Board Software

Like other OEMs, Biostar has included several different software utilities to use with the TZ68A+. the first, pictured above, is aptly name “eHot-Line”, a utility used to submit board and installed component info directly to Biostar for troubleshooting purposes. As this is not something I have seen offered elsewhere, we are left with no choice but to give kudos to Biostar for thinking ahead and providing such a utility, as its usefulness cannot be overstated.


The next utility is called “TOverclocker”, a tool similar to what we’ve seen included with other products. The first image shows the opening page, which gives a fair bit of system info, although not all is available on the primary page, but can be found by clicking the appropriate tab.


The “OC Tweaker” tab gives access to many different options users can adjust from within Windows, including clocks and voltages. The third sub-tab here offers automatic overclocking, with two pre-defined settings as well as an auto-overclock utility, but we must mention that the automatic overclock functionality is a fair bit limited when compared to other solutions we have used.


“TOverclocker” also provides some monitoring functions, as well as fan speed adjustments, as shown in the images above. Perhaps not the most ideal layout, its functionality has proven to be useful to us as we explored all the board has to offer. Considering that the TZ68A+ is an entry-level product, we were left fairly impressed that such functionality was included at all.


The last bit of software is the Lucid Virtu software package, which allows use of both the integrated Intel GPU, as well as a discrete VGA, all via the onboard video outputs. As you can see in the second image, the list of supported software is quite lengthy, with 100’s of apps listed here. Although there is still a small bit of performance overhead involved with using a discrete VGA simultaneously with the Intel GPU that’s part of all the i3, i5 and i7 SKT 1155 CPUs, it is very small, and offers a lot more than these screenshots show, as use of the onboard GPU for encoding duties can lead to significant performance increases.

We have to note that there is several other software tools available, but we could not get any of them to function. Both the BIOS updating tool, and the G.P.U. (Green Power Utility) tool failed to start properly, which we hope is fixed in the near future. There is also another utility called "Bio Remote 2", which when combined with an app running on supported smartphones, allows use of the smartphone to control the PC, using a WiFi connection. However, as with the G.P.U. and BIOS updating tool, we failed to get the software to work properly. We have notified Biostar of the problems, and with some guidance we were able to get the "Green Power Utility" working partially, via BIOS settings, but we noticed little-to-no power savings, and no difference in what the software displayed. We did, however, noticed dynamic phase loading thanks to the BIOS tweaks to CPU P-States.