If they are also stable, your overclock was successful. If not, lower FSB again and run the tests again until it is stable.
If you want to test the max FSB of the board, set the LDT to 2 or 1, set chipset voltage to the maximum (1.325V), FID (CPU multiplier) to 4 and raise FSB until you cannot boot any more. If the board fails to boot, switch the PSU off, press the power button to get rid of power left in caps, set the CMOS jumper below the PCI slots to the other position, wait 5 secs and set it back again. Then you can power on again. Before you start messing with the bios settings, better save your current (working) config in one of the 50 profiles, so in case you have to do a CMOS clear, you have your old setting back in no time.

[elfy_008]

seems like i am having a system stability problem now, its crashed without warning 3 times...not good. it just shuts off.

i am wondering if my choice of PSU was a good one, but oh well...

guess i need to take this apart completely and redo it.

[Jimmer411]

2.2V is a good enough voltage for D9GMH in terms of good speed and timings. I even try to run less than that 24/7. I use 2.05-2.15V depending on what speed I run them at.

CPLB: Nice to see that you could hit 350MHz too.
Set the LDT divider to 2 or 1 and see if you can get higher. You also have to set chitset voltage to the max (which is 1.325V if I am correct). With a LDT of 4 I cannot boot 350*4.

elfy_008: Overclocking is not that hard on K8. Lower the LDT multiplier, so that FSB * LDT <= 1000MHz. Then raise the FSB in 5MHz steps and run Orthos for half an hour or SuperPi 32M on each core. If it doesn't fail, raise the FSB another 5MHz (all in the bios) and run those applications again. If they produce an error, you have to either lower your overclock again or increase VCore by a little step. Use CoreTemp or any other app of your choice to monitor temp. +0.15V should be no problem in case you have decent cooling. At a certain point you will have to raise chipset voltage too. When you think you have overclocked enough, run Orthos for 15-24 hours. When it runs that long without an error, test 3D applications. If they are also stable, your overclock was successful. If not, lower FSB again and run the tests again until it is stable.
If you want to test the max FSB of the board, set the LDT to 2 or 1, set chipset voltage to the maximum (1.325V), FID (CPU multiplier) to 4 and raise FSB until you cannot boot any more. If the board fails to boot, switch the PSU off, press the power button to get rid of power left in caps, set the CMOS jumper below the PCI slots to the other position, wait 5 secs and set it back again. Then you can power on again. Before you start messing with the bios settings, better save your current (working) config in one of the 50 profiles, so in case you have to do a CMOS clear, you have your old setting back in no time.

Very nice to see that it supports profiles, thats one of the things that I love about my DFI. Being able to switch summer, winter, benching and suicide settings on the fly

[elfy_008]

Hows that? I need to work on RAM timings, since my sticks are CAS 4 and if that info from CPU-Z is right, they are running at CAS 5.

Also: I am just booting the system, I am not stress testing or anything. I just finally figured out how to play with the board a little.

What (anyones best guess) speed would be the top end for d9 ram?

Vram is reported on my machine as being 1.92v. I wonder if I should bump it up a little bit.

[Fr3ak]

Yes bump the vdimm up a little. Set it to 2.05V. I am actually surprised it booths with 540MHz CL5 at that voltage. The board is undervolting vdimm from what it looks like, so 2.05V should not be a problem at all, considering the rated voltage is 2.1-2.2V if I am not mistaken.

To get 300MHz FSB/HTT stable, you would have to raise chipset voltage a little if you haven't done so already.

[elfy_008]

I think I am right at the limit without being able to swap CAS around, on top of that I am a big novice OC'er so, when you guys say to change the TDL, RSVP, LMNOP or whatever...I go 'huh?'

One thing I will need to do is figure out which variables in the RAM settings on the board are what....


oh, and hit 2.84 Ghz after I made that screenshot.....I think thats not too shabby for never really trying anything like that before~

[bingo13]

Biostar should be releasing the 718 BIOS shortly, does a tad better up top and memory timings are a little tighter, at least with the beta we have been testing.

[mibo]

@bingo13: Were you told by Biostar what exactly the AM2+ features are? To me it looks like a (good) just AM2 board.
Will there be a test of this board on anandtech?

[bingo13]

@bingo13: Were you told by Biostar what exactly the AM2+ features are? To me it looks like a (good) just AM2 board.
Will there be a test of this board on anandtech?

Waiting on official word from NV about the AM2+ capabilities. Yes, we will have a full review of the board up in a week or so.

[Jimmer411]

I just got mine from the UPS man! Tearing down my rig and hoping to have results later tonight