- Oct 13, 1999
- 22,377
- 7
- 81
Biostar Tforce6100 motherboard mini review
CLIFF NOTES VERSION:
This board does everything it set out to do with high overclocks and more BIOS features than you can shake a stick at. Pushes my test CPU as high as ever and with full stability. May be limited for HTPC use because no TV-out for IGP and only bare headers for SPDIF.
OVERVIEW:
Here is a mini review of the Biostar Tforce6100 motherboard for socket 754. I obtained this board from Newegg as a refurbished unit for $43. New ones are available for about $70. As a refurbished unit, the board worked fine (not always the case with refurbs) but it was basically a bare board, no cabling, no driver CD, no ATX back plate and a 15 day warranty instead of one year. I originally was going to get a refurbished Geforce6100 model (instead of Tforce) but Newegg sold out before I could finish checking out, so this one being $5 more as a refurb (and $10 more comparing new products) I snagged one quick before they ran out of these.
The Geforce6100/6150 chipsets have been the source of some excitement because it is a contender to the ATI chipset for top IGP honors. Normally IGP isn't too exciting, but the latest Nvidia and ATI IGP chipsets are powerful enough for casual gamers and can be used as a stepping stone until enough money is saved up to purchase an add-on PCIe 16x graphics card. Coupled with the ability to drive dual monitors, DVI and TV-out, and you have a powerful integrated solution for anyone who does not call themselves gamers. Also, Nvidia is known for making overclockable chipsets. However, most of the actual products we are seeing for sale do not take advantage of all of the possibilities this chipset has to offer. The four Biostar offerings don't give us anything extra except for overclocking, and boy do they give it to us!
Biostar is not very well known among enthusiasts, but some will remember one other Biostar offering that is similar to these new board, the K7NCG-400 mATX board using the Nforce2 IGP chipset and offering a reasonable array of working overclocking settings in BIOS. Why I specify "working" is that I've personally known other mATX boards that offer some settings in BIOS, but not enough and sometimes the settings are there but don't work or don't "stick." Until the Jetway mATX board using the ATI chipset came out last year, the Biostar board was probably the most overclock-friendly offering from any company.
One thing I have to start noting is how motherboard manufacturers deal with warranty issues. Biostar is "old school" in that they basically don't want to deal with you. Yes, new Biostar motherboards have a one year warranty, but you have to buy the board from a place that will service that warranty. Most online retailers offer only a 30 day warranty, after which they tell you warranty is covered by the manufacturer. To my knowledge, Newegg and Directron are the exceptions - but read the fine print because even at Newegg some things are noted as "manufacturer's warranty only." What happens with your warranty if the vendor you purchased from does not want to take the board back? Biostar treats it as an "out of warranty service" meaning they'll charge you $30 to fix your motherboard. ECS is the same way with a one year warranty through reseller, or a $25 fee direct to end user. As an example, Abit is much better in that they offer a two year complete warranty and a third year parts only, and they state plainly that they will accept end user RMA. If warranty is important to you, then before you buy you should be aware of how the manufacturer deals with warranty issues and if they don't offer free, direct RMA, then find a vendor that will honor the full warranty.
MOTHERBOARD FEATURES:
Geforce6100 chipset
mATX form factor
1X PCIe 1X
1X PCIe 16X
2X PCI
2X SATA
10/100 NIC
5.1 Audio (ALC655)
"special" capacitors
overclocking
Pretty standard list of features. Besides being mATX with IGP, the specifications are nothing to get worked up over until you get to the capacitors and overclocking features. This board is the "Tforce" version meaning Biostar actually advertises it as being overclockable. I mention the capacitors because they are unlike what you see on most board (at least the ones for powering the CPU). These are supposedly better quality - I'll just take their word for it.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
The board has a fairly wild color scheme, with blue for the PCB and yellow, yellow-orange and light green for the plastic bits on the board. I'm probably getting used to boards having jarring colors these days as my first impression was "wow colorful" instead of "ouch my eyes hurt."
This board is smaller than the full size allowed by the mATX standard. Though it has such a small PCB real-estate to work with, most components and connectors were intelligently placed with the exception of the 4 pin ATX +12v plug and the floppy connector. The floppy connector is at the bottom underneath the last PCI slot while the ATX +12v connector is towards the middle of the PCB between the CPU/chipset area and rear ports. A much better place would be at the top edge of the board, such as on the Abit KN8 and ECS NFORCE4-A939 boards.
The 24 pin ATX connector is in the "proper" place, on the upper corner next to the RAM, and the IDE connectors are just below it. The SATA connectors are near the bottom corner of the board right at the edge, putting it really close to where typical hard drives are located in a mATX tower. There are a total of four fan headers, two at each end of the RAM slots. The chipset is arranged as a Northbridge/Southbridge combination with passive heatsinks on them. I've heard that some people have needed to actively cool these when overclocked highly - a testament to how high a system bus the board can run - more on that later. Suffice to say that at stock speeds or with reasonable overclocks, there shouldn't be a cooling problem in a reasonably ventilated case.
This board has POST reporting consisting of four red surface mount LEDs next to the ATX power connector. Presumably you can look up the light pattern and figure out why the board isn't turning on. Between the IDE ports and SATA ports are the power button and reset button. Yes, the buttons are right on the board making it easy to bench test. The power button has an ultrabright blue LED embedded in the middle of it that lights up when the board turns on.
Regarding the 24 pin ATX connector, I've heard that the extra 4 pins are to supply power to the PCIe slot so presumably you can get by with only a 20 pin connector, or a 20 pin with adaptor but that isn't recommended if you were actually using the PCIe slot for a video card.
The cramped layout of the board means that you may not be able to use huge CPU heatsinks with this board. The CPU HSF bracket ends about ¼" before the edge of the PCB and the Northbridge heatsink is about ¼" below the CPU HSF bracket. The PCIe 16x slot is about ½" below the chipset heatsink. Be aware of the space limitations before buying those Zalman 7700 HSFs, tall chipset heatsinks and sandwich/heatpipe video card coolers.
TEST PARTS
Sempron 2600+ with retail HSF (Palermo D0)
GigaRAM 512MB PC3200
Sapphire Radeon X800GTO Ultimate
CoolerMaster 120mm fan
Toshiba 16X DVDROM
Seagate 200GB EIDE HDD
Fortron FSP400-60GLN PSU
BIOS:
I'll just mention the "interesting" options.
Phoenix - AwardBIOS
Advanced Chipset Features:
Frame Buffer Size (for IGP) 6/32/64/128MB and Disabled
NB-->SB HT Speed 1x-5x
NB<--SB HT Speed 1x-5x
K8<->NB HT Width 8/16
NB<->SB HT Width 4/8/16
Spread Spectrum available for CPU, PCIE, SATA and HT (disabled if any are overclocked)
PC Health Status:
Shutdown Temperature 60/65/70ºC and Disabled
Smart FAN Control by Always ON/SMART
when set to SMART:
CPU Fan Off(ºC) 0-127 (16 default)
CPU Fan Start(ºC) 0-127 (24 default)
CPU Fan Full speed(ºC) 0-127 (64 default)
Start PWM Value 0-127 (40 default)
Slope PWM 0/1/2/4/8/16/32/64 PWM value/ºC (1 default)
CMOS Reload Program - lets you save different CMOS configurations for later retrieval, a great idea
OverClock Navigator Engine:
*Overclock Navigator Normal/Automate Overclock/Manual Overclock
Watch dog time(times) 1-31 (5 default) - I think this is to reset CPU speed if system doesn't POST
Integrated Memory Test DISABLED/ENABLED - run Memtest on next POST
*Overclock Navigator on Automate V6/V8/V12 - doesn't say how much it overclocks
*Overclock Navigator on MANUAL
CPU Voltage Regulator 0.800V-1.500V in 0.025V increments and up to 1.800V in 0.050V increments
Memory Voltage 2.6/2.7/2.8/2.9V - note that there is a memory overvolt >3V jumper on the motherboard - make sure your memory can take it before trying it
CPU Frequency 200-450 in 1MHz increments
HT Frequency 1x-5x and Auto
PCIe Clock 100-145 in 1MHz increments
Memclock Frequency Auto/100/133/166/200 - pretty standard, may change with E3/E6 chip installed
1T/2T Memory Timing
DRAM Configuration submenu - suffice to say that it has the regular latencies plus more options that I don't even know whta to do with, a total of 13 different configurable options. I'd recommend to not fiddle with anything beyond CAS settings unless you know what you're doing.
A couple of things to note:
-The only thing that's really missing is a way to boost chipset voltage. Sometimes that is needed to hit really high HTT speeds.
-Haven't played with it, but the CMOS Reload Program sounds really neat.
-There's no way to turn off the Biostar splash screen on POST, irritating.
-I really love the CPU fan control which along with being able to undervolt can make for a very quiet machine, plus you get to change the parameters of the temperature points and how fast the fan ramps up in speed. Awesome!!!
-Some CMOS settings cause the system to not POST, so unless you're into troubleshooting down to which exact settings causes what problems, leave advanced settings alone. For instance, changing the HT Width settings will sometimes cause no POST.
OVERCLOCKING RESULTS
To take heat out of the equation, I had the CPU fan running full speed, an 80mm fan pointing at the Northbridge and a 120MM fan cooling the Southbridge and video card.
I already know that my CPU can work at up to around 300MHz if it has a voltage boost, and this motherboard did not disappoint. Not only did I hit 300MHz, I hit 330MHz!!! Unfortunately Windows would not boot with this CPU at 2640MHz and 1.650V vcore - not that I'd run it 24/7 at that vcore, but it would be interesting to do a suicide benchmark run or CPU-Z screenshot at those speeds. I don't know if it's the motherboard's lack of chipset voltage or just my CPU being limited, a valid concern since it needs extra vcore just to be stable at 2.4GHz. Reducing HTT by 5MHz increments, I booted into Windows at 320MHz HTT, or 2560MHz on the CPU core!!! That's awesome for such a budget CPU. Still, something wasn't happy at these speeds. Using 3DMark05 (just for the heck of it) there were occasionalglitching textures such as flickering or disappearing (most obvious with the "firefly" part), and occasionally the whole picture would shift downward and then jump back up. Higher CPU vcore seems to help but it could also mean hte chipset is at its limit - I cannot tell for sure. I know it isn't the video card because at the same video card overclock but with CPU at lower speeds, no flickering. However, I'll just do one suicide benchmark run for the heck of it with the CPU and video card at max. However, 2560MHz is apparently above the maximum because the system locked during 3DMark05.
Dropping HTT by 5MHz to 315 also got rid of the glitching textures in 3DMark05.
HTT 315MHz
CPU 2520MHz
vcore 1.650V
Memory 133 - DDR420 single channel
HT multiplier 3X
Video card X800GTO 12 pipelines 600MHz core 580MHz memory (1160MHz)
3DMark05 score 6060e
Imagine if I were using a Sempron 2800+ E3/E6 (may have better overclocks at lower voltages) and some good PC4000 memory. The extra cache plus running the memory at DDR525 speeds... who needs dual channel?
PICTURES
Picture of setup running on bench
Screenshot of results
Pictures courtesy of Newegg
CONCLUSION:
To say that I'm please with this board is to tell the truth. Even the regular price of $70 for the motherboard is well worth the cost. The stability and overclockability did not disappoint. The board may or may not be limited by lack of chipset voltage but most boards don't go too high above 300Mhz HTT anyways, so to hit 315MHz stable on default voltage is pretty darn decent. As a budget gaming system, especially in a mATX case for portability, this board can't be beat for socket 754. It also has the potential for "close to socket 939" performance once you up the bus speeds and use PC4000 memory and a Sempron with 256k cache like the 2800+.. That may sound strange to recommend a cheap motherboard and cheap CPU, but going with more expensive RAM, however I see PC4000 memory sticks in 1GB size for $99 these days. The buyer will have to make the decision on whether to invest $30 more on the memory or $90 more on the CPU to go with socket 939 (based on current average Sempron 2800+ versus A64 3200+ pricing). Except for not having the possibility to use a dual core CPU, such a socket 754 setup would be within a few percentage points of socket 939 for gaming.
If the board had TV-out for the IGP and SPDIF that was more than just headers on the PCB I'd be buying a second one soon just for use in my HTPC. As it is now, if you use SPDIF you'd have to buy or make a rear port and use a budget PCIe video card for TV-out.
CLIFF NOTES VERSION:
This board does everything it set out to do with high overclocks and more BIOS features than you can shake a stick at. Pushes my test CPU as high as ever and with full stability. May be limited for HTPC use because no TV-out for IGP and only bare headers for SPDIF.
OVERVIEW:
Here is a mini review of the Biostar Tforce6100 motherboard for socket 754. I obtained this board from Newegg as a refurbished unit for $43. New ones are available for about $70. As a refurbished unit, the board worked fine (not always the case with refurbs) but it was basically a bare board, no cabling, no driver CD, no ATX back plate and a 15 day warranty instead of one year. I originally was going to get a refurbished Geforce6100 model (instead of Tforce) but Newegg sold out before I could finish checking out, so this one being $5 more as a refurb (and $10 more comparing new products) I snagged one quick before they ran out of these.
The Geforce6100/6150 chipsets have been the source of some excitement because it is a contender to the ATI chipset for top IGP honors. Normally IGP isn't too exciting, but the latest Nvidia and ATI IGP chipsets are powerful enough for casual gamers and can be used as a stepping stone until enough money is saved up to purchase an add-on PCIe 16x graphics card. Coupled with the ability to drive dual monitors, DVI and TV-out, and you have a powerful integrated solution for anyone who does not call themselves gamers. Also, Nvidia is known for making overclockable chipsets. However, most of the actual products we are seeing for sale do not take advantage of all of the possibilities this chipset has to offer. The four Biostar offerings don't give us anything extra except for overclocking, and boy do they give it to us!
Biostar is not very well known among enthusiasts, but some will remember one other Biostar offering that is similar to these new board, the K7NCG-400 mATX board using the Nforce2 IGP chipset and offering a reasonable array of working overclocking settings in BIOS. Why I specify "working" is that I've personally known other mATX boards that offer some settings in BIOS, but not enough and sometimes the settings are there but don't work or don't "stick." Until the Jetway mATX board using the ATI chipset came out last year, the Biostar board was probably the most overclock-friendly offering from any company.
One thing I have to start noting is how motherboard manufacturers deal with warranty issues. Biostar is "old school" in that they basically don't want to deal with you. Yes, new Biostar motherboards have a one year warranty, but you have to buy the board from a place that will service that warranty. Most online retailers offer only a 30 day warranty, after which they tell you warranty is covered by the manufacturer. To my knowledge, Newegg and Directron are the exceptions - but read the fine print because even at Newegg some things are noted as "manufacturer's warranty only." What happens with your warranty if the vendor you purchased from does not want to take the board back? Biostar treats it as an "out of warranty service" meaning they'll charge you $30 to fix your motherboard. ECS is the same way with a one year warranty through reseller, or a $25 fee direct to end user. As an example, Abit is much better in that they offer a two year complete warranty and a third year parts only, and they state plainly that they will accept end user RMA. If warranty is important to you, then before you buy you should be aware of how the manufacturer deals with warranty issues and if they don't offer free, direct RMA, then find a vendor that will honor the full warranty.
MOTHERBOARD FEATURES:
Geforce6100 chipset
mATX form factor
1X PCIe 1X
1X PCIe 16X
2X PCI
2X SATA
10/100 NIC
5.1 Audio (ALC655)
"special" capacitors
overclocking
Pretty standard list of features. Besides being mATX with IGP, the specifications are nothing to get worked up over until you get to the capacitors and overclocking features. This board is the "Tforce" version meaning Biostar actually advertises it as being overclockable. I mention the capacitors because they are unlike what you see on most board (at least the ones for powering the CPU). These are supposedly better quality - I'll just take their word for it.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
The board has a fairly wild color scheme, with blue for the PCB and yellow, yellow-orange and light green for the plastic bits on the board. I'm probably getting used to boards having jarring colors these days as my first impression was "wow colorful" instead of "ouch my eyes hurt."
This board is smaller than the full size allowed by the mATX standard. Though it has such a small PCB real-estate to work with, most components and connectors were intelligently placed with the exception of the 4 pin ATX +12v plug and the floppy connector. The floppy connector is at the bottom underneath the last PCI slot while the ATX +12v connector is towards the middle of the PCB between the CPU/chipset area and rear ports. A much better place would be at the top edge of the board, such as on the Abit KN8 and ECS NFORCE4-A939 boards.
The 24 pin ATX connector is in the "proper" place, on the upper corner next to the RAM, and the IDE connectors are just below it. The SATA connectors are near the bottom corner of the board right at the edge, putting it really close to where typical hard drives are located in a mATX tower. There are a total of four fan headers, two at each end of the RAM slots. The chipset is arranged as a Northbridge/Southbridge combination with passive heatsinks on them. I've heard that some people have needed to actively cool these when overclocked highly - a testament to how high a system bus the board can run - more on that later. Suffice to say that at stock speeds or with reasonable overclocks, there shouldn't be a cooling problem in a reasonably ventilated case.
This board has POST reporting consisting of four red surface mount LEDs next to the ATX power connector. Presumably you can look up the light pattern and figure out why the board isn't turning on. Between the IDE ports and SATA ports are the power button and reset button. Yes, the buttons are right on the board making it easy to bench test. The power button has an ultrabright blue LED embedded in the middle of it that lights up when the board turns on.
Regarding the 24 pin ATX connector, I've heard that the extra 4 pins are to supply power to the PCIe slot so presumably you can get by with only a 20 pin connector, or a 20 pin with adaptor but that isn't recommended if you were actually using the PCIe slot for a video card.
The cramped layout of the board means that you may not be able to use huge CPU heatsinks with this board. The CPU HSF bracket ends about ¼" before the edge of the PCB and the Northbridge heatsink is about ¼" below the CPU HSF bracket. The PCIe 16x slot is about ½" below the chipset heatsink. Be aware of the space limitations before buying those Zalman 7700 HSFs, tall chipset heatsinks and sandwich/heatpipe video card coolers.
TEST PARTS
Sempron 2600+ with retail HSF (Palermo D0)
GigaRAM 512MB PC3200
Sapphire Radeon X800GTO Ultimate
CoolerMaster 120mm fan
Toshiba 16X DVDROM
Seagate 200GB EIDE HDD
Fortron FSP400-60GLN PSU
BIOS:
I'll just mention the "interesting" options.
Phoenix - AwardBIOS
Advanced Chipset Features:
Frame Buffer Size (for IGP) 6/32/64/128MB and Disabled
NB-->SB HT Speed 1x-5x
NB<--SB HT Speed 1x-5x
K8<->NB HT Width 8/16
NB<->SB HT Width 4/8/16
Spread Spectrum available for CPU, PCIE, SATA and HT (disabled if any are overclocked)
PC Health Status:
Shutdown Temperature 60/65/70ºC and Disabled
Smart FAN Control by Always ON/SMART
when set to SMART:
CPU Fan Off(ºC) 0-127 (16 default)
CPU Fan Start(ºC) 0-127 (24 default)
CPU Fan Full speed(ºC) 0-127 (64 default)
Start PWM Value 0-127 (40 default)
Slope PWM 0/1/2/4/8/16/32/64 PWM value/ºC (1 default)
CMOS Reload Program - lets you save different CMOS configurations for later retrieval, a great idea
OverClock Navigator Engine:
*Overclock Navigator Normal/Automate Overclock/Manual Overclock
Watch dog time(times) 1-31 (5 default) - I think this is to reset CPU speed if system doesn't POST
Integrated Memory Test DISABLED/ENABLED - run Memtest on next POST
*Overclock Navigator on Automate V6/V8/V12 - doesn't say how much it overclocks
*Overclock Navigator on MANUAL
CPU Voltage Regulator 0.800V-1.500V in 0.025V increments and up to 1.800V in 0.050V increments
Memory Voltage 2.6/2.7/2.8/2.9V - note that there is a memory overvolt >3V jumper on the motherboard - make sure your memory can take it before trying it
CPU Frequency 200-450 in 1MHz increments
HT Frequency 1x-5x and Auto
PCIe Clock 100-145 in 1MHz increments
Memclock Frequency Auto/100/133/166/200 - pretty standard, may change with E3/E6 chip installed
1T/2T Memory Timing
DRAM Configuration submenu - suffice to say that it has the regular latencies plus more options that I don't even know whta to do with, a total of 13 different configurable options. I'd recommend to not fiddle with anything beyond CAS settings unless you know what you're doing.
A couple of things to note:
-The only thing that's really missing is a way to boost chipset voltage. Sometimes that is needed to hit really high HTT speeds.
-Haven't played with it, but the CMOS Reload Program sounds really neat.
-There's no way to turn off the Biostar splash screen on POST, irritating.
-I really love the CPU fan control which along with being able to undervolt can make for a very quiet machine, plus you get to change the parameters of the temperature points and how fast the fan ramps up in speed. Awesome!!!
-Some CMOS settings cause the system to not POST, so unless you're into troubleshooting down to which exact settings causes what problems, leave advanced settings alone. For instance, changing the HT Width settings will sometimes cause no POST.
OVERCLOCKING RESULTS
To take heat out of the equation, I had the CPU fan running full speed, an 80mm fan pointing at the Northbridge and a 120MM fan cooling the Southbridge and video card.
I already know that my CPU can work at up to around 300MHz if it has a voltage boost, and this motherboard did not disappoint. Not only did I hit 300MHz, I hit 330MHz!!! Unfortunately Windows would not boot with this CPU at 2640MHz and 1.650V vcore - not that I'd run it 24/7 at that vcore, but it would be interesting to do a suicide benchmark run or CPU-Z screenshot at those speeds. I don't know if it's the motherboard's lack of chipset voltage or just my CPU being limited, a valid concern since it needs extra vcore just to be stable at 2.4GHz. Reducing HTT by 5MHz increments, I booted into Windows at 320MHz HTT, or 2560MHz on the CPU core!!! That's awesome for such a budget CPU. Still, something wasn't happy at these speeds. Using 3DMark05 (just for the heck of it) there were occasionalglitching textures such as flickering or disappearing (most obvious with the "firefly" part), and occasionally the whole picture would shift downward and then jump back up. Higher CPU vcore seems to help but it could also mean hte chipset is at its limit - I cannot tell for sure. I know it isn't the video card because at the same video card overclock but with CPU at lower speeds, no flickering. However, I'll just do one suicide benchmark run for the heck of it with the CPU and video card at max. However, 2560MHz is apparently above the maximum because the system locked during 3DMark05.
Dropping HTT by 5MHz to 315 also got rid of the glitching textures in 3DMark05.
HTT 315MHz
CPU 2520MHz
vcore 1.650V
Memory 133 - DDR420 single channel
HT multiplier 3X
Video card X800GTO 12 pipelines 600MHz core 580MHz memory (1160MHz)
3DMark05 score 6060e
Imagine if I were using a Sempron 2800+ E3/E6 (may have better overclocks at lower voltages) and some good PC4000 memory. The extra cache plus running the memory at DDR525 speeds... who needs dual channel?
PICTURES
Picture of setup running on bench
Screenshot of results
Pictures courtesy of Newegg
CONCLUSION:
To say that I'm please with this board is to tell the truth. Even the regular price of $70 for the motherboard is well worth the cost. The stability and overclockability did not disappoint. The board may or may not be limited by lack of chipset voltage but most boards don't go too high above 300Mhz HTT anyways, so to hit 315MHz stable on default voltage is pretty darn decent. As a budget gaming system, especially in a mATX case for portability, this board can't be beat for socket 754. It also has the potential for "close to socket 939" performance once you up the bus speeds and use PC4000 memory and a Sempron with 256k cache like the 2800+.. That may sound strange to recommend a cheap motherboard and cheap CPU, but going with more expensive RAM, however I see PC4000 memory sticks in 1GB size for $99 these days. The buyer will have to make the decision on whether to invest $30 more on the memory or $90 more on the CPU to go with socket 939 (based on current average Sempron 2800+ versus A64 3200+ pricing). Except for not having the possibility to use a dual core CPU, such a socket 754 setup would be within a few percentage points of socket 939 for gaming.
If the board had TV-out for the IGP and SPDIF that was more than just headers on the PCB I'd be buying a second one soon just for use in my HTPC. As it is now, if you use SPDIF you'd have to buy or make a rear port and use a budget PCIe video card for TV-out.
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