Review of Biostar TA890FXE AMD 890FX SB850 mainboard

Review Conclusion of Biostar TA890FXE
Bluetooth 22 May 2010

Conclusion

Biostar TA890FXE mainboard is a no nonsense implementation of the 890FX chipset. Without the addition of NEC USB3 nor PCIe lane switching chip, this board relies mainly on the strengths of the AMD 890FX and SB850 chipset for utmost performance. Performance wise, this board runs fast with the Phenom II 960T processor. This is furthur improved when the power of the 2 hidden cores are unleashed. This can be seen from the numbers in Cinebench10 and SiSoft Sandra.

Features wise, the BIOSTAR TA890FXE have most of the feature set of other 890FX board. 5 SATA3 (RAID 0,1,5,10), 1 eSATA, USB, GbE, 1394 but there is no USB 3. Other features are Biostar unique and they are G.P.U – Green Power Utility which enhance energy efficiency., Smart Memory integration test, O.N.E- Overclocking navigation engine, just to name a few. Most importantly, Biostar’s BIO UNlocking feature allows you to turn your Dual Core 550BE into a quad core, a Phenom II X4 960T into a 6 core easily by enabling the feature in BIOS.

Installation is pretty straightforward for the board. If you are intend to run CrossFireX, you might need to refer to the manual to see which PCIe 2.0 slots are running in PCIe 2.0 x16 as PCIe slot 1 and 3 are PCI 2.0 x16, PCIe slot 2 is PCIe 2.0 x 4. PCIe slot 2 is PCIe 2.0 x1. The board also comes with POST Code/CPU temperature indicator on the left bottom corner of the mainboard for easy diagnostics.

Overclocking features are available in the BIOS, there are many voltage options available as seen in page 5 of this review. You can also select the  Automatic Overclock System in T-Series option in BIOS for automatic overclocking usnig V6, v8, v12 engine. Alternatively, you can manually overclock using the vast range of settings available. To ensure your ram is able to work correctly under overclocking environment, Biostar included memtest during boot up to test your system stability. You can also use T-overclocker to overclock the system within Windows. In our overclocking test, we managed to overclock it to 205MHz x 20 = 4.1GHz. Below is a screen shot.

Overall, the board performed stable and works very steadily even with the unhidden cores on the Phenom II 960T. If you do not need USB 3, this board is for you. The board is priced at ~ USD 139 , around USD 20 dollars cheaper than those with USB 3.

Pros
4 full length PCIe slots for ATi CrossFireX
T-Overclocker
Power switches, Clear CMOS switch
Debug LED

Cons
No USB 3 support

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.

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