ASUS P7F7-E WS SuperComputer (3450 Express) Motherboard Review!

Introduction

Although not usually covered by the enthusiast media, ASUS has a great line up of Workstation boards that have just as many features (including overclocking) as their non-professional line up. We have taken a look at one of these before; the P7P55 WS SuperComputer and it was a fast board.

Today we have the chance to look at the follow on to that board, the P7F7-E WS SuperComputer. This board is built around the 3450 Express chipset (ibex peak). This has many of the same features as the H57 with a few improvements for the professional crowd. ASUS has also dropped a NF200 chip on this board to allow for some serious multi-GPU work.

The price tag for this 1156 socket, multi-GPU, dual LAN wielding board is only $290 at NewEgg.com. That is not bad at all once you see what it can do.

Well then, let's break out the adding machines and see if the features and performance equal the asking price.

Package and Contents

A box, a box; my kingdom for a box. Well, I do not have a kingdom, but that is really ok as I did not get a box with this one. What happened was that when we were sent this it was (and as far as I know still is) the only media sample available. This meant that while everything else was the retail BOM, the retail packaging was not completely final.

But not to worry, while we cannot show you what the box is going to look like, we can certainly tell you what you will get inside it.

You can also head over to NewEgg.com and look at their image gallery to see the box.

The Board

 

 

One of the things that I noticed right off the bat with the ASUS P7F7-E is the layout of the lower half of the board. It is very clear from this and from the marketing on the product that you are buying a board designed to use multiple GPUs. This is a key factor to this board. But before we get into all of that, let's look at the general layout and features.

 

 

Starting off at our usual spot, we see that ASUS has dropped on an extra pair of RAM slots. This will be good news for many professional users. Although you cannot load this board up with six 4GB modules (the max is still 16GB of addressable RAM), you can extend the amount of RAM you can use without spending a ton of money.

 

To get 16GB with four slots you are going to pay quite a bit more than you would if you are using the P7F7-E WS. On the opposite side you can also extend out to 12GB spending much less money as well. For some reason ASUS put an extra 4-pin Molex connector for board power up here; while the extra power is nice, the location is a tad awkward.

 

 

At the top of the RAM slots are three switches. As this is an ASUS board first and foremost, these are there to give you some overvolting options. You can extend the voltage available to the CPU, IMC and RAM.

 

 

Looking at the CPU socket, we find the familiar heatpipe layout. This is the same layout we saw on the P7P55 WS. The tall blue heatsinks are something of a fixture for the Intel based WS boards. Despite its cramped appearance, there is still plenty of room around the CPU for large air coolers and even our large Hyper 212 with two fans fit without issue.

 

 

Although the tall heatsinks are nice and provide excellent cooling, they do get in the way of plugging in the 8-pin Aux power cable. I think this one little plug is going to be an issue on just about any new high-end ATX board. To be honest with you, while this is an issue that is repeated over and over again with just about every manufacturer, it is not something they can do much about. This plug needs to be in close proximity to the CPU. The reason for this is that the traces (the small lines crisscrossing the board) cannot run power like this over long distances efficiently.

 

 

Moving down to the lower half of the board, you can see the well-spaced slots for all of your GPUs. Of course, not all of these are fully x16 electrical. The two blue are x16 (thanks to the NF200 bridge) and the two black are x8. In between each of these is more than enough space to accommodate a dual height cooler (if you do not use the x1 slots). The board fully supports Tri SLI and Quad Crossfire. It also supports up to four NVIDIA Tesla GPUs (if you are using a Clarkdale CPU).

 

 

Here we see the six SATA II and two SATA 3.0 ports as well as two internal USB ports. These USB ports are ideal for software dongles for applications like Lightwave 3D, etc.

 

 

To ensure that the SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 ports get enough bandwidth, ASUS has dropped a PLX bridge onto the board. This gives the extra PCIe Gen 2.0 lanes needed to keep the data flowing.

 

 

The PLX bridge is, according to ASUS, a much better method for controlling both SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 on the P55 and H5x boards. It has multiple PCIe Gen 2.0 lanes that it then translates back to a x4 Gen 1.0 lane to the chipset.

 

The upshot of this is that the Marvell and NEC controllers have all the bandwidth they need while the PLX bridge is responsible for handling the data transfer back to the P55 MCP. There is a small amount of latency with this, but in the end it is a much cleaner solution.

 

 

Looking at the ports on the I/O panel, you will see that ASUS has thrown in a pair of Firewire 800 ports as well as two LAN ports.

 

Now, the extra LAN port is nothing new, but the fact that these ports can be teamed using 802.3ad Link Aggregation Protocol and load balancing/ failover is. The LAN ports are controlled by RealTek 8112L chips which offer Gbe connection across both (up to 2GB with teaming).

 

 

The ASUS P7F7-E WS is a well laid out board for its intended use. It is very much designed to be either a professional content creation board (primarily graphical or video) or a computational monster. The four available PCIe x16 mechanical slots give some amazing freedom in your choice of GPU. This is especially true if you are using Adobe CS5 products; you can get a pretty big boost if you are using NVIDIA Quadros and Premier.

 

BIOS

The BIOS on the P7F7-E WS follows the AMI layout as usual. Also as usual are the heavy overclocking features that ASUS stuffs into the board. These are found on the AI Tweaker Page.

Inside the AI Tweaker page are a few sub menus that give you greater control over your CPU and memory.

There are also some pretty cool fan options in the BIOS. Along with the auto controls, ASUS has added in some manual ones that are very nice.

Overclocking

Overclocking the P7F7-E WS was as easy as overclocking any ASUS board. As per our usual methods, we started with the "CPU LevelUP!" to get our base. From there we pushed forward until we finally hit a high of 185 x 22 for a recorded stable clock of 4.083GHz. The voltages to achieve this were pretty mild in comparison to some of the other boards we have tinkered with. The CPU was only at 1.38V and CPU PLL are also low at 1.9V.

You can see the validation for our overclock here.

It is pretty impressive to have this type of overclocking headroom on a professional level board. Normally overclocking is left out completely.

TurboV EVO

The ASUS TurboV is probably my favorite overclocking software. It is simple, clean and powerful. The only thing that it lacks is the ability to drop the memory multiplier using the manual clocking tools. I am sure there is a reason for this omission, but it would be nice to see it in a future revision of the software.

Here you can see your system status at a glance as well as overclock the CPU, memory and GPU fairly quickly.

Included with the overclocking tools is also an easy tool to get your CPU moving. This is the CPU LevelUP feature.

The last item on the TurboV list is the Turbo Key utility. Here you can set a key stroke pattern to automatically enable a present OC.

As all overclocking results are dependent on the hardware you use, your results may vary. Results of our overclocking tests are included in the performance section with the stock scores. It is also important to point out that when overclocking memory performance may vary greatly due to different memory multipliers. As such there is no real "apples to apples" comparison. We include the overclocked performance to show the potential performance you can get form pushing the boards we have in hand.

Important Editor Note: Our maximum overclocking result is the best result we managed in our limited time of testing the motherboard. Due to time constraints we weren't able to tweak the motherboard to the absolute maximum and find the highest possible FSB, as this could take days to find properly. We do however spend at least a few hours overclocking every motherboard to try and find the highest possible overclock in that time frame. You may or may not be able to overclock higher if you spend more time tweaking or as new BIOS updates are released. "Burn-in" time might also come into play if you believe in that.

 

There are a few things that we found to be very cool about the P7F7-E WS. We are talking about features beyond the multi-GPU setup and the extra memory. One thing that stands out is the EPU and TPU software. These two combined (at stock speeds) help reduce the power draw on the system as well as balancing the thermal load.

 

 

 

But beyond that is the audio. Although some may think that Realtek has a better CODEC, personally I think the VIA VT2020 included with the P7F7E-WS has a cleaner, crisper sound.

 

 

The dual teamed LAN ports also are a great feature. The included software is excellent and actually works. For our testing we set the team up using the 802.3ad LACP; this allowed us to maintain 70+ MB/s transfer rates even on large files (2GB in size). Not bad at all, especially for video work.

 

 

 

The installation of the board went well. We had almost no issues with it other than a slight misunderstanding on our part. When we first received it we thought our Registered ECC DDR3 would work. However, the P7F7-E WS does not support ECC registered RAM. We ended up having to fall back on our standard DDR3 kit.

With any system you will want to see a combination of synthetic testing and real-world. Synthetics give you a static, easily repeatable testing method that can be compared across multiple platforms. For our synthetic tests we use Everest Ultimate, Sisoft Sandra, FutureMark's 3DMark Vantage and PCMark Vantage, Cinebench as well as HyperPi. Each of these covers a different aspect of performance or a different angle of a certain type of performance.

 

Memory Bandwidth

 

Memory is a big part of current system performance. In most systems slow or flakey memory performance will impact almost every type of application you run. To test memory we use a combination of Sisoft Sandra, Everest and HyperPi 0.99.

 

Sisoft Sandra

 

Version and / or Patch Used: 2010c 1626
Developer Homepage: http://www.sisoftware.net
Product Homepage: http://www.sisoftware.net
Buy It Here

 

 

Stock memory performance leaves a lot to be desired. We see the P7F7-E at the bottom of the list, even at 1333MHz. We did see good performance when we overclocked the CPU, though. The poor memory showing could impact video editing and 3D animation later in the review.

 

Everest Ultimate

 

Version and / or Patch Used: 5.30.1983
Developer Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com
Product Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com
Buy It Here

 

Everest Ultimate is a suite of tests and utilities that can be used for system diagnostics and testing. For our purposes here we use their memory bandwidth test and see what the theoretical performance is.

 

Stock Memory Performance

 

Overclocked Memory Performance

 

Everest shows the same thing with the memory performance here. It could be the extra RAM slots that are causing the issue, but it could also be that the Xeon is looking for the ECC feature as well.

 

HyperPi 0.99

 

Version and / or Patch Used: 0.99
Developer Homepage: http://www.virgilioborges.com.br
Product Homepage: http://www.virgilioborges.com.br
Download It Here

 

HyperPi is a front end for SuperPi that allows for multiple concurrent instances of SuperPi to be run on each core recognized by the system. It is very dependent on CPU to memory to HDD speed. The faster these components, the faster it is able to figure out the number Pi to the selected length.

 

For our testing we use the 32M run. This means that each of the four physical and four logical cores for the i7 and the four physical cores of the i5 is trying to calculate the number Pi out to 32 million decimal places. Each "run" is a comparative to ensure accuracy and any stability or performance issues in the loop mentioned above will cause errors in calculation.

 

 

With the extra load on each CPU core, it is not surprising that we see the Xeons at the bottom here. After all, they are having to handle two 32M super pie runs per core. When you look at it that way, the performance we see here is not too bad.

Disk Drive Controller

 

The system drive controller is an important part of system performance. In most modern boards your drive controller will run off of the PCI-e bus. The PCI-e bus performance can be affected by poor trace layout as well as many other design choices that show up on different boards.

 

For testing we use Sisoft's Sandra and Everest.

 

SiSoft Sandra

 

 

HDD performance was a little off for the SATA II controller, but SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 performance is right on the money.

 

Everest

 

 

Stock HDD Performance

 

 

Overclocked HDD Performance

 

 

Stock USB 3.0 Performance

 

 

Overclocked USB 3.0 Performance

 

Everest shows us a little better performance, but it is still not up there with what we have seen form P55 based boards.

PCMark Vantage

 

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.0.0
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Buy It Here

 

For overall system performance we use PCMark Vantage. This is run in both x86 and x64 mode to give the best indication of performance.

 

 

The P7F7-E WS does a great job at PCMark. During both the stock and overclocked runs it was in the top three. We have a feeling that the memory performance is showing its head here.

 

3DMark Vantage

 

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.1
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Buy It Here

 

For synthetic gaming tests we used the industry standard and overlockers bragging tool 3DMark Vantage. This is a test that strives to mimic the impact modern games have on a system. Futuremark went a long way to change from the early days of graphics driven tests to a broader approach including physics, AI and more advanced graphics simulations.

 

3DMark Vantage uses the DX10 API in addition to having support for PhysX. As we are no longer using an NVIDIA GPU for testing (at least until we can get a GTX 4xx card) you will only see the CPU based PhysX results in the scores. For testing we use the Performance test run.

 

 

The P7F7-E WS does quite well in 3DMark. Here we see it right behind the P7P55 WS in our stock run and at the top of the pile for our overclocked run. It looks like this workstation board would be great for gaming, too.

 

Cinebench R11.5 x64

 

Version and / or Patch Used: R11.5 x64
Developer Homepage: http://www.maxon.net/
Product Homepage: http://www.maxon.net
Download It Here

 

Cinebench is a synthetic rendering tool developed by Maxon. Maxon is the same company that developed Cinema4D, another industry leading 3D Animation application. Cinebench R11.5 tests your systems ability to render across a single and multiple CPU cores. It also tests your systems ability to process OpenGL information.

 

 

The Cinebench numbers are also good, but we do see a little of the HDD and memory performance showing here. While the score is just behind the P7P55 WS, because of its faster memory and HDD performance it is able to top things here fairly easily.

Real-world testing allows us to see how well a product will perform when used in the same manner as it would be in your house or office. It is an important side to performance testing as it can uncover hidden glitches in the way a product performs.

 

It is especially true when testing a mainboard; there are so many components of a board that have to interact that any problems between parts can cause a failure of the whole.

 

For real-world testing we use some common applications and functions. We test with LightWave 3D for rendering performance, AutoGK for transcoding from DVD to AVI and two games for gaming testing.

 

Rendering

 

Rendering of 3D Animation is a system intensive endeavor. You need a good CPU, memory and HDD speed to get good rendering times. For our testing we use LightWave 3D. This software from Newtek is an industry standard and has several pre-loaded scenes for us to use.

 

LightWave 3D

 

Version and / or Patch Used: 9.6
Developer Homepage: http://www.newtek.com
Product Homepage: http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/
Buy It Here

 

 

The performance here is most impressive. Granted, it is a little skewed as the two WS boards in the rankings are sporting an 8-thread CPU. Still, it is nice to see this level of performance from the workstation boards in an industry standard test.

 

AutoGK

 

Version and / or Patch Used: 2.55
Developer Homepage: http://www.autogk.me.uk/
Product Homepage: http://www.autogk.me.uk/
Download It Here

 

AutoGK stands for Auto Gordian Knot; it is a suite of transcoding tools that are compiled into an easy to install and use utility. It allows you to transcode non-protected DVDs and other media to Xvid or Divx format. For our testing purposes we use a non-DRM restricted movie that is roughly 2 hours in length. This is transcoded to a single Xvid AVI at 100% quality.

 

 

AutoGK performance was ok; it was not good, but it was not bad. This was probably due to the memory and HDD performance problems we saw before.

Here we have our real gaming tests. Each of the games we chose use multiple cores and GPUs. They are able to stress the system through use of good AI. Both have decent positional audio that adds impact to the sound subsystem of the board. We ran each game through the level or parts listed and recorded frames per second using FRAPS. This brings the whole game into play.

 

*** A word on gaming as a motherboard test ***

 

Despite the fact that most games are very GPU limited, we are still noticing HDD and even audio creating issues in gaming performance. Because of this you may see differences in the number of frames rendered per second between different boards. Usually the difference is very small, but occasionally because of bad tracing, poor memory or HDD performance, this difference is significant. The issues are often more prevalent in older versions of DirectX, but can still pop up in DX10 and 11.

 

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (DX9)

 

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0
Timedemo or Level Used: First combat until the school is cleared
Developer Homepage: http://www.infinityward.com
Product Homepage: http://modernwarfare2.infinityward.com

 

Most of you know about the game Modern Warfare 2; it caused quite a bit of controversy in the latter half of 2009. The game is a first person shooter with a heavy combat emphasis. It follows the events in the first Modern Warfare very closely and brings back several characters from the original.

 

As with most games in the Call of Duty franchise, it features a heavy AI load. This is not because of a complex AI routine, but more due to the sheer number of enemies in any given combat situation. It is also our single DX9 based game in our testing suite. Settings are shown below.

 

 

 

 

Ok, so the P7F7-E WS combined with a Xeon X3470 and HD 5870 GPU is not the right combo for Modern Warfare 2. But then again, at 100+ FPS average and 65+ FOS at minimum, who would really complain?

 

Far Cry 2 (DX10)

 

Version and / or Patch Used: V1.00
Timedemo or Level Used: Clearing the Safe house through to the Rescue
Developer Homepage: http://www.ubi.com
Product Homepage: http://www. http://farcry.us.ubi.com 

 

Far Cry 2 is a large sandbox style game. There are no levels here so as you move about the island you are on you do not have to wait for the "loading" sign to go away. It is mission driven so each mission is what you would normally think of as the next "level".

 

In the game you take the role of a mercenary who has been sent to kill the Jackal. Unfortunately your malaria kicks in and you end up being found by him. Long story short, you become the errand boy for a local militia leader and run all over the island doing his bidding. Settings we used for testing are shown below.

 

 

 

In Far Cry 2 things are a little better. Here we see the minimum FPS over 40 for the P7F7-E WS. Again, at speeds like this most people would not notice or care about the difference between the boards we tested (for gaming at least).

 

Battlefield Bad Company 2 (DX11)

 

Version and / or Patch Used: V1.00
Timedemo or Level Used: From washing up on the beach to the mine fields.
Developer Homepage: http://www.ea.com/
Product Homepage: http://badcompany2.ea.com/

 

Battlefield Bad Company is another sequel and also another game "franchise". Bad Company 2 is also our DX11 Shooter game. The game follows a fictitious B company team on a mission to recover a Japanese defector. This puts you back in World War II (at least for the beginning of the game) while the multi-player game is centered on much more modern combat. For our testing we used the single player mode. Settings are shown below.

 

 

 

Again, not too shabby here. The performance is right in the middle of the group. So, while you won't have the fastest FPS out there, the P7F7-E will not slow you down either.

 

Gaming Conclusion

 

The P7F7-E WS was not the fastest board we tested as far as gaming goes. However, it is still pretty nimble and quick. The VT 2020 audio from VIA also added a nice little extra for the gamers out there. But, that is not all the P7F7-E WS has up its sleeve. There is the full support for Tri-SLI and Quad Crossfire that can boost your gaming enjoyment as well.

Power Consumption

 

We are now able to find out what kind of power is being used by our test system and the associated graphics cards installed. Keep in mind; it tests the complete system (minus LCD monitor, which is plugged directly into an AC wall socket).

 

 

Power draw from the P7F7-E WS is good considering we tested it with a SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 drive attached. The idle draw here is quite good, although this could change quickly with one or two Firewire 800 drives attached.

 

 

Under load the P7F7-E starts firing on all cylinders. We still see it show good power draw as the two boards that are in the lead here do not have SATA 3.0 or USB 3.0.

 

Heat Generation

 

As a new measure, we are now monitoring the heat generation from the key components on the motherboard; this being the Northbridge, Southbridge (if it contains one) as well as the Mosfets around the CPU. The results are recorded at idle and load during the power consumption tests.

 

 

 

Heat is another story. It looks like the small heatsink at the end of the chain (there is an NF200 in the middle) is just not as efficient as some of the cooling on the enthusiast based products. It can keep the temps in the right envelope, but we would like to see a little better cooling.

  Final Thoughts

When you think professional equipment, you think high-performance, high-cost. Well, that is not always the reality of professional level equipment. Nine times out of ten the Pro equipment (at least in the computer world) will be built for stability first and performance second. Because of this, there is usually very little in the way of tweaks and adjustments to get additional performance.

 

However, that was not the case at all with the ASUS P7F7-E WS and the entire WS line up. ASUS has stuffed in the same overclocking features you would find on their enthusiasts boards. ASUS has also made sure that you get many other features of their top-end products in their Workstation line. EPU6, T.Probe, TurboV, Turbo Key, MemOK!; all of these come over to the pro line up. This makes these boards even more attractive.

 

With the P7F7-E WS there is more on top of the good; you get the multi-GPU support and also a less expensive method of supporting large amounts of RAM. And the real kicker is the support for four Tesla GPUs when running a Clarkdale CPU. All this with a $290 price tag at NewEgg.com and it makes for a great product at a great price.

 

 

quoted from "TweakTown"

Biostar TPower I55 Review!

Introduction :
Biostar were founded in 1986, with their original focus being on XL motherboards. Since then, like any good business, they've developed and expanded their range and product quality. As far as enthusiasts go, back in the Socket A/ 478 days, their star (no pun intended) was pretty dim and awareness of their products fell behind those of companies like Asus, Abit, Gigabyte et al. They made some headway with AMD Socket 939 but it wasn't until Intel socket 775 developed and gave us P45 that Biostar went supernova. Their P45 boards filled global leaderboards until X48 came along, but Biostar were already much more in the enthusiasts field of vision. Biostar have been fairly quiet on the Intel side since Nehalem came along. They released X58 boards in the first wave of I7-fever, but were spending more time with AM2 and AM3 boards, with some notable success. The release of Intel P55 has seen Biostar release new boards, against strong competition from all the usual names. We have the TPower I55 here for review... lets see how it stacks up.


Box, Bits, and Board :




Very eye-catching! The gold is a head-turner... and is also damned hard to take a good picture of! Same criticism as the TH55.... the selling points in the corner are.... not selling points.










Flipping over the box, we get details on the more interesting features of the board. The "G.P.U. Power Indicator, sadly, has nothing to do with GPUs or GPU power saving. It stands for "Green Power Utility" and the naming is heading towards being mis-leading. It is basically a set of LEDs that follow PWM utilisation.


The Bits:






Opening up the box, we get a very clean presentation. The contents are split into two layers, with the top layer being split into Left-Right packaging for protection.

Accessories: Five single S-ATA power leads, five S-ATA data cables, IDE and Floppy connectors, I/O plate, SLI and CF bridges and a bridge retention bracket. The cabling bundles are gathered together in branded velcro ties. Useful!

Also included are the usual manual and driver installation CD..




Removing the top layer to get to the board, I was impressed to see the board sat in its own foam cutout. I'm not used to seeing this and does a very good job of protecting the board in transit. +1 here, no doubt about it.


The Board:











Onto the board... its covered in feature-promoting stickers. I would like to see some of these... or all of them.... shunted to the front of the box to help tempt buyers. They're no use inside the box. A user has already bought the board before they see this... the advertising bit is finished!







On-board voltage readpoints. They're reasonably easy to access and accurate enough for my liking. Ideally, I'd like to see them presented as "pits" or holes, so its harder to slip whilst probing and short something out.





This was meant to show the vDIMM PWM.. but look! an IDE port!





On-board power & reset buttons and a debug display.





Nice beefy heatsink 





On P55/ H55, heatsinks in this position are essentially waste as they're not covering a heat source. I guess it can dissipate excess heat from the SB and/ or PWM (all connected via heatpipes) but... the board runs cool enough that its not a problem.

The Board, continued





Speaking of PWM heatsinks....... These are well designed and offer high surface area with a good transmission area from the heat source to the fins. Some boards i've seen recently did not feature well-designed heatsinks, so + 1 here.









I/O is well-equipped. Connections are nice and tight

BIOS notes

BIOS options include:

CPU clock Swing

CPU + PCH Clock delays. There are only delay options, no clock advance options.

CPU voltage is, like the H55 board, measured relative to it's base value, which i'm guessing (hoping) is VID. The CPU can have up to 0.7875v added to it, which will give a maximum of ~1.9v depending on the CPU VID. There are limited undervolting options, allowing up to 0.1v less than VID.


vTT can be set up to 2.03v


CPU PLL can be set as high as 2.73. I really doubt anyone will go anywhere near that high though....


vDIMM ranges from 1.60v to 2.53v. Like the TH55, low vDIMM options appear to be an afterthought and are listed after the ridiculously high vDIMM options and are also shown in red. Users should not be put off by this though, the values are accurate.


PCH voltage can be set between 1.1 and 2.03v, as can the PCH PLL voltage and PCH ME Voltage. I have no idea what this voltage is!


Clockgen voltage can be set between 0.015v and 0.6v higher than standard. 



There are also phase frequency options for some PWMs, which is a nice touch.

CPU phase freq. can be set: -20, +20 or +40%

DIMM phase Freq. can be set +30, +60 or +90%

vTT phase Freq can be set between +20 and +80%

While I suspect not many users will dabble heavily with these settings, an increased PWM Frequency can help stabilise relevant clocks, but at the expense of power consumption and heat. It would be nice to know the actual frequency being supplied though.

Available RAM timings are fairly standard, but we have access to R-R, W-R and R-W timings for same and different rank. One slip-up here.... There are two settings for R-W delay, same rank. I don't know which one is the real one... and I have no idea what the duplicate is controlling.


Another BIOS problem..... again, like on the H55, Using the + and - keys to change the DRAM Timing Control options results in a BIOS hang. Biostar engineers were unable to replicate this however. It might be a one-off linked to my keyboard.





Setup, testing, assumptions, drawbacks.

Test rig:

Biostar T-Power I55 .
Intel I7 860. Quad-core w/HT
2x2GB G.Skill EO 800MHz 7-8-7 @ 1.35
PSU: Xigmatek 1200W NRP.
GPU: PCI 5200 for power consumption tests, nVidia 8800GT single & SLI @ 800/1100 for 3D performance
HDD: Samsung S-ATA II
Watercooling for the CPU + 8800GT GPUs

* The PCI 5200 was used because of its low power draw. I wanted the focus to be on the CPU and board. The card is about as close to "no power drawn" as a discrete GPU can be.
* The PSU is my bench unit. Given that the power consumption with the 8800GT SLI was comfortably under 500W, the unit is total overkill and power efficiency is unlikely to be at its maximum, given the ~40-45% loading. Users with high quality 6-700W PSUs will probably see lower power consumption numbers.
* The CPU is the second-most power hungry s1156 CPU. May as well give the board a workout!
* The PWM got quite warm if no airflow was present, but if I put two low-speed 92mm fans over the RAM, the airflow overspill left the PWM cool to the touch. Very impressed!


C1E was enabled for all the power consumption tests, which explains the very low idle voltages. The feature was disabled for the 3DMark testing as the load-idle cycling between tests played havoc with stability.



Power consumption/ power efficiency


Running stock MHz- 133x21 @ 1.12v (-0.1v in BIOS.) vDIMM @ 1.45v, vTT @ 1.15v, we get the following:

Power-saving off:

Idle: 0.80-0.81v, 96-99w

SPi32M: 1.11v, 113-114w

wP 1024: 1.12v, 155W

Power-saving enabled:


Idle:0.76v, 92W

SPi32M: 1.04v, 106-108w

wP 1024: 1.12w, 155W









V12 Auto-OC. After setting the RAM timings to 7-8-7 manually (a trick learned from the TH55) I enabled the V12 OC and was offered:


145BCLK. x26 idle, x25 for SPi32M and x22 for wP1024.


Voltages and power consumption:


Idle: 0.9v, 89-91W

SPi32M: 1.28v, 116-117W

wP1024: 1.29v, 193W


Again like the TH55, the RAM performance was disappointing, setting 1.60v and using a 1:5 ratio to give 725MHz.







Pushing to 200BCLK... very simple.


200x19, 1.28v.RAM @ x5, timings: 7-9-7, 1.70v. vTT @ 1.35v


Power saving off:


idle: 1.00v, 114-115W

SPi32M: 1.25v, 146-148W

wP 1024: 1.28v, 221-222W









Power-saving enabled:


Idle: 0.96v, 104W

SPi32M: 1.19v, 126-128W

wP1024: 1.28v, 222W







Comparing all these numbers to something.


Enter the MSI P55 GD-80. Same chipset, aimed at enthusiasts, 20%+ more expensive.....


Matching the voltages and settings of the Biostar board, the MSI offered us the following:


Power-saving turned off:

Idle: 1.15v, 98-101w

SPi32M: 1.16v, 107-109w

wP 1024: 1.17v, 152-154w


Power saving enabled: 

Idle: 1.15v, 79-82w

SPi32M: 1.15v, 99-102w

wP1024: 1.17v 153-154w


 




Only a few watts in it, in MSIs favour. Consider this a success for the Biostar board, given the price difference!






BCLK testing:


Setting vTT to 1.42v, 213 was stable.





Not quite as good as the H55, but on a par with what the MSI GD-80 offered me with this particular CPU

Discussion of results.

At stock, the CPU will be the bottleneck, especially in SLI conditions. This will allow us to see the CPU-side efficiency for 3D benching. Tests run @ 3.8GHz should give a good guage of how the scores scale. 3.8GHz with a single GPU should shunt the bottleneck back towards to the GPU, which will indicate the GPU-side efficiency of the board. These numbers will then all be compared to a rival of this board... the MSI GD-80.


Plan A was to compare the Biostar board to the MSI GD-80- an ideal apples- apples comparison. Sadly... the MSI board was totally unwilling to work in SLI mode. I'm still looking into *why* but as a stop-gap, I brought out the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R. A higher-end chipset, higher performing, more expensive (generally) and uses more power.

With those points in mind, the numbers are surprising. There is less than 2% in it....and thats picking the most X58-friendly results.

Comparing the P55 single-card results, the Biostar generally holds a small lead. 

I have all the screenshots available for those who realllllyyyyy wish to pore over sub-test breakdowns. Theres not much to see though.

Im really pleased with how the Biostar held up. Its overshadowed by Asus, eVGA, MSI and Gigabyte but its pulling its weight, performance wise.



Conclusion.

Well.... its up against strong competition. Asus, Gigabyte and MSI have strong offerings in the same price bracket. The BIOS niggles continue to annoy me. I'd like to see tweaks in the vCore department in both the presentation and range. I hope Biostar will act on my comments  

The colour scheme of the board might make some colour-themed rig builds a challenge.

Performance is good... and that makes up for a lot of other small indiscretions.

Availability is... good enough. Scan have it in stock.

Power efficiency is totally acceptable and the board runs cool with even slight airflow.

Hmmm..... conclusion.... cautious recommendation. Sort out the vCore, tweak the colour scheme and its all good.

My thanks to Biostar for the review sample

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 Review: A Breakthrough Performer

The stylish Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 delivers both high performance and high value, a rare combination in the world of Android tablets. It uses Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor, which powers the tablet to several performance firsts and delivered terrific image graphics rendering in games optimized for the new processor. Given its promised future upgrade to Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich and its next-gen technology, not to mention its appealing price--$499 for the 32GB model and $599 for 64GB (prices as of 11/30/2011)--the Transformer Prime represents one of the best tablet values today.

Design

The first thing that will catch your eye about the Transformer Prime is its svelte design. It measures 10.35 by 7.12 by 0.33 inches, and weighs 1.29 pounds. That's a net reduction in size and weight from the original Eee Pad Transformer TF101, which measured 10.7 by 6.9 by 0.5 inches, and weighed 1.4 pounds. The TF201 also ranks as among the thinnest and lightest tablets on sale to date: Only Apple's iPad 2 (0.3 inches deep and 1.33 pounds) and Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 (0.34 inches and 1.24 pounds) best it today.

Unlike its plastic-enclosed predecessor, the Transformer Prime has an aluminum backplane (in “Amethyst Gray” or “Champagne Gold”), with a matching plastic bezel bridging the edges between the back and surface. The overall look is elegant and the design solid, a combination that's far preferable to the comparatively klunky or plasticky designs we've seen from other Android tablets this year.

In spite of its shallow depth, Asus manages to fit in several ports, a feat that neither Apple nor Samsung accomplished in their aforementioned models. The docking port runs along the tablet's horizontal length, and along the left side are both a microHDMI port and a microSD card slot. At the top of the left side is the volume rocker; this is a smart, and uncommon, placement for volume controls, given the likelihood that you'll need to adjust volume while watching video and holding the tablet in landscape mode. The combination 3.5mm audio jack (for microphone input) and audio-out sits on the right edge of the tablet (or bottom, if held in portrait mode). The power button is at the top left edge in landscape mode, or along the top right edge in portrait mode, and it has a handy, tiny dot that glows red while the tablet is charging.

A final noteworthy point about the Transformer Prime's design is its ability to pair with the Transformer Prime Keyboard Dock. Like the original Transformer (which remains in Asus' lineup at a reduced price) the Transformer Prime pairs with a keyboard docking base that effectively turns the tablet into a compact, easy-to-tote package that adds just 0.41 inches in depth and 1.18 pounds to the tablet. The dock is also made of aluminum, and has a terrific build quality. Typing on it felt solid and natural; and the clickpad-style multitouch-gesture-capable touchpad makes a worthwhile alternative to using an external Bluetooth tablet keyboard (typically, such keyboards do not include a pointing device). Even better: This $149 option includes a USB 2.0 port, an SDHC card reader, and an additional battery for up to a claimed 18 hours of battery life.

Performance and Display

As the first tablet with Nvidia's 1.3-GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, the Transformer Prime was primed to make a performance splash. And it did, almost literally, in our objective and subjective tests. We needed to look no further than the Tegra 3-optimized game Riptide GP, which makes the splash of water droplets look realistic on the tablet's display, to know that we were looking at the next generation of Android tablets.

This is not to say that we saw dramatic improvements in every aspect of tablet handling. But the Transformer Prime reset the bar on many of the PCWorld Labs' tests.

At the heart of the Tegra 3 processor is Nvidia's Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing technology, which optimizes the platform's quad-core Cortex A9 CPU performance, switching the processing load to a lower-powered fifth Cortex A9 CPU core for less demanding tasks that don't require processing oomph. All that happens seamlessly in the background.

For those who want to be more proactive in managing the Transformer Prime's performance, Asus also provides three system performance modes, lifted from the company's laptop settings. This is the first tablet I've seen with such modes, and they do make a tangible difference in some aspects of performance. The normal mode optimizes for maximum processing performance; the balanced mode optimizes for a more middle-of-the-road experience capped at 1.2GHz performance; and the power savings mode uses up to 1GHz performance to optimize battery life. These adjustments resulted in very different usage experiences. Interestingly, the normal mode felt noticeably zippier, and the different levels did impact some of our performance results, but in less CPU-intensive examples, the differences were negligible.

The most significant result in our gaming performance tests: The Transformer Prime logged 53 frames per second, the highest frame rate we've seen on the GLBenchmark 2.0.3 Egypt test with no antialiasing. This result topped the Apple iPad 2's previous record of 46 fps, and it just crushed the Android masses we've tested, which averaged 18 fps and topped out at 34 fps (for the 7-inch Acer Iconia Tab A100). The results on the GLBenchmark Pro test were similarly decisive, at least in the Prime's victory over other Android tablets. Here, the Prime tied the iPad with 58 fps, ahead of the Iconia Tab A100 at 49 fps, and the trio of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Sony Tablet S, and theToshiba Thrive, which were all tied at 40 fps.

Graphics in some games appear awesome. Riptide GP has water that ripples with surprising realism, and the droplets that splash stun. According to Nvidia, the game's developer takes advantage of the Tegra 3's additional pixel- and texture-processing capabilities on the GPU for that water effect, using the quad-core CPU to do real-time physics calculations of how the waves interact with the Jet Skis.

The Glowball demo on our test tablet was equally impressive. The reflectivity and light refraction in the Sea Floor level drew gasps. And while Bladeslinger's title character occasionally moved stiffly, the level of detail and dimensionality to the images impressed. The most conclusive example of the Transformer Prime's gaming prowess came when I compared the preloaded ShadowGun tech demo on the Prime, optimized for Tegra 3, with the standard version of ShadowGun on an iPad 2. The difference in the gaming experience was visceral, and drew oohs and aahs from colleagues who gathered to see what the fuss was about. The water and smoke effects stunned, flags flapped more naturally, and the detail in the floor was obvious even to the casual observer.

And since Nvidia has added support for popular game controllers, including those from the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Wii, and even USB gamepads, the Transformer Prime appears to be a leading contender for those chasing the ultimate Android gaming experience. The trick will be in getting the software to catch up to the hardware: Currently only three games—Riptide, Zen Pinball, and Sprinkle—are Tegra 3-optimized; a fourth, the shipping version of the Tegra 3-optimized ShadowGun, should be available shortly.

In our SunSpider 0.9.1 JavaScript benchmark, the Prime leapt to the head of the class, taking just 1.8 seconds to complete the test, 0.1 second ahead of the Acer Iconia Tab A500, and 0.2 seconds better than the iPad 2. We had some conflicting results in our page load tests, however, and are looking into what may have caused this, and will update later with the full results.

One performance metric where the Transformer Prime disappointed was in file transfer speeds. Compared with Android 3.x tablets and the iPad 2, the Prime was one of the slowest models we've tested at writing to the tablet, lagging all but the Sony Tablet S. Transferring data off the tablet, on the other had, was more competitive.

Another disappointment was audio. Through the awkwardly positioned monoaural speaker, music sounded muddied. My test tracks were missing the highs and lows, and at times sounded as if they were coming through in an echo chamber, even though the speaker itself was not blocked by my hand (which could happen easily, given the speaker's position at the rear edge).

Display and Image Capture

By contrast, the Transformer Prime exceeded expectations with its 1280-by-800-pixel display. The Prime is the first tablet in the PCWorld Labs with a SuperIPS+ display, which adds brightness to make the tablet more usable outdoors. When enabled, the SuperIPS+ mode increases brightness to 600 nits, up from the standard mode's maximum of 380 nits. Indoors, the effect is minimal. But outside, in bright sunlight, this makes a big difference. I still wouldn't recommend using the tablet for reading outside, but you at least now have a fighting chance at seeing the camera controls and what you're focusing on, or looking at the map you've called up to figure out to get somewhere. The wide viewing angle preserves colors, and makes the Prime perfect for sharing the screen with a small group, be it for business presentations or sharing a video.

Images looked good, too, with better colors and sharper images than on the original Transformer. That said, I observed that our test tablet appeared to have a warmer color temperature than its predecessor, which caused a yellowish cast that made some whites appear more off-white, and made skin tones appear jaundiced. Asus believes this may have been a flaw in our test unit; I'll update this text after observing the same content on a second unit.

Our test unit at times appeared to have difficulty automatically rendering high-resolution images. This resulted in images that appeared slightly fuzzy until I forced the image to render properly by tapping on it, or pinching and zooming. I've seen similar glitches on other tablets, and the Prime's offense was less obvious than those. Neither Asus nor Nvidia had an answer as to why I observed this, which leaves me to wonder whether it could be something in Android 3.2.1.

As much as I found to like in the display overall, there's still room for improvement in hardware and software. The air gap between the Gorilla Glass surface and the LCD beneath is still noticeable, though it's smaller and less glarey than on the original Transformer. The oleophobic coating on the screen didn't do much to mitigate fingerprints smudges. And text rendering in e-reader apps was still noticeably weak. Text rendering on Android tablets and the iPad as a whole remains an issue; perceived quality is very heavily dependent on the software, on which fonts you're using, and on how smoothly that font is rendered. Sadly, the display doesn't up the pixels per inch, unlike the display for the T-Mobile Springboard or the upcoming Toshiba Thrive 7-inch.

The rear-facing camera carries the best specs we've seen yet--8 megapixels--but a more pedestrian 1.2 megapixels for the front-facing camera. The rear camera has a flash and a wide-aperture f2.4 lens for shooting in low-light situations. But don't toss your dedicated point-and-shoot just yet; some casual test images looked good, far better than those on other tablets, but they were still were noisy, even in bright daylight, and lost detail and sharpness at full resolution.

Stay tuned for further testing results, including a full display and battery life report, and updated camera quality tests.

Asus' Software Touches

Beyond the obvious boost in CPU performance and gaming, the benefits of the quad-core Tegra 3 wasn't apparent in all activities. Touchscreen swiping was smoother, for example, but in general, navigation, multitasking, and in-app experiences didn't feel dramatically faster.

Granted, many everyday tasks may not require the extra power of four cores. But it's also likely that none of the software involved was optimized for the Tegra 3, unlike the games were that Nvidia preloaded onto Asus' demo tablets. I'll be interested to watch the Prime's performance evolve over time, and see what happens once the over-the-air update for Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich comes along in early 2012, and once more apps get optimized for a multicore mobile universe.

Asus has made a handful of useful customizations to the stock Android Honeycomb interface. As on its predecessor, the Transformer Prime's trio of core navigation buttons—back, home, and recently accessed apps—get a facelift, with darker, clearer definition than on stock Android. Recently accessed apps gain an “x” alongside the app thumbnail, for easily shutting down an app. Best of all, Asus redesigned the pop-up settings menu to add controls for brightness and SuperIPS+, the rotation lock, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio muting, sync (for use with the Asus PC sync app), and the built-in GPS.

New in this version of Android is a slick three-dimensional Google Videos app for easily shopping for, and viewing, video rentals from Google Market, and your personal videos, too. Asus also includes some useful apps, such as Netflix; Polaris Office, for editing and creating Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents; several for accessing Asus' cloud services and DLNA streaming; and SuperNote, for taking notes with finger input.

E-reading fans will appreciate Asus' MyLibrary, which finds and indexes e-books on your tablet—including ones stored locally in closed formats, like those from Amazon's Kindle store. Asus sells books via its own service; for periodicals, you can shop at the preloaded Press Reader and Zinio.

Bottom Line

The Asus Transformer Prime makes a visual statement, in both its brilliant design and its inner power. The docking station option makes it a superb choice for power users who want a tablet that converts into a productivity workhorse. Our full rating is pending until our testing is complete, but this tablet is shaping up as one of the top contenders you can buy today. We'll update this review with full testing results when available. The Transformer Prime ships through online retailers December 12, and will be in stores December 19. No word yet as to the availability of an expected 3G version.

Quoted from PCWorld

DOWNLOAD KITSERVER 12.1.3 BY JUCE

KITSERVER 12.1.3 BY JUCE

• Fixes more bugs with kit slots mix-up. All kits should be correctly displayed now during the game.
• Possible fix to music stuttering, but untested

To install, copy the dll file into the kitserver folder.

Download: