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| Overclocking Results: |
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nVIDIA based
motherboards have an excellent reputation with PCSTATS when it comes to
overclocking, it makes us wonder how we ever got by without that little
nForce. Since the GeForce 7050PV is brand new it will be interesting to see
how the little Biostar TF7050-M2 motherboard handles.
Before the
overclocking began, the AMD Athlon64 5000+'s CPU clock multiplier was first set
to 8x, the Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C3 memory set to run in DDR2-533
MHz mode. These settings ensure neither the processor nor memory will limit
the motherboard.
Starting at 200 MHz, the clock speed of the Biostar
TF7050-M2 was increased in 5 MHz jumps. The TF7050-M2 board handled
overclocking very well and quickly reached 260 MHz before the system started to
show any signs of instability. At this point I had to dive into my intimate
knowledge of overclocking tricks and pull out some oldschool moves to get around
the road block. What I did was increase the Northbridge voltage to the maximum
the BIOS would allow, which was 1.36V. After that it was pretty smooth
overclocking...
Ultimately, the Biostar TF7050-M2 motherboard handled
PCSTATS' overclocking challenge pretty well. The board overclocked to
a top speed of 285 MHz, anything higher and it would crash during
benchmarks. An overclock of 285 MHz is a very respectable speed for a mainstream
class MicroATX platform. The TF7050-M2 is not a motherboard I would overclock
because the software available right now has not reached the point where
you need to overclock, and running at stock speeds just assures stability.
The Biostar
BIOS:
Even though the Biostar TF7050-M2 motherboard
is an entry level motherboard, Biostar gives you a ton of memory timing options
here. Tweakers will spend a lot of time learning what each switch does.
The TF7050-M2's clock speed can be adjusted
between 200-450 MHz in 1 MHz increments. The HTT speed and bus width can be
adjusted depending on what you want to do. The Biostar TF7050-M2 motherboard
allows you to increase the CPU voltage 0.787V above stock, DDR2 memory to 2.65V
and the Northbridge voltage to 1.36V.
Prelude to Benchmarks
With the GeForce 7050PV being Microsoft Windows Vista
ready, PCSTATS will be testing the Biostar TF7050-M2 motherboard in Windows
Vista 32 bit. Consequently there are slightly less benchmarks than we would
normally have for a WindowsXP based test system because benchmark compatibility
with Vista is still finding its feet. To reiterate the benchmark results on the
following pages were all conducted within Microsoft
Vista Ultimate.
The details of how the Biostar TF7050-M2 motherboard test
system was configured for benchmarking; the specific hardware, software drivers,
operating system and benchmark versions is indicated below. In the second column
are the general specs for the reference platforms this nVIDIA GeForce 7050PV
based motherboard is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over
PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark
results on the next page.
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| PCSTATS Test System Configurations |
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