After opening the box, we met surprisingly neatly placed contents. The internals were separated into three different sections, containing the board, the manual with the drivers and all the necessary cables. Six Molex-to-SATA power adapters which arrive in the package only further reminded us of Abit's MAX series. At last, the star is on the desk and it looks top-class even at first glance. The Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe is a full ATX motherboard, based on Intel's P35 chipset, and the more imaginative readers already concluded from the “D3” that this board has DDR3 memory support.
| Chipset | Intel P35 + ICH9R | | Memory | 4 x DDR3 (Max 8 GB) | | Audio | Realtek ALC888 8+2-Channel HD Audio | | SATA | 6x SATA2 + 1x eSATA2 + 1x IDE PATA | | LAN | 2 x Marrvell 88E8056 - 10/100/1000 Controller | | RAID | Serial ATA RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | | Connectors | 1 PCI Express x16, 3 PCI Express x1, 2 PCI, 6 + 3 USB 2.0 |
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Initially, one might conclude that the layout is perfect, however, we do have some minor remarks. Users who always opt for perfect cabling will not be happy with the SATA connector positions, as they would definitely prefer them to be on the edge of the board, just like with all other modern mobos. The other thing is that the Molex connector is right in the middle of the board, which means that one power cable must go directly over the board. There is no second PCI-E x16 slot, which means that there is also no CrossFire support, although the chipset does implement this option. If you possess a newer date dual-slot graphics card (these are generally very long), the Clear CMOS jumper will be unavailable. Also, the board does not support FireWire, which is a serious minus in A.D. 2007. As far as other components are concerned, their position is very good.
Biostar finally decided to place the 24-pin ATX connector on the rightmost position, which really is the ideal place. The 8-pin EPS is also very practically positioned – in the upper left corner of the board. The board sports an 8-phase power unit, which automatically places it in the upper market segment. Also, all of the capacitors are metal-plated. There are also Power and Reset buttons on the board itself, which will ease the life for overclockers and people who have the need to keep their components out of the enclosure. Right next to them are the input pins, which are colored differently, so even this aspect is keeping component installation simple.
The I/O panel was smartly designed – a total of 6 USB ports, with room for 4 more on the board. What about cooling? Biostar put an effort into this aspect as well. Besides the fact that copper color of the cooling body goes well with the black PCB, it is top-quality business. Biostar implemented a heatpipe system, something very popular nowadays.
MOSFET, Northbridge and Southbridge passive coolers are all connected with a single heatpipe. In case that you are planning to install a water-cooling system, make sure you provide cooling for these components as well, since these passive coolers are dependent on CPU cooler's air current. This motherboard has an Award BIOS, which is, let's say, in concurrence with its possibilities. There is a certain amount of illogical things present, but basically, it's all there that needs to be there.
The BIOS is very neat and tidy, and all of the overclocking options are located in the “Overclock Navigator Engine” section. The FSB can go up to 600 MHz, but we weren't able to test this, as our Intel Core2Duo E4400 has an FSB wall of 405 MHz. The other strange factor were the memory divider values, which there are only two of; we really hope (and believe) that these will be improved in the upcoming revisions. Voltage options are fantastic.
You can raise the processor voltage for +0.787 V compared to the nominal value, in 0.013 V steps! The memory goes as far as +0.35 V in 0.05 V steps and it is as yet unknown whether this refers to the JEDEC specification or the SPD data. Time will provide an answer. Both the G(MCH) and the FSB termination voltage can be raised up to 1.55 V. The BIOS also includes MemTest.
| 1280x1024 | Biostar TP35D3-A7 Deluxe | | Sandra 2007 | | | Processor | 24.506 / 17.037 | | Multimedia | 146.206 / 79.381 | | Memory | 5.824 / 5.833 | | Latency | 82ns | | PhotoShop CS2 | 39,8s | | 3DMark06 Final / CPU Score | 6.005 / 2.357 | | FEAR (MediumQ) | 94fps | | Quake4 (MediumQ) | 111,5fps | | FarCry (MediumQ) | 172fps | | Cinebench 9.5 | 821 | | WinRAR 3.60 | 1.277 KB/s | | Nuclearus 1.0 | 8.306 | | DivX 6.2.5 | 109,1 fps | | Testbed | Intel C2D E4400 @ 2,66GHz, 2x1GB Kingston 1066-DDR3 (CL6), Foxconn 8600GTS, Win XP SP2 |
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If none of the aforementioned flaws bother you too much, then this mobo is truly an excellent piece of hardware. For a decent amount of money, you get a great motherboard with DDR3 support. This board can take on much more expensive models with no trouble at all.
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