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- Date:
- Monday , October 23, 2006
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe
We put Biostar’s TForce P965 Deluxe to the test. Biostar shocked us with what they have brought to market by creating a feature packed, well packaged, and finely crafted motherboard that hangs with the big boys as an overclocking powerhouse.
Introduction
Biostar has been around since 1986 and for the most part, they have been known as a budget motherboard manufacturer. Most of their models are geared towards cheap OEM style machines, and budget DIY PCs. Recently, Biostar has brought their TForce motherboard series to the market targeting the PC enthusiast. Biostar has to fight an uphill battle against larger more well established makers of enthusiast level motherboards and with that said, the TForce P965 Deluxe does a very good job of that. This motherboard is based on Intel’s latest P965 Express chipset and ICH8R south bridge.
The TForce P965 Deluxe is Biostar’s current P965 chipset based motherboard offering for the PC enthusiast. The P965 chipset has proven itself time and time again as an overclocker’s dream chipset allowing Core 2 Duo overclocks well into the 3GHz+ rang using the slowest Core 2 Duo processor, the E6300. The board is an entry level enthusiast offering in that there is no support for dual video card configurations such as ATI’s Crossfire, or NVIDIA’s SLI technologies. Memory speeds of up to DDR 800 are officially supported using DDR 2 memory modules. Following industry trends, the TForce P965 requires few components to operate as a full system. Components needed include an LGA 775 processor, ATX 2.0 power supply, hard drive, DDR 2 memory, and a video card. Biostar chose to integrate the following components into the TForce P965; 1 EIDE ATA-133 port; 1 floppy port; 6 SATA 3G ports on the ICH8R south bridge; 10x USB 2.0 compatible ports (6 on the rear panel, and 2 onboard headers supporting 2 ports each); 1 Gigabit Ethernet port on the rear panel; Realtek ALC883 8+2 Channel HD Audio Codec with SPDIF out ports on the back IO panel and as always, the standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
Biostar has some really strange packaging here. The box is rather large, in fact this is one of the largest motherboard boxes I have ever seen for a standard ATX motherboard. The box itself is an off white color, with the left side being covered in a sort of golden brown abstract pattern. The top right of the box shows the P965 Express chipset logo, and to the left of that is the ROHS logo. At the middle right of the box are some basic motherboard specifications. Below the quick specs is the T Series logo in a grayish-steel color scheme and below that is various icon style logos show casing the motherboards features. Finally at the very bottom of the box is the TForce P965 Deluxe Logo. Biostar has included the following items in the box; 1 floppy cable; 1 ATA-133 cable; 4 SATA cables; 4 SATA power converters; 1x SPIDF port bracket; 1 package bag; 1 driver CD; 1 owners manual; 1 x Rear I/O Panel; 1 x ear phone and finally 1x USB charging kit.
The USB charge kit is really the most innovative and unusual thing I have ever seen in a motherboard box. It has little to do with the motherboard or computers in general. However being able to charge your cell phone using a USB port is pretty cool. The kit contains many adapters for various model cell phones. In the kit I tried two different chargers for Motorola phones and one LG phone I happened to have on hand. Props are in order to Biostar for adding this little touch to the motherboard packaging. Also, I liked the package bag, though I see little purpose in including it.
Board Layout
The layout of the TForce P965 Deluxe is pretty good. The only real complaint I have is concerning the location of the ATX power plug. It is really close to the CPU socket, and at an awkward angle. This is something that I can see many people complaining about, but I certainly don’t consider it a deal breaker. It really is about the only complaint I could think of concerning the layout of the motherboard. Due to it’s proximity to the CPU socket, I could see a possible problem with using excessively large CPU coolers on this board. For stock coolers or even popular coolers like the Zalman CNPS9500 LED, this should not pose a significant problem. One complaint that I have is that you can’t remove or install memory modules with the video card installed. This is not unusual and many high end boards have this problem and it isn’t something to be concerned about, but it is annoying. The floppy port is also poorly placed, but again this isn’t a big deal as few people will have a floppy drive in their machine anyway. The PCB version tested here is version 1.0.
The CPU area is pretty good as I mentioned before. Again the only issue is the possibility of the closeness of the ATX power connectors, but again the problem will only exist with the use of excessively large heat sink and fan assemblies. It would have been nice
The board’s 4 DDR 2 DIMM sockets are located in front of the CPU socket. There is a fairly significant distance between the memory modules and the CPU socket, which is good as it will make using larger coolers easier. The DIMM slots are color coded to indicate the proper installation method for dual channel operation.
The north bridge is located just to the left of the CPU socket. The north bridge is passively cooled using a basic heat sink assembly. This is my preferred method for cooling the north bridge as it is silent and has no mechanical parts that can fail.
The south bridge is located directly to the left of the PCI-Express x16 slot and directly in front of the other, smaller PCIe slots. The south bridge is also passively cooled and does not need active cooling. The heat sink became warm to the touch, but not excessively so.
The TForce P965 Deluxe has one PCI-Express x16 slot, which operates with all 16 lanes at all times. There are two additional PCIe slots, an x1 and an x4 slot. There are three legacy PCI slots each of them are PCI v2.2 compliant.
The TForce P965 Deluxe includes the following ports on the rear panel: 1 PS/2 mouse port; 1 PS/2 keyboard port; 1 RJ-45 Ethernet port; 6 mini-headphone jacks for audio; one RS232 port; and six USB ports.
Biostar T-Utility
The Biostar TForce board comes with a suite of basic utilities called T-Utilities. They include a live update function for the BIOS, T-Overclocking Utility, T-Fan Control, and T-Utility Hardware Monitor.
The T-Overclocking Utility has 4 usable buttons. There are no rollovers and the function of each of these buttons is somewhat of a mystery until you click on them. The arrow button is actually the one you use to adjust the CPU FSB and voltage settings. The wrench button only minimized the application, rather than providing settings like I would have thought it would have done. The button on the right hand side opposite of the arrow resets the defaults for CPU voltage and FSB settings. Once the arrow is clicked four satellite windows appear. From left to right, top to bottom, they are CPU/FSB, Memory BUS/Voltage, PCIe frequency, and PCI frequency.
Using this utility I had numerous issues. The biggest problem was when I tried adjusting the CPU FSB. The utility never would show my changes, until I minimized the satellite windows and then maximized them again. I was also able to change voltages, but again the utility would not record my changes until I minimized and then maximized the satellite windows. The memory frequency wasn’t adjustable either, but I could adjust the memory voltage. Another issue I had was during the overclocking process. It didn’t take long before the system would randomly reset, even from mild overclock settings. I knew that this board and CPU were capable of much more, and manually, I was able to reach higher stable overclocks. Therefore I must conclude that there is some kind of instability in the utility itself that would cause the resets.
The other utilities like the T-Fan Control are relatively rudimentary. Once you open the Fan control application, you have to undertake a lengthy calibration process. Afterwards, you have full fan control. With the sliders, you can adjust the fan speeds or leave the program on the automatic default settings.
The T-Hardware monitor is also very basic. Essentially, all you can do is monitor settings and adjust thermal thresholds for system alarms. You can also set the utility to always load when Windows starts.
The final utility is the Live BIOS update utility. Again, this is a basic utility. You can update the BIOS from a file, or create a backup of your BIOS. Additionally, you can also update the BIOS from the Biostar FTP server.