Biostar TA690G - Overclocking

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This isn't a motherboard made for overclocking, but I can't let a review go on without testing to see how far you can push it. The first great news here is that the BIOS is filled with all kinds of tweaking and voltage control options. Rarely do you see a mATX motherboard with full voltage and speed controls. This promises nothing as far as overclocking, but it is the first requirement for a decent overclocking board.

I was able to get a decent overclock with this board. The CPU isn't an awesome overclocker, but there is surely some head room left in it. Overall, for being a motherboard that clearly wasn't designed for overclocking, it does a great job.

Testing

It's time to begin testing to see how well this motherboard performs. Until this point, the motherboard has surpassed all my expectations. Initially, booting up the computer was not a problem. The memory's default voltage is 1.95, which is more than enough to boot this RAM. I have had issues with many other boards in the past. It's nice to see a board that simply works.

There aren't a lot of different benchmarks for motherboards, but I will use some programs that stress different parts of the computer. Since this motherboard also supports onboard video, I will run a few games through the benchmarks too.

I occasionally run into problems with the heatsinks on chipsets becoming really hot. It doesn't seem good to run that hot. My reaction to this is to set up a fan over the chipset. With a heatsink this small, I was all but ready to get a fan out of the closet. However, it wasn't hot at all. Two thumbs up to AMD for this incredible chipset.

WinRar

This benchmark uses some important parts of the motherboard: the CPU, the memory, the chipset, and the southbridge. This test will see how fast the PC can compress and extract data. Higher speeds are better.

Super Pi

This benchmark computes the numbers of pi. It will need input from the memory, CPU, and chipset.

PCMark Vantage

This tests everything about the computer from gaming to word processing. It will give us a great look at everything about the board, like the audio, network IC, the chipset, and even the hard drives and memory.  The CPU will be used in all the tests

Next: Testing continued >>
 

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Comments On: Biostar TA690G

· Very nice review. However, I don't trust Biostar from my first build... it was...    · Bought this board and was really impressed with ease of setup, took right off ...   >>> Post your comment now!

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