The Biostar X470GTN Motherboard Review: AM4 ITX Revisited
by Gavin Bonshor on October 24, 2018 10:00 AM ESTBiostar X470GTN Conclusion
The Biostar X470GTN is a gaming orientated mini-ITX motherboard which makes up one half of their X470 options; the other X470 motherboard in their line-up is the X470GT8. The X470GTN represents one of the cheapest available X470 options at $130, depending on current deals and the retailer of choice. The X470GTN is the direct successor to the X370GTN which we was incidentally our first AM4 motherboard review. So many users could be asking what separates the two models and what justifies the $20 jump in price. The short answer is that there are three main differences: the 'iron slot' protection on the full-length PCIe 3.0 x16, the newer X470 chipset, and better RGB control. The rest from the specifications, the rear panel input and output layout, even down to the memory supported which remains at DDR4-3200, with a maximum capacity of 32 GB.
One other difference comes through the supplied software and newly skinned UEFI BIOS. The bulk of the usefulness of the software comes through the Biostar Racing GT utility which combines essential elements such as the Vivid Led DJ which offers users with customization options, albeit it with some limitations. The OC/OV section also offers limited overclocking options and is insufficient for sub-zero overclockers. Biostar is advertising an onboard LN2 switch designed to alleviate cold boot bugs from CPUs but unfortunately isn't the case as the switch is nowhere to be found. Users looking to the Biostar X470GTN with the intention of utilizing this switch will be somewhat disappointed, but the allure of a $130 motherboard with such 'extreme' features is a bit of a pipe-dream.
The Racing GT BIOS has had a visual overhaul and Biostar has this time included much better RGB customization options within. Aside from this, the pitfalls in the BIOS and overclocking options implemented over the X370GTN hasn’t been improved upon and the use of voltage offsets as opposed to allowing users to set defined voltage values for the CPU and memory to be a primitive method of doing things, especially in this day and age.
From a performance point of view, the Biostar X470GTN did a stellar job within our testing suite in a number of key areas such as non UEFI POST time with the current fastest booting times so far in all the AM4 boards we have tested. Another strong showing came in our deferred procedure call latency test as the X470GTN again gave us another top score in our graphs with a DPC latency of 87.8; a vastly superior result to that given by the succeeded X370GTN model. The performance within our Handbrake video conversion benchmark proved very good and the results given from other benchmarks such as 3DPM and POV-Ray further bolster that the X470GTN is actually a good value offering as far as performance is concerned.
The power consumption in both idle and long idle states was somewhat better than expected, showing that some improvements have been made, most likely a consequence of a less power-hungry Promontory X470 chipset. The overclocking performance was also a particular highlight with our Ryzen 7 1700’s ambient limitation of 4.0 GHz being something that was easily achievable. It has to be noted that despite the overclocking options in the BIOS being not so great, the X470GTN showed some of the most consistent and tightest voltage control when set voltage compared to load voltage was observed.
The power delivery consists of an average, but expected 4+3 phase design which consists of an Intersil ISL95712 PWM controller, three Intersil ISL6625A drivers and seven individual chokes assigned to each of the seven Nikos PK612DZ dual N-channel MOSFETs. The included heatsink doesn’t have much weight and mass to it, but it’s more than ample for a board of its size and thoroughbred with modest voltages and overclocks applied; within systems with ample airflow of course. Other cooling options on the board are fairly standard for a mini-ITX motherboard with two 4-pin fan headers available with one set up as a CPU fan header and the other dedicated to a system fan.
The Biostar X470 is a good option for users looking to harness the power of the desktop Ryzen processors to create a pocket rocket gaming system or even a good value small form factor gaming rig. The differences between the X370GTN and this newer X470GTN are minor at best and represents Biostars attempt to get users to notice them in the midst of a market dominated by four main vendors. Taking what’s essentially an X370 model and placing a newer chipset isn’t going to fool those with a keen eye, but for what its worth Biostar has done a good job with the things they have actually changed over the previous iteration, even though they haven’t gone as far as they should in with regards to the overclocking settings. Users looking to build a great value small factor system should certainly consider this board, but Biostar do have some areas in which they could improve upon, starting with the firmware. The increased price means we're not as excited as we were with the X370GTN when it launched, which tempers our conclusion a little.
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Marlin1975 - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
Thanks for the Power Delivery Comparison. That's something that is hard to check for if not in a good review. Keep up the good work.gavbon - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
Thanks Marlin, appreciated! We're looking to further add to this going forwardMrCommunistGen - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
I actually really appreciate this as well because this kind of information has been hard to come by in the past. I had some questions regarding the included table.The ASRock B450 Gaming ITX/ac is listed in the table as using the same controller (ISL95712) in "6+2" mode. The spec sheet for ISL95712 states that it is up to a 4+3 controller. The table also doesn't list any doublers. Doesn't this make the board a "big 3+2" rather than a 6+2?
I didn't look at any of the other boards in the table closely, but I was just doing a bunch of reading on the ASRock ITX boards recently and so I was looking very closely at that line in the table.
Thanks for the review!
TeutonJon78 - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
It would help more if it was accurate.The ISL95712 maxes out at 4+3 phases, so it can't run in 6+2 as listed in the chart. On the ASRock boards, then run a 3+2 setup but with two sets of MOSFETs and chokes in parallel, but not doubled. There is only one capacitor per phase. It helps keep the temps down by splitting the current, but it's still only a 3 phase design.
Plus, it would be more meaningful if the chart was for similar style boards rather than a smattering of different form factors.In this case, the other m-ITX boards.
DanNeely - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
Just thinking about POST times, when UEFI was the next big thing we'd been repeatedly promised that it'd allow 1-2s POST times because unlike BIOS it could start components up in parallel instead of 1 at a time.While current boards do post faster than their predecessors the speedup never came close to meeting the hype. Does anyone know why reality fell so short of the promise?
Dragonstongue - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
likely because there is so much crud to siphon through before it completes the processthe same from going to post to OS log screen to fully booted OS
am sure there are ways to "speed it up" but often those methods come with chance of something terrible happening and not knowing what took place.
be happy the new stuff is WAY quicker and more energy efficient then the old 9/10 so even if it takes a wee bit longer to boot up, patience come to those whom wait.
SSD helps that much I know, but as far as only 1 to 2s to finish post..umm I personally never heard of such promises, the board I am using is AM3/3+ M5A99X EVO (v1) which uses a UEFI based bios design and just going from HDD to SSD made post much quicker and a few changes I made as well to speed it up also helped.
I personally have more issue with how long it takes to shut down then be fully booted up ^.^
Vatharian - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
As fun as it sounds there are 10 year old systems that run on UEFI. I must say, that boot times are much quicker on them, while supporting much wider range of hardware. Feature-wise it's hit or miss, I have 9 year old board that's capable of booting from NVMe, thanks to drivers being easy to punch in, but it won't allow user mode to write to boot manager area, thus linux bootloader installation will fail (I just have to point the path manually from the UEFI setup).JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
Ahmdal's Law, in a way. There is a relative speedup to be had, but desktops don't need to be shutdown/restarted extremely often. Often just letting it go into sleep mode is adequate for me, and leaves my workspace in exactly the same place it was before.For laptops or other mobile devices, shutting down is more necessary when moving between work environments, (given that sleep mode will drain battery life over time anyways, hibernate isn't ideal and can clog the main storage disk with a file equal in size to your capacity in memory, etc.). For mobile PC devices, I have personally noted that boot times are appreciably fast.
Also, personal anecdote, but I've had boards that when set to options for "fast booting", not only would it refuse to take in DEL or F11 prompts to get into BIOS screen when booting up, but it would go from a stable (normal) bootup, to a blazingly fast crash/reboot cycle for 5 loops before landing me back on the BIOS page with stock settings. This is before and after BIOS updates.
Personal opinion, but I just think it's intentional that for the enthusiast PC market that vendors don't _want_ to speed up boot times because the same users buying these motherboards are enthusiasts likely willing or needing to occasionally go into BIOS and change boot order of disks, or do overclocking features, etc. and making sure users can actually get into BIOS easily and reliably (hence a slow boot with ample time to opt-in to boot to BIOS) may have been one of their intended design goals.
Vatharian - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
There is reverse effect in action: amount of stuff that is set to initialize during boot is staggering. I'd asku you to find 1MB legacy BIOS, while 16MB UEFI is not uncommon, and I am in a possession of motherboard that has 512 MB SPI flash for it (not 512 megabits - half a gigabyte). Then, amount of stuff you can boot from went trough the roof. On top of drivers for everything that need to start up and register, there are at least three different frameworks that monitor hardware and need to set up.Then, every damn power controller, voltage regulator, thermal zones, OC chips are smart need to boot up too.
Then, amount of memory skyrocketed - if you remember old BIOS happily running memcheck kilobyte after kilobyte, until it reaches that 64MB, and compare to you 64GB system, that still gets a cursory check, despite memory NOT being 1024x faster.
You can cut your boot time down, if you properly disable CSM, disable external controllers (or at least disable their boot rom), properly set up boot sequence to UEFI bootloader, and use GPU with a BIOS that supports GOP, and finally enable fast boot, your PC WILL boot in ~2-3 seconds plus OS.
On the other hand, while handling servers I am accustomed to boot times on the orders of 20 minutes at extreme case.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
My system (H87 with NVME boot mod BIOS) gets to windows faster than my 4k DP monitor wakes up from standby. The DVI one is a bit faster. I guess around 3 seconds maybe?