Biostar TPower i55 – Super Middle Weight Contender
by Rajinder Gill on November 25, 2009 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Today’s test subject is the Biostar TPower i55 that can be purchased for around $180 at various e-tailors.
TPower i55 Feature Set
BIOSTAR includes a full featured set of components like the Realtek ALC 888 HD audio codec, dual LAN (Realtek RTL 8111DL & Intel 82578), LSI FW322 IEEE-1394a, JMicron JMB363 eSATA , and full support for the Core i7/i5 S1156 processor series.
Bundled in the box, you get the standard rear I/O panel cover along with 1 x IDE cable, 6 x SATA cables, 6 x SATA power cables, SLI and CF bridges, an informative manual, and a software/driver CD.
TPower Software
Two overclocking tools are bundled on the supplied CD; TPower & TOVERCLOCK. Both allow on-the-fly control of rail voltages and BCLK easily enough. Other features include, voltage/temperature monitoring, profile save/load and quick touch overclocking for those who prefer automated overclocking methods. The system runs a quick stability test, ramps bus frequencies and repeats this process until the system crashes. Upon reboot and relaunch of the TOVERCLOCKER utility the highest stable frequency is automatically selected and applied. We found this worked fairly well, although manual overclocking is always the best route. TPOWER software also includes VGA clock adjustment (for BIOSTAR VR8xxx series cards), mother board BIOS flashing and eHot-Line which allows collects system information and relays it back to BIOSTAR tech support in the event of a user support query.
One thing we did not like about TOVERCLOCKER, is that if you save a manual profile and then reload it, the software will attempt to reload the profile any time you reopen TOVERCLOCKER at a later date. This causes problems in situations where the profile overclock is considerably higher than the normal operating frequency, the system will crash before you can make any changes. The only way to rectify this is to either delete the saved profile manually, or reinstall the TOVERCLOCKER application. A better choice would be allow users to manually load the profile after the application launches. Overall, TOVERCLOCKER is a fairly well rounded utility, although we still prefer the outright simplicity and power of EVGA’s E-LEET utility for overclocking.
BIOS
The BIOS layout is very good and offers a significant amount of settings for overclocking.
BIOSTAR’s O.N.E menu (Overclocking Navigator Engine) is where all the action takes place with a wide variety of adjustments including the CPU Core, PLL, VTT, PCH, VDimm and VRef voltages. Clock generator output voltage and skew adjustments are also available for maximum BCLK overclocking.
Overclocking profiles can be saved, loaded and individually named in one of the available 10 slots. A built in BIOS flashing function is available, allowing users to save and flash BIOS from a USB or floppy drive easily.
Fan control is only offered for the CPU fan header (via BIOS/TOVERCLOCKER/TPower), offering full temperature range and speed control which is great. Unfortunately the SYS fans cannot be controlled at all.
Let’s move on to the general layout and features...
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granulated - Friday, December 4, 2009 - link
I want to know how why the AMD board murders the rest in two games when it's in it's more usual 'bringing up the rear' position in the rest.ta2 - Monday, November 30, 2009 - link
Seems like you've been using a pretty crappy i5 chip. For it to top out as 4.1GHz is incredibly bad. I manage 4GHz on a GA-P55-UD4 with ALL voltages at stock except VCore at 1.30V. You have not really pushed the BCLK on this board and for you to need 1.36V for 4.1GHz is pretty terrible. I consider myself a novice overclocker, but either you're using a very bad chip or this board isn't so hot."We could run our memory at DDR3-2152". This board is officially rated up to 2600MHz for memory... so we haven't even tried to get close to the spec speed.
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - link
It's an average 750 CPU. There are plenty out there that top out early.With regards to 2600 MHz memory, I don't know of any CPU's that can hold 2600MHz speeds fully application stable. That's a benchmarking claim for users who run processors with sub zero cooling or like to post suicide shots. This article is focused on daily PC use. A BCLK of 215 is perfectly respectable for everyday usage scenarios (especialy with S3 resume working).
later
Raja
lopri - Friday, November 27, 2009 - link
The board looks really awesome. I mean, the fact one of the main gripes is the lack of clear CMOS button in the rear I/O panel says a lot. I like that Biostar used the Intel ethernet PHY to take advantage of ICH10R's built-in network controller. So many times I see CPU usages going 20~30% when there is heavy network trafficking, and I wondered why my experiences are so different from what I see in the reviews. Granted different packets show different performance characteristics and anti-virus is probably half of that CPU load, but the CPU usage wasn't as severe on my BadAxe 2 (which I use for WHS) so I do believe the Intel NIC/PHY is superior to that of Realtek.Another welcome news is the flawless S3 functionality under overclocking, and I applaud it very, very much. Board's layout looks extremely clean and logical as well. For me the downside of this board are the lack of fan headers and the price tag which can be (hopefully) rectified in the future.
Thank you for a thorough review (for a split second I thought Gary was the author, but please don't take offense ;) ) and I just might have found my next motherboard.
lopri - Saturday, November 28, 2009 - link
Well, actually I do have one more gripe. I am not a fan of daisy chained heatsinks, and on this board the heatsink with 'Biostar' written on it kinda sticks out. I'm guessing what's underneath are those 4 PCIe blocks often found bare on other boards. (?) How hot do they get and do you think it's justified to having a heatsink over it based on that? If not, I'd prefer to have more room for CPU HSF installation and video card installation.Rajinder Gill - Saturday, November 28, 2009 - link
Hi,The BIOSTAR logo sink does not really cover anything other than to add mass to the enitire assembly. Stock operating conditions, you could get away with passive use. If overclocking and raising PWM switching frequency(for whatever reason), while runnign a 'hot' GPU in the first slot, you'll probably want to cool the HS assembly depending on what kind of case you have. The lack of fan headers obviously does not help.
regards
Raja
lopri - Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - link
Thank you for the clarification. That said, since the board is kind of heavy on use of heatsinks, maybe they can use real screws instead of plastic push-pins? Faced with the Almighty AnandTech editors' advice, who knows? Biostar might listen. *wink* *wink*yuhong - Friday, November 27, 2009 - link
"It’s the first time in a long time we’ve not had to request fixes for peripherals or BIOS issues/tweaks to complete a benchmark, a welcome change indeed!"Yep, remember this:
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