UNOFFICIAL BIOSTAR TPower I45 M/B

[OnDborder]

in order to do that, i had to move the jumpers on the board to enable crossfire which puts both 16X slots into 8X speed

I thought this was normal for the p45's.
Just anything populating the 2 slots kicks it to 8x ??

[Ace-a-Rue]

I thought this was normal for the p45's.
Just anything populating the 2 slots kicks it to 8x ??

that is what i thought...biostar, at least for their board, did not design it that way...it is shipped with 8 RED and one normal black, in color type, jumper set to run the 1st PCIe slot at 16X speed...the 2nd slot is powered but the bios won't recognize the card; not until you do the jumper thing.

here is a picture of the board..i inserted a green arrow to highlight the two banks of red jumpers which have to be moved over from rows 1/2 to 2/3 to put it into crossfire...there are eight jumpers.

there is a 9th jumper to move also, which is just like all the rest of the jumpers on the board...i used a yellow arrow to identify it...the manual does spell this out in clear terms.

[Ace-a-Rue]

i am going to run the 3D2001, 3D2005 and 3D2006 benches to see how this puppy runs in crossfire at 8x speed...i am going to gather that the tests results will be slightly better with the exact same video card used on my X48T DQ6 (DDR3) board....will see in a hour or so.

[Ace-a-Rue]

WOOPS!...i got confused looking back at my images from the X48T board...i was looking at 8800 GTS results...sorry!...found the 9800 GTX results and the scores are higher than this biostar but the frequency was higher...so my objective is to match the frequency and rerun the tests...be back in a while.

[nachthymnen]

Hope to receive mine tomorrow

[Ace-a-Rue]

my memory settings are little fussy since i am using DDR-6400...i tried DDR-8000 and it was about the same...with the 6400 memory, one memory timing change can stop it from posting...then, there is a little bit of a hassle to reset the bios with a previous saved bios...they have a numerical value that you can set for how many times it should try to overclock at the newer settings...might as well set it to 1 or 0 since 3 times (default setting) doesn't get you any where but lost time.

[Ace-a-Rue]

first set of images are from Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 (DDR3) board with the 9800 GTX card and same Areca card in Raid 0 but the drives were different...i used Seagate 7200.10 series, 250 gig, Sata II, one platter drives on the X48 Areca card.

the biostar has Veloci-Raptor, 300 gig, Sata II drives...pretty amazing drive for only 2.75" wide.

next post will show the Biostar runs.

[Ace-a-Rue]

here are the biostar runs at the same FSB and Mhz...the link speed is only 8X while gigabyte was at 16X...both boards incorporate the PCIe 2.0 specs.

[Ace-a-Rue]

biostar keeps right up with the X48T board and it is running at half the link speed...i'd say biostar did a darn good job of engineering this board for half the price!

superpi runs for the next post.

[Ace-a-Rue]

superpi was right there and better than i could do on the GA-X48T-DQ6 (DDR3) board:

[Henry]

Ace, can you test the vdroop with Quad ? Thx...

[Ace-a-Rue]

i'll have to find the actual DIMM measuring point...i won't change out to a quad until a few days from now....i need to run a new setup with different drives to makes sure the Veloci-Raptors are not adding an extra edge to any of the benches other than PCMark 2005...that bench will do better with the raptors.

[Ace-a-Rue]

i'm about 1.5 hours into Prime 95...hanging in there nicely using the XIGMATEK HDT-D1284..it has four 8MM heatpipes...i replaced the fan with a higher volume Panaflo fan, 2.7K....temps are running 62C outside of the case on the bench with about 1.35 for Vcore.

[NormanABates]

biostar keeps right up with the X48T board and it is running at half the link speed...i'd say biostar did a darn good job of engineering this board for half the price!

superpi runs for the next post.

@ace,
really appreciate this review your spending so much time with. you're the man.

[Ace-a-Rue]

@ace,
really appreciate this review your spending so much time with. you're the man.

thanks for the vote.

here are two hours of Prime 95 @ 4255 Mhz (i don't believe in 8, 16 or 24 hour runs..to me, it is absurd)...the E8500 handled much better on this board than the GA-X48T-DQ6 (DDR3) board at about the same Mhz...the Vcore to hold the E8500 was less on the biostar...i have it set to about 1.35 in the bios...in windows it says 1.36v...still have not found a reading point for an actual DMM reading....kind of hard to get around the heatsink to test the various resistors sitting around the cpu socket.

Biostar's Tpower software, if fairly accurate, says 1.36v for idle and when i load up the two cores, it drops to 1.336, which is a Vdroop of 0.024v...that is not bad for Vdroop..even with the gigabyte X48 board, which had Loadline enabled, it still dropped about 0.025 under full load....all in all, this one of the better price point boards around for the P45 chipset...it is now selling at newegg with an instant $25 discount....man, it is a good deal...check it out!

[Ace-a-Rue]

also, i just had run setup again since i put to many dings on XP...i just did the repair feature...NOW...how many boards will allow you to run a setup at 420 FSb @ 9X = 3780 Mhz with all the voltages set to "AUTO"...i'd say PRETTY nice!!

[OnDborder]

Thanks Ace for the review. Best-bang-for-the-buck mb.
I'll be looking at this board when the 4870x2 comes out.

[Ace-a-Rue]

it is the best-bang-for-the-buck!

[gundamit]

Ace-a-Rue, nice work so far. I was wondering if you could share your bios settings. Are use using one of the pre-set "DDR2 RCOMP Configuration" settings or auto for your 2x2GB sticks?

[Ace-a-Rue]

yes, i am using "number 3" for "DDR2 RCOMP Configuration"...i found that is the best setting for my GSKill DDR-6400 memory...it looks like the max stable for me (without using to much voltage) is about 1030 Mhz...that is at 8.5X or 4382 Mhz (E8500).

i will work up the bios settings that i am using in a day or so.

[Ace-a-Rue]

For all those guys having problems with Gigabyte EP45 boards with PCIe 2.0 video cards, this board post to boot without any hitches...i had one time a video corruption after installing the driver but as soon as i rebooted in windows safe mode and then rebooted back into windows desktop, it worked perfectly...the corruption occurred after i repaired the windows install since i had many dings on the operating system as i was trying to find the limits.

my video card is an EVGA 9800 GTX

[natedog420]

man i hope my tp45hp im getting in the mail today is as good as the tpower. nice stable board from the looks of it. i always like biostar this will be my 3rd 775 biostar board and all of them overclocked like mad.

[Budwise]

what does this board have over the P5Q-E and Pro?

[Mortis360]

I have ordered one of this, had to induce my favorite webshop NetShop AS (Norway) to import this one, hoping this motherboard will be a hit in Norway too! Can't wait until i get it!

~ Mortis360

[mrcape]

what does this board have over the P5Q-E and Pro?

lots of world records! It's got a great bios and can be tuned to super high freq.

Day to day I wouldn't say it's anything out of this world. I'd take my DFI LP UT P35 over this for memory tuning and 24/7 use. But for high freq and WRs fahgetaboutit, this is the board.