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Biostar TForce TA690G Review

Good things in small packages…

by Josh Walrath

Setup

            I have been using Vista 64 as of late, and I have grown to actually enjoy it.  It does require more horsepower than Windows XP, but I am getting used to the new features and setup.  So far I have had limited issues with compatibility, which is a far cry from what we all experienced in the first weeks after Vista’s release.

Biostar TForce TA690G

Asus MVA-VM 690G

Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8 GHz 2 x 1 MB L2 Cache)

Supertalent 2 x 1 GB PC6400 4:4:3:8 timings

Seagate 7200.10 320 GB SATA HD

Toshiba DVD-ROM

Thermaltake PurePower 600 Watt Power Supply

Vista Ultimate 64

Catalyst 7.9

The three phase power circuitry should be considered the minimum needed for modern processors.  Note the solid caps between the mosfets/chokes and the CPU.

            I compared this motherboard to the Asus MVA-VM, which is another 690G motherboard.  One big difference is that the MVA board does not feature voltage control on the memory, and at least 2.1v is needed to get these particular DIMMS running at 4:4:3:8 timings.  As it is, the Asus board defaults to 5:5:5:15 timings at DDR-2 800 speeds.

            There are two issues that I have so far run into with this board.  The first is that the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive can cause the system to fail to boot, depending on which USB port it is plugged into.  When looking at the backplate, the USB ports on the right caused the system to lock on boot, while plugging the drive into the USB ports on the left side with the USB mouse caused everything to boot correctly.  The other issue was with HD DVD playback.  Certain resolutions would not display the video, but others would.  For example 1280 x 1024 would play perfectly fine (though the video was obviously downsampled from full 1080p to something around 480p or 720p), but when playing at 1600 x 1200 the video would not show up.  I unfortunately did not have a 1080p HDCP compliant LCD to do further testing on, but the playback at the lower resolutions was crisp and smooth. 

Results

SiSoft Sandra XII

            I’m starting things off with a little SiSoft Sandra XII, the latest incarnation of this standard benchmark.  The CPU tests should all fall within the same area of performance, so I took a look at memory bandwidth instead.

            Because of the ability to raise the voltage and adjust the timings, the Biostar board takes a good lead over the Asus. 

Neither heatsink is very large, but they do more than a good job of keeping the chipset cool.  I was very surprised by how cool running the northbridge was, even when stressed by 3D benchmarks.

Cinebench 9.5

            This benchmark takes a look at multiple rendering functions using both CPUs and graphics hardware.

            While the differences are not huge, the Biostar board is consistently faster throughout.  We see a pretty big difference in the CPU results, and a slightly smaller one with the graphics.

Next:  More Results

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