Biostar TForce 550

Thought I would start a thread about this board since I imagine that a bunch of people would be getting the X2 3600+ / TForce 550 combo and this might start becoming popular.

First off, overclocking with this board is pretty good, but most of the bios versions will not boot past either 287 HTT or 295 HTT. The newest bios does not have this problem and I have booted into windows at 305HTT, and I imagine could go higher (CPU needed more voltage, I'll push it further later, right now I am just testing). I would flash the bios as soon as you get the board, the bios that shipped with the board did not properly lock the PCI bus, and I was running at 47mhz on the PCI bus at one point (and I was running an IDE hdd too).

For the price this board has a lot of great overclocking options, there is a ridiculous amount of memory timings most of which are a mystery to me. Voltage selection is pretty good, you can set CPU voltage to obscene levels (you can select voltages past 2V in the bios...I don't recommend it), VDimm up to 2.2V if you set the 2.2V jumper on the board (newer revisions have a 2.4V jumper, and RebelsHaven has a 2.4V mod for the earlier revs), also adjustable is chipset voltage and HT voltage.

The board looks pretty good, and has a clean layout, and being a single chip design the board is pretty small (a good inch or two more narrow than my 939Dual, and also component are placed neatly, rather than the haphazard assortment on the Dual). The only negative of the layout is the power connector which forces you to go around your CPU heatsink to plug in.

Expansion is decent, but not great. This board has the basics, no firewire, no eSata, no 2nd PCIE x16 slot. I am dissapointed by the one PATA connector, but I believe thats all the Nforce 550 supports (shame on Nvidia and Intel for trying to kill ATA off when SATA Optical drives are still so rare). Expansion card slot options are good with 2 PCIE x1 slots and 4 PCI slots. I like this because most cards on the market are still PCI. and even with a 2 slot GPU cooler you can still access all four PCI slots.

Unfortunately the NIC died on me after two days. I believe this is an isolated incident because I haven't heard of it elsewhere. Quite odd, its in device manager, but it would not pick up a DHCP address, and still wouldn't work after I used a static address. I'm going to RMA to newegg, but for now a PCI card is working fine.

If you are looking at a budget dual core system, I would definitely consider picking up this combo for $160. Sure a C2D is going to be quite a bit faster, but ultimately is going to cost you at least $100 more.

Check out this thread for some tips and workarounds for this board:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000259

You definitely want to sink the mosfet pointed out there because it is HOT, I can't hold my finger to it for more than a couple seconds.

Here is the 2.4Vdimm mod:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000274

Here is a thread with a ton of great info:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000255

Thats it from me for now.

edit:
Here is a page with all the bios versions:
http://www.lejabeach.com/Biostar/6100-550/6100550bios.html

The unmodded 207 is working great for me right now.

Nice to know they finally fixed the HTT issue. This combo was tempting me this weekend so I might have one here in a few days also.

this deal also caught my eye. glad to see some insight into whether it is worth it or not.

This motherboard is a pretty decent one, lots of connectors, good support, and pretty good overclocking ability (With a BIOS upgrade)

I bought the X2 3600+ combo, stock 1.3 volts, 1.9 ghz. I have gotten it to 2.9 ghz stable, at 1.45 volts. Temps are a little high, started out at 55 breaking it in, but after about 6 hours it went to 50 constant. Idle it sits about 33-34. This processor is very fast. Ran Orthos for 15 hours, no errors at 2.9 ghz. Trying for 2.95 I got blue screened without a volt increase, and with 3.0 at 1.475 volts it would give a constant addition error. Then with 1.5 it would blue screen on me. A 1 GHZ overclock is nice though.

Well I got my replacement board from newegg because the lan on the original died. Interestingly enough, this is a rev1.3 which seems to be significantly different with the component layout (like the ram mosfets which were getting very hot before, hopefully this is remedied). Also now allows 2.4V to the Ram with the jumper, so no mods are needed for that . I will report back here with some results as soon as I have them.

A few thoughts on the revision 1.3 board. There were only two changes that I could detect by scanning the boards side by side. First of all, the Vdimm circuitry has been completely redesigned, they have spread out the mosfets used and added an inductor or two. The end result as far as I can see is that the superheating mosfets issue is no longer an issue. Had I kept the rev 1.0 board, I would have definitely put some sinks on the mosfets as those things were too hot to hold my finger on before. Also there seems to be a clock oscillator below the lan chip where previosly there was only a silkscreen for one, not sure what this does.

I flashed bios 207 off of RebelsHaven's bios page and am back at 2.8 where I was before. The thing is that now my load temps are reading 35C where before they were reading 50C. I imagine this is part actual cooling improvement, and part sensor calibration changes. My previous heatsink install was done hastily to get me up and running and at first the heatsink was installed with the fan blowing downwards, and a grain of Thermalright grease on top of the AS Alumina that remained on the heatsink before (layering thermal paste = bad). I had then flipped the fan so it was pulling air through the fins instead of pushing down. I do think that a clean remount did my temps a whole heap of good because this time I just had a thin layer of the Thermalright grease, and the fan was in its correct configuration. On the other hand, those adjusments I made do no account for a 15C drop in load temps, and a dual core CPU at 2.8ghz simply doesn't run at 35C on an Ultra 90 and a 50cfm fan. My guess is that the mobo sensor is a bit off, and that my temps are more around 42-46C.

I would really love it if CoreTemp could be fixed to work with Brisbane chips. It would be nice to know the actual temperature of my CPU.

I'm trying to create a slipstream cd for the SATA drivers since I don't have a floppy drive.

Are the nvraid drivers the ones I need to use or is it something from the chipset drivers?

(Maybe in the wrong spot, but I just ordered this combo and need to know)

I believe that for many of these boards, and if you have an XP SP2 CD, you won't need to slipstream the drivers for regular SATA. I think those would only be needed if you are setting up a RAID array.

Xenithon is right, unless you want to run raid, you don't need to slipstream the drivers. My XP SP1 cd detected my SATA drives wihtout any issues. But if you did want to slipstream I imagine that the nvraid is what you need.

According to the Nvidia documentation:
The storage tree in the extracted nForce installation package should look like this:
...\IDE\WinXP\sataraid
...\IDE\WinXP\legacy
...\IDE\WinXP\sata_ide

And you want the sataraid files.

I have some pics of the revision 1.3 board:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/asohangh/images/tforce/tforceside.JPG
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/asohangh/images/tforce/tforce13osc.JPG
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/asohangh/images/tforce/tforce13vdimm.JPG

The Vdimm picture is the most significant. Before the vdimm mosfets got crazy hot and they were using a linear voltage regulator supply. JWilson on Rebelshaven pointed out that this design looks like they switched to a switching regulator supply, and that would explain why the fets are running so cool now.

A little update on my overclocking, I am now running 9x305HTT for 2.9Ghz with vcore set as 1.375V in the bios. The actual vcore being reported by CPUZ and other utilities is 1.44V.

I have it at 9.5 X 306, it's set to 1.475 volts but it shows 1.456 in cpu-z.

Yea, I don't know if your board does this, but mine actually runs 1mhz above the HTT that I set it as. So I am actually running 2.9ghz when I set it to 305HTT.

Yeah mines like 2914 mhz...I didn't care though.

Right now I'm at 2.9 reading 1.44 volts in HW monitor... Will update when I reach the top. Only using an AC alpine64 & AS5.

Edit: After figuring out that my memory settings were stupid and that speedfan was reporting temps wrong (sort of), I'm now testing @ 2.7 with 1.31-1.34v as reprted by bios & HW monitor. I have the core set to 1.25v in bios.

What voltage had you actually set it to in the bios?

After some research into RAM timings I found out that a couple of the setting that I left to auto were WAY out of line (especially "trc" of 8). I also found out that the RAM that I purchased is kinda crappy. Oh well. Now running stable @ 2.8 with default voltage. Would proabably do 2.9, but I'm done messing around for a while. COuld post and do memtest over 3, but no windows. I'll see if I can get better cooling at some point.



ANybody else having trouble with their microphone? It was showing very low volume for a while until I found the mic boost... Now it just doesn't work at all. I've checked to make sure it's plugged into the right spot, reinstalled drivers... I just don't know what is going on.

Does the Realtek audio console program keep popping up saying a jack was plugged/unplugged, that happened to me when trying to use the Biostar Hardware monitor.

One thing I would try if you haven't already is getting the newest driver from the Realtek site:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...=3&GetDown=false#High Definition Audio Codecs

Not using biostar HW monitor... Already updated drivers and turned on mic boost on all inputs & turned up vol. Only input that works is the green front panel jack, but vol is too low like mic boost isn't working. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers multiple times.

Just searched the registry for "boost" ANd found mic boost a few times.

I'd really hate to have to buy a seperate sound card just to get the mic working.

(edit) Correction. Both front panel connectors now magically working at reasonable volume (not great). Am satisfied with results.

I just got my combo deal from the Egg but have to wait until the weekend to try it. A few questions...
- Is the OC software that comes with the TForce 550 useful? I wouldn't want to use auto mode but it seems that the software allows you to make changes without rebooting the system. Are there any other useful features in the software?
- I'll be using 1 stick of 1 meg DDR2. Does it matter which slot it goes in? Usually I put it in the slot nearest to the processor but I noticed that in the manual the 3rd slot was a different color than the others and thought there might be a significance to it.

Imho the T Utility is worthless. It does allow some advanced capability, but if you start it while overclocked, the thing just freezes my computer. At stoch speeds it worked all right, but imho Clockgen is where its at for Windows ocing.

Also it shouldn't matter where you put the ram, and there should be two orange and two green ram slots, one shouldn't be a different color.

just got my combo the other day. cant wait to try it out, but its going to be at least another weak because i'm waiting for my swiftech pump and gpu waterblock.

Guys, this is my first post here.. Ive been searching all around, as I just assembled by newegg 3600+/Biostar TForce 550 combo. Ive got 1 gb of Corsair xms2 4-4-4-12 ddr2-800 ram, and Im dying to try some overclocking. First, about the bios.. I went to the list of bios for our mobo at http://www.lejabeach.com/Biostar/6100-550/6100550bios.html, but didnt see anything which matched up with mine, which is: N55SA-A2T.. Is mine newer than the others, as my order was placed on 3/1? Whatever, I cannot find this bios number Anywhere on the net, so Im a bit confused.

At any rate, is there one place I can find all the bios settings for my hardware which will give me a 2.7 or 2.8 ghz bump? Also, re cpu temps, Im idling now around 30-32 degrees as Im typing this. But thats only with the HSF operating at 60%.. I can drop the cpu temps into the upper 20s by turning the hsf up all the way, which I guess Id have to do with the overclock.. But what is the max temp I should allow.. For instance, would 45-50 be ok? A couple days ago, I tried the V6 auto setting, and I hated it.. It only bumped me to 2.185 ghz, but in order to do so, it bumped vcore up from 1.328v to 1.552v, with a resulting rise in cpu temp to 50... From what iM reading here, that is an unconscionablely large vcore bump for such a small frequency gain. I even read where perhaps 1.45v is all thats needed to support up near 3 ghz, so I dont know what biostar was doing with those aggressive cpu voltages in the automatic overclocks, but I guess Ive been well advised to stay away from those.

So, I want to start trying some manual settings, but Im so damn nervous, I wish there were a wimps handholding section of this forum as I venture forth and try not to F up my gorgeous new machine. Overclocking is Definitely not for wimps. So any help with settings Id really appreciate.. And again, this looks like an awesome forum!!