![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , August 18, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
BIOSTAR T-Power I45
Last year we reviewed BIOSTAR's T-Force P965 Deluxe. The board was simply outstanding and was certainly on par with offerings from other more recognized builders of enthusiast class motherboards. Today we are looking at another T-Force series offering; the T-Force TPower I45. Is this BIOSTAR motherboard up to the test?
BIOS
BIOSTAR used the American Megatrends Inc. BIOS for the T-Power I45. The BIOS is largely the same as it is with any do it yourself motherboard but it does have a slightly different look and feel to it. The BIOS was a bit slow and unresponsive while navigating it. It wasn't as bad as I've seen on a handful of other boards, but it wasn't as responsible as it should be. At the top of the BIOS screen are several tabs. They are Main, Advanced, PCIPnP, Boot, Chipset, O.N.E. and Exit. The main page contains BIOS information and a information concerning the installed system memory. Date and time settings are here as well as the floppy drive configuration setting. Additionally the SATA configuration sub-menu can be accessed here.
The Advanced Settings menu contains a ton of sub-menus. CPU Configuration, Super IO, Hardware Health Configuration, Smart Fan Configuration, PM/ACPI Configuration, USB Configuration, and Config Onboard PCI/PCIe Devices. The CPU Configuration menu contains CPU information as well as settings for things like Intel's Virtualization technology and Execute Disable Bit functionality. You can also enable or disable multi-core processing. It doesn't allow for the disabling of individual cores. It seems like a all or nothing option. The Super I/O Chipset menu contains serial port, keyboard, Power On, Mouse Power On, and Restore on AC Power Loss by IO (Last State.) Hardware Health Configuration contains shutdown thresholds, fan speeds, and thermal monitoring. From here the user can also monitor the system voltages. Under the Smart Fan Configuration you can control fan speeds and fan temperature thresholds. There is a great deal of control offered here, you can set start speeds, max speeds, and of course set fan speeds based on temperature ranges defined by the user. PM/ACPI Configuration has HPET settings, power management resume settings and ACPI configuration settings.
The USB configuration menu shows connected devices. Also found here is USB controller mode and BIOS EHCI hand off settings. The onboard PCI/PCIe Devices configuration menu contains only LAN adapter settings. The MAC address is displayed and two settings are found here. One enabling or disabling the LAN adapter and the other enabling the boot ROM. The Advanced PCI/PnP settings contain the standard PnP OS settings as well as the standard IRQ adjustment settings. The chipset menu is the next item of note. Here there are two submenus. One for the north bridge and one for the south bridge. Under the north bridge configuration there is the memory hole and PEG Port settings. The south bridge submenu contains a few more settings. USB Port configuration settings and so on.
The O.N.E. menu contains settings related to overclocking and general performance options. Getting right down to it there is an auto overclocking option. This is the same thing that is found in the overclocking software. The highest setting called "V16" doesn't actually overclock the processor a whole lot. With this setting I got 2004.3MHz. That's only about a 200MHz jump over the stock speed of 1.83GHz. You can also adjust the CPU ratio, overclock retry count and FSB to Northbridge Latch. The overclock retry count setting was pretty much worthless as it never worked in my testing. Anytime the board failed to overclock I ended up clearing the CMOS and resetting everything for another go. DRAM frequency can be adjusted here, and I found that in order to run the memory at 1066MHz speeds you needed to adjust the FSB to Northbridge latch to 1333MHz before you'd be able to do so.
Also on this page are several submenus. DRAM Timing Configuration, Clock Gen Configuration and Voltage Configuration. In the DRAM Timing Configuration menu you have the Static tREAD Value setting and below that you can adjust the memory timing to be configured by SPD values or manually. When set to manual all your timing values become adjustable. Clock Gen Configuration containst CPU Clock Skew Control and MCH Clock Skew Control as well as CPU Clock Driving Control. The voltage configuration has all the usual settings we've come to expect to find on any motherboard. DDR voltage, chipset voltage, FSB voltage, CPU Core GTL Ref Voltage, MCH GTL Ref Voltage and CPU PLL Voltage. Below the voltage settings is the current voltage for your CPU, NB/SB, DDR2 and FSB voltages. This doesn't update in real time so you'll have to reboot the system in order to see changes to these values.