Biostar A780L3G for budget gaming build?

[996GT2]

I've seen this board bundled with an Athlon II X4 640 for around $100, which I think is a pretty sweet deal since the CPU alone is usually around $100.

However, I haven't been able to find many reviews on the board. The few reviews over at Newegg were quite positive, but there were only 3. The onboard Radeon 3000 is older than the 4200 found in the newer AMD 785G, but I don't think that will matter much since I'm using a discrete graphics card anyway.

I did some digging and managed to find the BIOS manual for the board. It does to have quite a full list of overclocking and tuning options. Below is a sampling of the CPU options:


Does this seem like a pretty good board for a budget gaming/overclocking build? I don't plan to get any monster overclocks...if I can reliably hit 3.4 GHz, I'd be happy.

 

[Rifter]

Looks good, for $100 for both its a steal. I have a Athlon II 635 OC'ed to 3.9Ghz in my HTPC, they are great budget quad cores.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

They also have the 640 bundled with the MSI 785GM-P45 for the same price at MicroCenter. I have that bundle and it works fine although I did not try overclocking on it.

 

[996GT2]

They also have the 640 bundled with the MSI 785GM-P45 for the same price at MicroCenter. I have that bundle and it works fine although I did not try overclocking on it.

It seems like the MSI 785GM-P45 does not support anything with above 95W TDP? Looking at MSI's CPU compatibility list, only CPUs with 95W TDP max are supported:

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodcpu2&prod_no=1990&maincat_no=1

The Biostar supports up to 125w CPUs. Does this have any effect on the overclocking potential of the board?

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Maybe, but the overall board construction of the MSI is much better than theBiostar A780L3G. Notice how the Biostar uses the cheap coil wrapped components. The MSI also has all solid capacitors, 7.1 audio, 785G chipset, 4 DIMM slots, built in HDMI, 6 SATA slots, PCI-E x1 slot, Easy OC switch, and other features.

 

[996GT2]

Maybe, but the overall board construction of the MSI is much better than theBiostar A780L3G. Notice how the Biostar uses the cheap coil wrapped components. The MSI also has all solid capacitors, 7.1 audio, 785G chipset, 4 DIMM slots, built in HDMI, 6 SATA slots, PCI-E x1 slot, Easy OC switch, and other features.

The lack of PCIe X1 slots on the Biostar eventually made me change my mind. I changed my order to the MSI board today, haha. Hopefully it will get a decent (10-15%) overclock out of my X4 640.

 

[Its_Hondo]

It's been a great board for me with the Phenom 560 II that I am using.

System -

Biostar A780L3G Motherboard
AMD Phenom II 560 AM3 CPU (3.3 Ghz)
8 gb Corsair XMS DDR3-1333
Zotac GT430 Fanless GPU
PC Power & Cooling 500Watt PSU
320 GB WD SATA Hard Drive
Sony Optiarc DVD Burner


As I was using this for my dedicated Linux rig, the 3.3ghz of the cpu was fine, but as an overclocker I wanted more.

I could not unlock the additional 2 cores in bios, so I moved on to increasing the CPU speed.

Currently the rig is coasting along at 3.7 Ghz, a decent overclock. This with stock timing of the memory and stock voltages - (a Gkrellm window is also shown for temps with the stock AMD HSF) -



You can change the FSB but I found the motherboard too unstable, as it changes other things as well.

After searching the web I found that the Bios has a setting that allows fine tuning of the multiplier and other setting.

First, get into the Bios and get to the Performance Menu ( 1 )

Then select CPU Tuning ( 2 )



Scroll down to Custom P-States ( 3 )



Then Enable Custom P-States ( 4 )



Once you enable the Custom P-States you will be able to see the advanced settings.

Here is what my Phenom II 560 CPU settings ( Core FID ) ( 5 ) were, 16.5 x 200 = 3300 Mhz



When you hit enter you will get to select other Multipliers. I selected 18.5 for 3700 Mhz ( 6 ) , the overclock I am currently using -



After selecting the multiplier you can hit F10 to save and then the mobo will reboot.

As you can see in the above pics there are a lot more settings available to you.

Not bad for a budget motherboard/CPU combo!

 

[Its_Hondo]

3.8 Ghz by changing the multiplier only -

(CPU-Z is incomplete due to errors in the Linux emulator)