Biostar A880G+ MATX Motherboard
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- CPU: Socket AM3 Support AMD Phenom II X6/X4/X3/X2 Processor, Athlon II X4/X3/X2/Sempron Processor,
- Chipset: AMD 880G & SB710
- Memory: 2x 240pin DDR3-1333/1066/800 DIMMs, Dual Channel, Max Capacity Upto 8GB
- Slots: 1x PCI-Express 2.0 x16 Slot(Support ATI Hybrid CrossFireX Technology), 2x PCI slots
- IDE/ SATA: 1x ATA133 Channel, 4x SATA2 Ports, support RAID 0, 1, 10
- Audio: Realtek ALC662 6-Channel HD Audio
- Form Factor: Micro ATX
- Ports: 8x USB 2.0 Ports (4 rear, 4 by headers), 1x PS/2 Port, 1x VGA Port, 1x DVI Port, 1x HDMI Port, 1x RJ45 LAN Port, Audio I/O Jacks
- Support 125W CPU, Support Hyper Transport 3.0 Technology, FSB upto 5.2GT/s
Biostar A880G+ Socket AM3/ AMD 880G/ DDR3/ Hybrid CrossFireX/ A&V&GbE/ MATX Motherboard
Biostar motherboard
Biostar A880G+ MATX Motherboard
List Price: $ 76.99
Price:
Budget gamers look here !,
If you want to core unlock and Amd Sempron 140 into a dual core Athlon x2 4400e then this board is the ticket !
I put everything togehter Using an old Emachines case from my last computer, two notebook 250 GB drives I had with a Silverstone adpater for mounting notebook drive in a standard bay, a Coolermaster 460 Elite Power Supply, 4GB of ADATA 1333 DDR3 RAM, AMD Sempron 140 Processor and this Biostar A880G+ board.
Next I promptly fired it up. Next I hit the F3 key during boot which then caused the system to reboot with the 2nd Core unlocked and BAM just like that Dual Core bliss that will hand and even beat a $69.99 doallar Intel Pentium Dual Core E5400 all this from a $32.99 Amd Sempron.
Next up I enter the BIOS to set the DRAM to 1333 and 1.5 for the voltage as reccomended for the 4GB of ADATA Ram I installed
Most people would think a Sempron is a cheap and slow processor, yet I now have 2 MB of level 2 cache and dual 2.7 ghz cores which overclock quite well to over 3 Ghz.
Now it’s time to test, I am using Win 7 X64 Pro and first with the Onboard Ati Hd4250 I was suprised, while not for any heavy gaming even when you hit F7 righ after you power on, to do what Biostar calls Gamer Boost overclocking the Graphics to 700 Mhz. Yet for the average user this onboard graphics is more than capable of watching 720 and 1080 P movies, Hulu, Netflix and all the rest. The Windows Score I got was 4.5 Desktop and 5.5 Gaming for the two graphics related scores.
So next up I installed the Ati Radeon HD 5570 Card which I got for 80 Bucks and I now have what I believe is THE BEST GAMER on a tight budget available anywhere. My Windows Scores are now as follows.
Processor 6.2
RAM 7.2
Graphics Desktop 6.8
Graphics Gaming 6.8
Hard Drive 5.4
I am Using an AOC 32 Inch 720P Digital Tv DVI to HDMI cable and with a native resoulution of 1360×768 I am playing Dirt 2 in Direct X11 without a hitch. The Resident Evil benchmark available for download on Windows Live Games is running at just under 60 FPS in Direct X10. at 1280×768. Who would have thought for a total price of under 250 Dollars with the Video card and assuming you too have an old case with drives lying around you too can duplicate the same system for less than the price of a PS3 or the high end XBOX system. By the way I have Dirt 2 on my XBOX 360 and this Demo on this bargain PC looks and plays far better.
I cant Imagine what it will look and play like when I get an Athlon X3 or Phenom X2 BE to drop in here and then upgrade the grapchis card to an HD 5770.
In the meantime I am playing all the older games and most of the newer ones for around 250 Bucks. Again keep in mind this $250 figure is assuming you have an extra computer case and some drives either laying around of from your current system ! Yo may even own a decent graphics card comperable or better than the one I have in which case the other parts I bought ran just under 170 Dollars total with Amazon Prime 2 day delievery.
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Great Motherboard – Easy to Unlock Cores!,
I paired this with an AMD Athlon II X3 445.
With this motherboard, I was able to unlock the 4th core with just a drop down in the bios. Now I have 4 cores – all under 9 degrees C! My tool now shows this as an Athlon II X4 645!
Pluses:
1. Easy to install
2. Simple instructions
3. Plenty of sata ports
4. Plenty of USB connections
5. HDMI and VGA
6. Decent on-board graphics
7. Easy to overclock – one easy click!
8. Easy to unlock other cores – one easy click!
Cons:
1. Only 2 slots for the RAM (not a biggie)
2. Only 1 IDE slot
I used this with my old HP case, PSU, HD, DVD and CDRW drive … so the old IDE slot was very important. Because there was only 1 slot, I had to buy a new SATA HD – no problem as my old HD was only 80GB and was slow. I was able to reconfigure my PSU to work with this motherboard. For the price and reliability, this is a winner.
BTW – paired with DDR3 1066 RAM, this is now faster than my Core i3 370M laptop!
Amazing motherboard!
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Nice little board. BASIC,
Raid controller bad, driver for RAID bad too. Spent many hours trying to figure this out, many combinations, many attempts to install driver different ways, would not work at all RAID 0, then worked for one boot up RAID 1, then lost array.
So I switched boards and had no problems.
I have 2 of these boards, one in my mom’s PC (office stuff) one in my wife’s PC (office stuff).
This board works great for multiple monitors (will run 2 on board) plus you can add an ATI HD5450 (will run 2 more) for a total of 4 monitors. Yes, we like 4 monitors in our office/trading setups and this is a nice budget solution for multiple monitors. YOU MUST USE the ATI HD5450 card as the drivers for both the on board and addon card are the same. http://www.amazon.com/PowerColor-Radeon-HD5450-PCI-Express-512MK3-SH/dp/B0038JREUY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1288809988&sr=1-2
I previously had a PNY NVS420x16 card to run 4 monitors, and it cost $450, and was a furnace at 170 degrees. The setup described above runs at 89 to 96 degrees, silently, for $90 bucks! I can sit in my office without sweating again!
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