UNOFFICIAL BIOSTAR TPower I45 M/B

[DiscoTech]

Here is my feedback on the board for current and prospective owners to be of some help.

E8500 E0
TRUE (I need to lap it, I have noticed that the bottom is convex)
Scythe Flex F
PC Power Cooling Silencer 750W

I haven't had time to tweak.
Everything is at Default.

This is what I did for quick testing:
-Disable the features that affect cpu vcore and multiplier on the CPU Configuration page.
-Set the max voltages I am comfortable with on the Voltage Configuration page which are...
Vcore +0.15
NB +0.35
FSB +0.25
DDR +0.30
-Set DDR to run 1:1
-Relax the timings on the DDR Configuration Page.
RComp:2
PL=11
SPD:disable
6-6-6-24......

Results:

#560x8....I ran prime for 15-20 minutes and then stopped it. It looked good.
#570x8....Prime errored after 2 minutes.
#585x8....Ran SuperPi 1M.
#595x8....No Boot
#480x9.5....Prime errored after 2 minutes....570x8~480x9.5 I did that to see if it was the motherboard holding at 570. Same result so it was the CPU.
#480x9.5....VCore +0.20 this time. I ran prime for 30 minutes and then stopped it. It looked good. (not comfortable with 1.40-1.41V idle though.)

There is a lot of room for improvement for CPU Overclock using:
*Better Cooling
*More Voltage
*GTL Settings
*Clock Configuration (Skews...)

For Reference on Temperatures:

at load with VCore +0.15

Ambient 26
Core Temp 62-63 (TJ MAx being 100)
CPU Temp 56
Sys Temp 34

I have some screenshots but they are over the attachment size limit.

Pros:
*Good Overall Overclocker.. But I don't know how it stacks up to Asus P5Q series etc...
*CPU temperature LED on the motherboard. Nice touch.
*I like the TPower2 Utility also the hardware monitor snapshot.
*System temps are very low. (34 at load too good to be true?) I like the heatsink attachment even though I am not sure if it is benefiting since it is getting the hot air from the TRUE. I did not remove it to test since I am not motherboard FSB limited.

Cons:
*Bad spot for the Clear CMOS jumper. It is right under the first PCIE video card.
*I can't comment on the memory overclocking yet. But I did not like the RCOMP configuration setting. (do you guys know that it does?) I had to play around with it to get the computer stable. AUTO didn't help.
*VCore options!!. It jumps from +0.15 to +0.20 on the list. If it had smaller increments, I could have upped my VCore a little bit more. I only have an option to go with ~1.36 or ~1.41V now.
*VDroop.. at idle 1.360V
at load 1.336V
*I don't know if it is the sensor, my power supply (which I think is decent) or the voltage regulators on the motherboard but the Vcore moves between 1.352-1.360-1.368 at idle.
Is this too much fluctuation? Can it be a drawback of 4 phase analog PWM?

I have added the screenshots for my previous post on the E8500.

More impressions:

For people working with Quad Cores:

After the E8500 , I put in the Q9450.
There was a FSB wall at 450. It was prime stable at 448x8 but wouldnt even boot at 450. Very frustrating.
I changed the CPU Clock Skew to 200 and the MCH GTL ref to 64%, then it started acting normal. I didn't know they were this sensitive to these adjustments but I hadn't had this problem on the ABit IP35 Pro.

Voltages set same as above but there is more vdroop. it is down to 1.32 at load.

The EO stepping must be running hot because I got almost the same temperatures with the quad core as those of the dual core E0.

Results:
#480x8 Ran Prime for 15-20 minutes then I stopped it.
#485x8 Errors Prime after 4-5 minutes.
#490x8 Prime error 1st minute.

For the overall cpu overclock, I am roughly at the same numbers as I was On the Abit. But I can't compare since I never had to deal with skew and gtl settings on the Abit and on the other hand Abit had more Vcore at load 1.35 vs the 1.32 on the Biostar.
Abit needed more VFsb and more VMch to be stable at the same clock which is expected being the older chipset.