Modded Biostar TPower I45 BIOS

[DonNiger]

Chad, could you please run the Everest bench C-state on with the same settings (at this moment you have different CPU and Mem speeds). And run SPi 1M/32M with original and moded bios?
Thanks!

[BababooeyHTJ]

Still no bios update since july! Is that even a month after they releaced the board? Why would anyone buy a biostar product after that?

[Ket]

Bug Biostar, see what they say. I'm having a real good look at the BIOS, but theres really not much a modder can do with it Many things are intertwined which other P45 boards don't do with their BIOS.

[mattkosem]

Ket,
Are you able to do something similar to what was done with the memory voltage on the CPU vid? If the starting point on the VID was +.100 or so to begin with, there would be much more granular voltage controls at the vid ranges that people commonly run. For instance, I'm running +.250 and the smallest jump up from there is .05v. If there was a .1v buffer, I'd still have .025v increments to spare at that point.

--Matt

[hstuehmeyer2000]

Still no bios update since july! Is that even a month after they releaced the board? Why would anyone buy a biostar product after that?

Take a look here, http://www.lejabeach.com/Biostar/TPI45/ , there was a bios released in November

[mattkosem]

Still no bios update since july! Is that even a month after they releaced the board? Why would anyone buy a biostar product after that?

I don't think there have been any new steppings since that was released, and there aren't really any problems with the board that would need to be addressed by one. What exactly is it that you would expect to be in a bios update?

--Matt

[Ket]

Ket,
Are you able to do something similar to what was done with the memory voltage on the CPU vid? If the starting point on the VID was +.100 or so to begin with, there would be much more granular voltage controls at the vid ranges that people commonly run. For instance, I'm running +.250 and the smallest jump up from there is .05v. If there was a .1v buffer, I'd still have .025v increments to spare at that point.

--Matt

I can change default values, but all that will happen when you select +.100 for example, is it "resets" to the lower voltage, not higher.

Take a look here, http://www.lejabeach.com/Biostar/TPI45/ , there was a bios released in November

P45AAB03 Beta.... not official.

I don't think there have been any new steppings since that was released, and there aren't really any problems with the board that would need to be addressed by one. What exactly is it that you would expect to be in a bios update?

--Matt

Finer voltage granularity, thats what everyone wants. Would also be nice if Biostar fixed the PSB800 bug. If you set it manually to PSB800 the system will not POST. Tried and verified with my old E4400. Memory compatibility isn't that great either. This board can only just do 1200MHz with my Cellshocks, my P5Q Pro can POST @ 1300MHz.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I sold that board in less than a week. The fact that the vNB and vSB is linked is nuts, the board never even posted with my ram at its rated specs, you cant fine tune any voltages especilly the GTLs. The least they could do is work on memory compatibility.

[hersounds]

i tested 3 bios yesterday,710 bios original,710 bios modded ( this thread bios) and the beta P45AAB03, easy to test, just put bios files in pen drive and next reboot and press F12,select the pen drive and folow the steps...well conclusion, bios 710 run fine, 710 bios modded, run very well,no problems and absolut compatibility with 4 gb ram and of course vcore default setting in 2.0 vdimm ...beta bios sucks absolut sucks!..overclocking troubles ( much) and 4-4-4-12 ram have problems with mem test around 45 minutes,5-5-5-18 no sense with 3,6 ghz ddr 2 800,so i come back to modded 710...is best bios that all i try.

bios 710 oficial ==== cache L2 everest latency 4.7 / 4.6 ns

bios 710 modded ( this thread bios) ==== 4.4 ns

bios P45AAB03 beta ==== 4.4 but many troubles,not recommended!

all testing 400 x 9 ddr2 800 with E8400

[DonNiger]

Thanks for the info
Two sets of my mem are doing the same - 675Mhz and that's all Kinda waird.

[Ket]

Perhaps its just me but something struck me last time I was sniffing through the TPower BIOS with AMIBCP, I had NEVER seen an option to disable on-board audio. I spent some time sniffing around with AMIBCP, and sure enough, couldn't find anything to disable the on-board audio. I actually went into the BIOS "realtime" as well, still couldn't find a option to disable on-board audio. Am I going blind or is there really not an option to disable on-board audio? Talk about potentially creating a real of a problem should somebody buy a decent audio solution.

[hokiealumnus]

Loaded the BIOS two days ago and it's been folding and benching just fine ever since. Very sorry I didn't have a chance to bench the difference. Just weren't enough hours in the day and I was so excited to have a new BIOS!

If you decide to delve back into it, the beta allowed one to disable the PATA controller. That would be nice to see in yours as well.

It's nice to just have someone putting effort into a BIOS. Biostar sure as he** isn't. Didn't even get a response from a recent email to them, big surprise. Tried US support and they said to contact Asia. Quite useful all around. Anyway, thank you very much, Ket!

[Ket]

I'm testing a modded beta BIOS for the TPower as I type

[vab206]

ket you are offically the man in my book, you come to the rescue when the m2f needed some tweaking and now the tpower... i was getting really aggrivated that i couldnt get my ram working @ 1066, but it fires right up with yours no problem. only thing im kinda iffy about is the speed step. im not sure if you changed anything here but my multi seems to be set @ 6 by default even though i manually set it to 10 in the bios and my core voltage jumps anywhere from 1.068 to 1.200v. im lookin at it in cpuz so it may not be 100% accurate though.

[Ket]

Sounds like you have something like EIST or speedstep enabled. Check the BIOS carefully, theres actually a option or two that for some reason need disabling in both places, under the CPU config menu thing and somewhere in O.N.E.

ED - Oh and about the modded beta I was testing.. its been scrapped. Setting +.350 for NB/SB voltage caused a no POST, something that isn't a problem in 710m.

[Riska]

I hav that board and my problem with the bios is Vmem at high vmem the jump is way to far is that corrected in this modded bios?

[Ket]

No. Voltage granularity as I explained in a previous post is not something a modder can fix easily (if at all) Biostar would need to get involved, but as Biostar suck.. all you can do is bug the hell out of Biostar.. maybe you will get lucky and your complaint about voltage granularity will make the "magic number" and they will release a new BIOS.

[koksy]

Seeing as this thread is not a month old, I'd take a shot an post here. I want to try your modded bios, but I've never flashed any BIOS before. You say I need to do it the old floppy way, but I don't have a floppy drive :P And the board has it's own flashing utility (you can install TPower2 from the driver/utilities CD, which includes the flashing application).

Anyway, I was hoping that you might be able to fix the RAID problem. I hate that every single time I boot up, I have to get told that the BIOS can't find any hard drives in the RAID controller. Well guess what, I don't have any RAID installed (I should edit my old sig :P)! And I've made 10000% sure that the BIOS knows that I only have 1 hard drive and that it doesn't use RAID.

Also sad that you can't make voltage granularity better It's seriously bad...

[Ket]

I'm not sure what your describing is a BIOS issue, I use only one HDD and never have any problems with RAID error messages. Have you tried resetting your cmos by removing battery and power as well as setting the jumper to "clear"?

[koksy]

It's a "problem" that I've had since the day I bought this motherboard. I'll go take a screenshot and edit my post. I've read that other people have had the exact same problem. I'll also add some screenshots of my BIOS setup.

edit:
Okay so the image is very bad (ty light I guess, flash is off :P)
http://i41.tinypic.com/24qs31y.jpg
In case you can't read it :P

Adapter 1
Disks Information:
No hard disk is detected!

Takes a couple of seconds and then it juts boots.

Bios settings:
http://i41.tinypic.com/dn0gt3.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/24waerr.jpg

[vab206]

from what i can tell that is actually the ATA raid. actually im guessing it would have to be b/c i have a raid setup on the ICH10 and it shows an intel storage array as my primary boot disk. the marvell controller still boots with my system as well though and i havent found anything that disables it.

[hokiealumnus]

vab206 is correct, that's the PATA controller. The only BIOS that gets rid of it properly is the beta Biostar released a while ago.

/begin rant/ Annoyingly, that's the last thing Biostar ever did for this board. It'll also be the last board I ever buy from them. One official BIOS since the product's release is atrocious. Even releasing the beta as an official release would be something. It's a good board, just has a few issues (PATA RAID delay, lack of voltage granularity <---that's my biggest beef) that could easily have been worked out if they gave a crap about their product. /end rant/

I say all of that to thank Ket for modding it. At least it was another BIOS to play with. Thanks Ket!!

[Josifek]

Hi KET,

This BIOS works just fine... I get 635FSB on the newest BIOS and 630FSB on yours. The only thing missing from the newest BIOS is the NB PLL voltage setting, thats where the 5Mhz is hidden i suppose... It would be great if you could do the default vDIMM mod to the newest BIOS... Anyway im glad for this one as well Keep up the awesome work

[rsnubje]

does some1 know already this bios supports P4's? or some1 have a link for a bios that does?