Packaging

The Biostar TA990FXE comes in what has become standard packaging for Biostar for 2011. Like the rest of the AMD-supporting Biostar motherboards, the TA990FXE is clad in a red box with stylized slashes across the front. There are many technology logos surrounding the product name on the bottom right, while emblazoned across the middle is Biostar's "Extreme Edition" logo. Flipping the box over, we are once again greeted by what looks like a tablet like the other Biostar products we've looked at recently, with logos describing the included Biostar technologies inside. The Biostar packaging has to be one of our most favorite, as its simple design is very understated, without fancy graphics that distract, and although Biostar offers some of the least expensive board options, the packaging really helps give the board a high quality first impression.


Upon opening the box, we find the goodies right on top, separated from the board itself by a layer of protective cardboard. Under the goodies we find the board itself, and those goodies seem pretty sparse in comparison to some of the other products that have undergone torture in our bench station. However, being priced as it is, we did expect as much, and while we would have liked to have seen a bit more here, this is a trivial issue for a product in this price range.

Contents

This entry-level product comes with very little in the way of accessories as we mentioned, and shocking to us, we find only four SATA 6 Gb/s cables, along with a manual, driver disc, I/O shield, and a couple of Crossfire bridges. It seems very odd that there is cabling for only four of the five included SATA ports, but again, this is partially dictated by MSRP. What we do not find here is an SLI bridge, as the TA990FXE lacks support for one of the newest 9-series exclusive features; support for NVIDIA's SLI multi-GPU technology. Take a quick look below to find a full listing of what's inside the TA990FXE's box:

• 1x I/O Shield
• 1x User Manual
• 1x Driver CD
• 4x SATA 6 Gb/s cables with locking pins
• 1x Biostar Cable Tie
• 2x Crossfire Bridge Cable

UPDATE(12/06/2011): Biostar has notified us that SLi support for this product has been added with a BIOS update(99FADB24.BST) available on the product page on Biostar's website.

Hit the next page for a look at the board itself.