The Quake 3 diagram indicates that the TA64B does exhibit good
gaming performance. The tested board was just slightly a bit slower than the
fastest boards we've tested at PCstats up to now. So all gamers will like the
performance under Quake 3. We didn't include any Expendable scores because this
game depends more on CPU speed than any other parameter and the tested boards
would have performed almost identically.
Overclocking
The TA64B supports
about 14 FSB settings, which is enough for decent overclocking flexibility. It
is important to note that the TA64B does not have any provision for Vcore
voltage adjustment and there are NO bus settings between 83MHz and 100MHz.
However, adding a "slocket" adapter could be used to alleviate such a
problem.
We knew that our Celeron II 566 required a good voltage boost before attempting an
850MHz overclock. In order to accomplish this on the TA64B, we had installed
the processor on an Asus "slocket" adapter with Vcore adjustment. We then subsequently configured
the voltage of the slocket to 1.8V and inserted the module into the Slot
1 CPU interface. The result? The system refused to POST. However, this was
quite expected as none of our VIA Apollo Pro 133A
boards were able to clock the Celeron II at 850MHz.
Unfortunately the highest we could get out of our Celeron II was 635MHz
(8.5x75MHz). According to some info we found in the Internet, the overclocking
potential of this board is really great with Coppermine chips (saw a 550E
running at about 800MHz). To summarize, the tested board has average
overclocking potential with Celeron CPU's, but overclockability with other CPU's
should be more successful.
The TA64B was rock
solid during our tests and never exhibited any stability/compatibility issues.
We tried to install a 128MB DIMM (Spectek, Made in USA) but this only resulted
in some incompatibility problems. The same DIMM had problems on the DFI CA61
(VIA Apollo Pro 133) but worked fine on all the other boards we have tested so
far. Other than that, all devices that were installed operated as they have
should.
Conclusion Final Thoughts
The DFI TA64B is a
decent product as it sports of various features such as AGP 4x, ATA 66, twin CPU
ports, support for all Intel Slot 1 Socket370 chips including the Cyrix MIII.
Its layout design and component quality are top notch. However, as it turns out,
the TA64B only offers moderate overclocking settings as well as overclocking
ability.
On the other hand this board is definitely a great choice for
casual users since it packs a good amount of features at a very affordable
price. The idea of having both a Socket 370 and a Slot 1 connector certainly
adds to future expansion ability and makes this product extremely versatile to a
users needs.
As previously indicated in the performance charts, the
TA64B's performance is quite good. In both business and gaming, this motherboard
should not disappoint at all. If your needs are restricted to everything other
than intense overclocking, the TA64B should suit your needs quite
nicely...
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