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The X2 3600 Newegg Combo |
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Featuring the Biostar T-Force 550 |
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by Josh Walrath |
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Overclockers Rejoice! I was not entirely sure what to expect when I first booted the board and got into the BIOS. Was this going to be a solid, yet unexciting board? Would there even be an option to overclock? If so, how many settings can I actually adjust? What I found was far more than I was expecting. Every single adjustment you can think of is put into this BIOS. Voltages for every component can be adjusted, voltages for the busses can also be tuned, and timings for nearly everything are present. A user could get into big trouble with all of the low level memory timings that are available. A person could spend weeks going through all of the potential permutations to squeeze every last ounce of performance from their system. Unfortunately, the price of this is the potential instability of not totally understanding all of the timings and their relationships to each other. For most users, adjusting 4 memory timing settings should be more than adequate.
Note the six USB 2.0 ports, as well as the antiquated serial port. While I would have preferred a parallel port here, 6 USB ports could not co-exist with the size of the parallel port and still retain the sound riser. This is honestly one of the most complete and configurable overclocking BIOS that I have run into. It seriously gives DFI a run for their money when it comes to user adjustable settings. Everything is very well laid out in the BIOS, and it never becomes unwieldy or intimidating. There are good descriptions of most of the settings as well. For both beginners and experts, this BIOS has a lot to offer. Biostar did a really excellent job. The next question that comes to mind is if the board itself can handle the higher speeds that such a BIOS unlocks? I am happy to report that this is one of the easiest and fastest boards for AM2 processors that I have yet laid hands on. I am not a hardcore overclocker, nor do I have a lot of tricks to use to get the very most out of a board. I was able to take the HTT up to an impressive 340 MHz. This is far greater than the 290 MHz I could take the Asus M2N32-SLI rev. 1.02.
The bundle is about as spartan as one can get. Only the basics are included. The CD features all the drivers the board needs, including AMD CPU drivers. It also has hardware monitoring, overclocking, bios flashing, fan control, and a free anti-virus. For those who want to test the board outside of the case, it features the power and reset buttons on the bottom of the board. This allows users to power up and reset the board without fiddling with jumpers. This is of little use to the average Joe, but for those that wish to play with it outside of a case it is a very handy feature. Finding the New Limit When I first purchased this combo I was expecting to get the best overclock for the X2 3600+ on the M2N32-SLI board. After my first look I figured that I might as well try the board offered with the combo and see how far it could go. I couldn’t have been happier with the results. Here are the components that I used for overclocking the T-Force 550.
AMD Athlon X2 3600 Biostar T-Force 550 Leadtek GeForce 7800 GTX Supertalent 2 GB PC6400 Hitachi 250 GB SATA-2 7200 RPM Drive Lite-On DVD-R/RW Drive ThermalTake PurePower 600 Watt Power Supply Windows XP 64 Professional
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Copyright 1999-2007 PenStar Systems, LLC. |
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