Biostar TP43D2-A7 Motherboard Review

I recently bought a Biostar TP43D2-A7 6.x motherboard it's based on one of Intel's latest chip sets the P43 which is a derivative of the P45. The difference between the two is mostly just a lower fsb wall on the P43 and lack of crossfire support, but neither of which is a noteworthy deal to a lot of users as even a lot of casual and modest overclockers will find the Biostar TP43D2-A7 a suitable overclocking board thanks to it's solid capacitors and bargain entry price point. It's fully PCI-E 2.0 compliant which if your like me who came from a SRock 4CoreDual-VSTA you'll find handy as your new 8800GT and other newer PCI-E 2.0 video cards are future compatible for the motherboard hopefully adding to it's long term longevity if you plan on keeping it awhile and/or reusing it. It also has on board1000Mbps lan and on board 6 channel audio. It supports 4×240pin ddr2 1066 up to 8GB of memory total. It supports the latest 45nm Intel wolfdale & penryn processors. It has 6 on board sata connections and 6 USB 2.0 connections. 2 PCI Express x1 slots and 3 pci slots.

Now that I've told you a bit about the board and it's features time to share my experiences with the board well I've had it for a good solid two months and haven't had any hiccups related to the board itself yet it's a rock solid motherboard and excellent performer. I'm sure what you really want to know is the how well does it overclock? Well I've managed to overclock my E7200 to 3.7GHz rock stable at 1.3V on semi stock air cooling so not bad at all I'd say. The reason I say it's semi stock cooling is it's a Intel stock cooler, but from a previous Intel 65nm E4300 C2D processor which was about double the mass size of the newer E7200 stock coolers Intel bundles and has a copper center opposed to a aluminum one. Now the Intel stock cooler on the E4300 was pretty respectable for a bundled cooler, but certainly can't compare to a higher quality after market cooler in the cooling department. It's my belief that with a good aftermarket cooler 3.8GHz stable with a E7200 on the TP43D2-A7 might be possible since I'm able to post into windows at 3.8GHz with the (semi stock) Intel cooler. Also for anyone curious the my FSB wall for the board was 420FSB beyond that and I'm unable to post, but hey 420FSB for a board this cheap yet so feature packed is very respectable if you ask me and more than I need for overclocking anyway. There's a nice variety of overclocking options inside the bios as well as other bios options much better than my previous motherboard bios provided. If you have some high quality ram you'll be able to tighten up the timings on them very nicely if they can handle it of course. The on board audio sounds good for it's intended use, but it's certainly no E-MU1212M if you want a top a quality soundcard audio interface that's the thing to go with believe me. For regular usage though th on board audio is just fine in fact I didn't even bother switching my E-MU1212M over even though I probably should since it's defiantly a high quality product being a after market audio interface soundcard. Well anyways I wouldn't buy the TP43D2-A7 motherboard though unless you want a rock solid feature packed motherboard with positive reviews at a bargain price point expect these boards to be flying off the shelfves once more word gets out about them.


So where can you get this excellent motherboard at? Well look no further!

BIOSTAR TForce TP43D2A7 ATX Intel Motherboard BIOSTAR TForce TP43D2A7 LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard (Mail In Rebate $10.00 Expires 08/31/2008)