Thread: Biostar TAY90GX A2+ Motherboards

WHEN AMD UNVEILED its 780G chipset for entry level motherboards, it set new standards for onboard video. Motherboards based on that chip set made game titles as new as just the previous generation fairly well playable. While Nvidia responded with the featurerich GeForce 8200 and GeForce 8300 chipsets, AMD upped the clock speeds of the AMD 780G and the result is what we have here - the 790GX chip¬set that is powering the new Biostar motherboard the 790GX A2+. Given the precedent set by the 780G powered motherboards, we expect good performance and were not let down. In PC World's own real world benchmark¬ing suite, WoridBench 6.0 we received a score of 94, in league with the AMD 780G and GeForce 8200-based boards.

The benefit however is with gaming tests where the higher clock of the graphics core enables higher frames with some games (700MHz on the 790GX versus 500MHz on the 780G, the number of stream processors and the architecture is the same). In 3D Mark 2006, the Biostar 790GX A2+ obtained 1,547 points, about 6 points higher than the best managed by the 780G based motherboards. DOOM3 saw a 15 percent increase in frame rates. Apart from the clock speed, a noteworthy addition to the graphics department on the 790GX is the inclusion of video memory (called sideport memory by AM D) which frees up some bandwidth from the main memory.

This Biostar has 64MB DDR2 sideport memory, but a 128MB version is also available.
But the benefit is not seen in all games however. F.E.A.R and Company of Heros saw minimal improvement up by only one or two frames. Since this motherboard is priced equivalent to its predecessor and is not charging you a premium, we have no reason to complain. On the features side, the motherboard is complete four USB, eSATA, Gigabit LAN, 8 channel audio, six SATA ports (RAID 1,0,10 and 5 supported) are present. When in Crossfire mode, the PCle slots work in x8 mode and when a single video card is used, full x16 speed is available. PCle xl and older PCI slots are two each in number.



Hybrid Crossfire is carried over from the 780G it enables the onboard video to work
alongside an entry level video card to increase graphics performance. Thus, budget conscious users who seek some gaming can buy this motherboard and later on add an inexpensive video card to achieve modest gains. The TA790GX A2+ has enthusiast level overclocking functions, complete with voltage and frequency control for CPU, memory, chipset and the Hyper Transport bus. Automated overclocking is available in three levels, V6, V8 and V12 (named after performance automobile engine configurations). The board also has power and reset buttons another add-on found mostly on enthusiast class models.

So, is this an entry level motherboard for cash strapped gamers? Or something meant for enthusiast overclockers? It performs both these roles and pretty well too. Given the fact that the onboard Radeon HD 3300 video engine can decode Blu-ray and MPEG-2 HD videos, this can even function as an HTPC (but for that your TV must support VGA inputs as there is no standard TV output). If you are on an AMD platform, you won't go wrong with this motherboard.