![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , December 17, 2009
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
BIOSTAR TPOWER I55 Motherboard Review
BIOSTAR, a company often overlooked by enthusiast users, emerges with its P55 based motherboard. The TPOWER I55 packs enough power under the hood to put some fear in to the competition. This is not the first good enthusiast motherboard we have seen from BIOSTAR.
Subsystem Testing
NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel LGA 1156 Core i5 750 CPU with the board base clock running at 133MHz and 2 x 2GB Corsair CMD8GX3M4A1600C8 memory modules running at 1333MHz were used in testing.
Audio - Subjective Listening
One of the easiest ways to determine the quality of the audio subsystem is via a subjective sound test. Ideally, a sound test requires audio covering the entire spectrum, from subtle to intense. For this test, I chose to listen to the Megadeth album United Abominations.
Audio playback was flawless, with no discernible audio distortion detected.
Audio - Microphone Port Testing
The MIC-IN input was tested using our standard Labtec Desk Mic 524 testing microphone. Spoken words were recorded and played back using Microsoft Sound Recorder, with the Microphone Boost option disabled and enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the Advanced menu under the Microphone section within the Volume Control menu.
While overall audibility was much better with Microphone Boost enabled, distortion and audio signal breakup was very evident throughout the recording. No distortion was detected with Microphone Boost disabled, but the audio track itself was more like whispers than voices.
Drive Performance
To adequately test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 connections, we chose to use an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected to both ports. SATA and IDE drive tests were performed using a Maxtor 40Gb ATA 133 model 6E040L0 hard drive on the IDE header and Samsung 40GB SATA II hard drives on the SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in a RAID 0 16k block size configuration and in standalone mode on both the Intel P55 controller. Testing was also conducted using an IDE drive in a standalone configuration on the JMicron JMB363 controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.
The SATA 2 based RAID array had the best overall performance, following closely in performance by the standalone SATA drive. The external drive devices performed similarly in the tests, with the IEEE 1394 device having only a slight advantage. With the exception of the IDE device, the CPU utilization remained below 1%.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the onboard Intel and Realtek GigE NICs. DU meter was used to measure bandwidth, with Windows Task Manager to monitor the CPU utilization on the test system. For the test itself, a 750MB archive file containing various sized .WMA audio files for the large file transfer test and a 750MB worth of various sized .WMA audio files for the small files transfer test were used in conjunction with an integrated Gigabit NIC on the host system and a crossover cable to connect the host system to the test system. A crossover cable was used to rule out any possible bandwidth losses due to hub or switch passage.
Intel GigE controller
The large file transfer results were better than expected, with the download speed beating that of upload by over 16 MB/s at just under an impressive 48 MB/s. During both tests, the CPU utilization remained under 10%.
The small file transfer tests performed as anticipated, with the upload speed besting that of download by 3 MB/s at just over 29 MB/s. In both cases, the CPU utilization again remained below 10%.
Realtek GigE controller
While not as fast as the Intel results, the large file transfer tests performed well within expectations, with the download speed besting that of upload by 10 MB/s at 41MB/s. The CPU utilization stayed below 10% for the test duration.
The small file transfer tests also performed as anticipated, with the upload speed besting that of download by 4 MB/s coming in at just under 31 MB/s. During both tests, the CPU utilization remained below 10%.
Synthetic Performance Testing
Test Systems
The following system configurations were used for the system benchmark graphs, as well as all graphs listed under the Application and Gaming Benchmarks sections:
Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Type & Clock Speed - Memory Speed
Sisoft Sandra 2009
Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode for all systems with the exception of the Intel X58 based board which ran in Triple Channel mode.
The TPOWER I55 held no surprises here, with its performance matching that of the other P55 based systems. The X58 based system’s performance dwarfed it as expected, due to the bandwidth differences between the P55’s Dual Channel memory bus and the X58’s Triple Channel memory bus.
The TPOWER I55 performed well against the other P55 based boards, indicating that its CPU interface was well designed and working as expected.
Hiper Pi
The TPOWER I55 continues to meet performance expectations, when compared with the other P55 based boards.
wPrime
The TPOWER I55 board closes out the Synthetic benchmarks on a strong note, again matching performance with the other P55 contenders and illustrating the hearty design of the board itself.