BIOS Walkthrough

Using the Biostar UEFI bios is easy and very straight forward. Its layout is very easy to navigate, with each section split into tabs that are accessed by using your mouse to click each tab, or using your keyboard's arrow keys. The first page that we see once the board boots is a very standard and basic page that has been found in board BIOSes nearly since time began, listing system details and providing access for time and date adjustment. The second tab contains the majority of board device settings, while the next two screens show listings from within that page.


The CPU configuration page contains only a few settings, and in the Smartfan heading, as you can see in the second image above, there is only control for the CPU_FAN via SMARTFAN options. The third image above shows the monitoring page, and as you can see, there is a nice healthy list of voltages, but not too many temperature sensors. The last image shows the landing page for the "Chipset Options" tab, whose headings each contain quite a few options.


The "NorthBridge Options" heading leads to several options for PCIe management, while the "SouthBridge Options" heading contains options for I/O devices, like USB and SATA. The "Onboard Devices" heading contains options for the remaining onboard devices, seen in the third image above. The "Boot" tab contains all settings for boot options, such as which devices are booted first.


The "Security" tab only contains options for password settings, and nothing else. The next tab is a bit more exciting, however. Even its "O.N.E." title kind of hints that it is important, and it truly is the ONE tab that contains all needed options for overclocking, including clock settings and voltages. The voltage heading contains all needed voltage options, and we've gone as far as showing the maximum voltages offered by the TA990FXE in the third image above. The fourth image above shows what is contained within the "Biostar Memory Insight" heading, which is filled with a fair bit of helpful information read off of the installed memory's SPD ROM, making memory setup a much easier task and is something we have been seeing much more often in BIOSes, a trend that we are very happy to embrace.


The "AMD P-State Configuration" heading contains quite a bit of options that we don't see too commonly, allowing users to not just adjust clock multipliers and voltages, but also allows those settings to appear as defaults for the CPU. This makes CPU clocking a relatively easy task, when combined with the voltage offsets offered. The two offer nearly endless options for clocks and voltages even beyond what most extreme users will need. Settings for HTT bit-width are also available, as seen in the second image above, which might let users going to maximum bus clocks reach a bit further than on other products. Settings for memory timings are pretty in depth, but we found a few critical options were missing, such as TRFC, which might prove to limit memory clocking depending on how Biostar has setup those options users cannot access. There is also a small selection of memory controller specific options users can adjust, as seen in the last image above.


The first image above shows the last heading under the "O.N.E." tab, labeled "G.P.U. Phase Control", which simply lets users adjust what mode the CPU VRM is in, either dynamic phase loading, or with all phases under power at all times. And with all that said, we are left with the last tab, labeled "Save and Exit", where users can save BIOS profiles for easy switching between clock settings, as well as access standard exit options.

We were very happy to see Biostar use UEFI BIOSes on AMD products. We do feel that the BIOS could use a bit of work in layout and options offered, but almost every critical option we needed, barring a few memory timings, were all available. We did check with quite a few sets of memory to see if those missing options played any role in overclocking and we are very happy to report that we encountered no problems. This is a huge step for Biostar who has had some issues in the past with memory compatibility on some products. For us, it's ultimately very critical that board makers ensure the highest compatibility for RAM considering how many different modules are on the market today. Therefore, we really feel the need to mention the progress Biostar has made here and to congratulate them on a job very well done.