- Oct 13, 1999
- 22,377
- 2
- 81
Here's the gist of it...
Zap's Biostar Tforce6100 mini review
Read that review and you'll know just about everything there is to know about this board's BIOS, except timings are for DDR2 and vDIMM is lower, again for DDR2. Also, the extra ">3v" voltage jumper is now a "2.2v" jumper. The board's chipset and layout is a bit different but you can get that from the pics at Newegg and knowing that it is for socket AM2 and uses the Nforce 550 chipset.
Speaking of Newegg, that's where I purchased the board from. C'mon man, when will you guys start sending me free products to review for sending you business.
I became interested in this board because it seems to be one of the cheapest socket AM2 boards that used the newer family of Nvidia Nforce 5XX chipset and I wanted to see what it could do, plus I got great results (except for one underperforming board) with Biostar Tforce6100 boards in all three socket flavors (754/939/AM2, again all from Newegg).
Also, HardOCP reviewed it and didn't have too much luck overclocking it.
That sounded like a challenge.
I am pleased to say that I had much better luck than they in overclocking this board.
I am sorry to say that even so, this board completely underperformed the Tforce6100 AM2 in overclocking.
With the Tforce6100 AM2 I was able to POST at close to 340MHz HTT, and be near stable (crashed out of CPU burn-in after ½ hour on a locked multiplier chip) at 330MHz HTT.
With the Tforce 550 I was not able to POST over 275MHz HTT (tested in 5MHz increments). This is a pathetic overclock compared to most other Biostar boards I've used lately, except for two. First is the Biostar Geforce6100-M7 which only hit about 270MHz HTT, but that isn't even their vaunted Tforce series. Second is a Tforce6100 that for whatever reason didn't want to go over 280MHz HTT - strange because a second, identical board was hitting 330MHz HTT stable. Well, HardOCP ended up only reliably getting to 250MHz HTT and I only ended up reliably getting to around 275MHz HTT. What's up with that, Biostar?
Other things of note:
- Interesting to have 4 PCI slots which is rare these days.
- ATX 24 pin power is back in a retarded spot forcing the power cable to stretch over the CPU area.
- No printer port, just headers. C'mon, you saved a whole 3 cents in manufacturing on that one!
- This board acts just like my other Biostar socket AM2 board with RAM. The "faster" RAM cannot be detected properly so it won't POST, but will just give a memory BEEEEEEEEP. I have to put in some cheaper RAM to get into CMOS setup and manually set timings, save/exit, then shutdown and replace the RAM... after which the "faster" RAM worked fine. I'm still somewhat convinced that most people who think they have dead RAM or a dead motherboard are coming across similar issues and the parts are not dead, just will not (initially) work with each other.
- Last thing of note is that between the IDE/FDD ports and the RAM slots are two smallish capacitors and three mosfets. These get EXTREMELY HOT even at default clock speeds even after being on for just a minute or two. That is of concern to me. I actually burned my thumb on it when I placed it there to hold the board steady while I swapped RAM and now my thumb is still a bit tender.
Anyways, that's all for this review. I'm dissapointed and so I'm not going to waste time writing too many more words about it. Besides, time to take a shower and head to the LAN party!!!
Zap's Biostar Tforce6100 mini review
Read that review and you'll know just about everything there is to know about this board's BIOS, except timings are for DDR2 and vDIMM is lower, again for DDR2. Also, the extra ">3v" voltage jumper is now a "2.2v" jumper. The board's chipset and layout is a bit different but you can get that from the pics at Newegg and knowing that it is for socket AM2 and uses the Nforce 550 chipset.
Speaking of Newegg, that's where I purchased the board from. C'mon man, when will you guys start sending me free products to review for sending you business.
I became interested in this board because it seems to be one of the cheapest socket AM2 boards that used the newer family of Nvidia Nforce 5XX chipset and I wanted to see what it could do, plus I got great results (except for one underperforming board) with Biostar Tforce6100 boards in all three socket flavors (754/939/AM2, again all from Newegg).
Also, HardOCP reviewed it and didn't have too much luck overclocking it.
That sounded like a challenge.
I am pleased to say that I had much better luck than they in overclocking this board.
I am sorry to say that even so, this board completely underperformed the Tforce6100 AM2 in overclocking.
With the Tforce6100 AM2 I was able to POST at close to 340MHz HTT, and be near stable (crashed out of CPU burn-in after ½ hour on a locked multiplier chip) at 330MHz HTT.
With the Tforce 550 I was not able to POST over 275MHz HTT (tested in 5MHz increments). This is a pathetic overclock compared to most other Biostar boards I've used lately, except for two. First is the Biostar Geforce6100-M7 which only hit about 270MHz HTT, but that isn't even their vaunted Tforce series. Second is a Tforce6100 that for whatever reason didn't want to go over 280MHz HTT - strange because a second, identical board was hitting 330MHz HTT stable. Well, HardOCP ended up only reliably getting to 250MHz HTT and I only ended up reliably getting to around 275MHz HTT. What's up with that, Biostar?
Other things of note:
- Interesting to have 4 PCI slots which is rare these days.
- ATX 24 pin power is back in a retarded spot forcing the power cable to stretch over the CPU area.
- No printer port, just headers. C'mon, you saved a whole 3 cents in manufacturing on that one!
- This board acts just like my other Biostar socket AM2 board with RAM. The "faster" RAM cannot be detected properly so it won't POST, but will just give a memory BEEEEEEEEP. I have to put in some cheaper RAM to get into CMOS setup and manually set timings, save/exit, then shutdown and replace the RAM... after which the "faster" RAM worked fine. I'm still somewhat convinced that most people who think they have dead RAM or a dead motherboard are coming across similar issues and the parts are not dead, just will not (initially) work with each other.
- Last thing of note is that between the IDE/FDD ports and the RAM slots are two smallish capacitors and three mosfets. These get EXTREMELY HOT even at default clock speeds even after being on for just a minute or two. That is of concern to me. I actually burned my thumb on it when I placed it there to hold the board steady while I swapped RAM and now my thumb is still a bit tender.
Anyways, that's all for this review. I'm dissapointed and so I'm not going to waste time writing too many more words about it. Besides, time to take a shower and head to the LAN party!!!
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