by Abbas Jaffar Ali on February 21, 2004
Introduction/Specifications
Biostar is a relatively unknown brand in this part of the world, however, they produce most of the common products like SFF PCs, motherboards and graphics cards like most players in the industry. Their local distributor Empa Middle East managed to get a hold of us and provided us their VIA K8T800 chipset based motherboard- the K8VHA Pro. Lets find how well this board performs.
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CPU: |
Supports Socket 754 AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 3400+ Processor |
| Chipset: | VIA K8T800+VT8237Supports AGP 8X interface. Hi-Speed USB (USB2.0) controller, 480Mb/sec, 8 ports. 2 Serial ATA/150 ports. |
| Memory: |
2 x 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM- Maximum 2.0 GB |
| Audio: | Cemedia CMI9739A 6-Channel AC'97 CODEC S/PDIF Interface |
| IDE/SCSI: | Dual Ultra DMA 66/100/133 IDE controllers- up to four Ultra ATA drives Two-Channel Serial ATA(SATA) PHY for support up to two SATA devices Multiple RAID Configurations support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 |
| I/O Connectors: | 2 x PS/2, 21 x Serial, 1 x Parallel, 1 x Media, 1 x SPDIF, 4+4 x USB, 1+1 x Firewire 1 x RJ-45 |
| Expansion Slots: | 1 x AGP (3.0) , 5 x PCI (2.3), 1 x CNR |
| Additional Features: |
Realtek RTL8110S Gigabit LAN |
| Form Factor: | ATX Form Factor Dimension: 244mm X 305mm ( W x L ) |
Layout
The K8VHA Pro has a pretty standard layout as far as K8T800 motherboards go. There are a few capacitors around the CPU socket which can cause a problem in the installation of an HSF unit that is bigger than the standard. Biostar places both the main power connector and the four pin connector towards the top of the board which is good as it restricts the thick power cables from creating a block or clutter, however, there a couple of capacitors right next to these connectiors as well which makes them a little hard to get to.
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There are only two memory sockets and like most K8T800 boards, they enter the AGP territory meaning you’ll have to remove your AGP card if you want to add/remove any memory modules. The floppy connector is placed towards the right of these sockets, however, Biostar moved the IDE connectors below the PCI slots. Although we doubt there will be many PCI cards long enough to block these IDE connectors, it still would’ve been a better idea to place them next to the memory sockets.
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Biostar places most of the other headers in the bottom right quadrant. These include two USB headers and one Firewire header. The Serial- ATA connectors are also placed in this region and so is the clearing CMOS jumper which makes it easy to get to. The front panel is color coded which makes it easy to identify where to connect the relevant connections.
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Features & BIOS/Overclocking
The K8VHA has a decent amount of onboard features. The VIA chipset supports technologies like Serial-ATA (with RAID) and USB 2.0 while Biostar adds support for Firewire thru a VIA controller. Audio is powered by a CMedia Codec with SDPIF while networking is taken care of thru a Gigabit Realtek Controller.
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The board also supports some of Biostar specific features like WarpSpeeder which is a hardware monitoring/overclocking utility for Windows (with an interesting egg-like interface) and WinFlasher that, as you guessed, lets you update the BIOS from Windows.
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The BIOS is one of the weakest links on the K8VHA. While it offers pretty good options to adjust memory timings as well as HyperTransport/LDT options, there isnt much in terms of overclocking.
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All that is allowed is changing the clock value between the 200MHz and 250MHz. We would’ve liked to see at least some voltage options for the CPU or Memory. One thing we liked about the K8VHA is that it allows you to upgrade the BIOS from within the BIOS.
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Testbed
| CPU: | AMD Athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz) |
| Memory: | 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS3502 v1.1 DDR-433 Memory Module |
| VGA Card: | Gigabyte Radeon 9800XT |
| Optical/Hard Drives: | ASUS 52X CDRW, Maxtor ATA-133 7200RPM 40GB IDE |
| Monitor: | Relisys 19" Monitor |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboard Drivers: | VIA Hyperion 4-in-1 v4.51 |
| VGA Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 3.10 |
Our Corsair memory works very well at the highest memory timings at DDR400 speeds and thus all benchmarks were conducted at 2.0-5-2-2 settings. For comparison, we've chosen our winner of the eight-way K8T800 boards roundup- the MSI K8T. As reported by CPU-Z, the frequency of the K8VHA at default was reported at 200.8MHz which is right on average. For benchmarking we've selected the following applications:
| SiSoft Sandra 2003: | Memory Bandwidth Benchmarks |
| PC Mark 04: | CPU, Memory, & Hard Drive, |
| Quake3 Arena: | Fastest Setting at 640x480 resolution as well as High Quality Settings at 800x600 Resolution |
| 3D Mark 2001SE: | Default settings using the latest build. |
| Serious Sam Second Encounter: | Using the default settings (800x600 resolution) and running the "Little Trouble" Demo |
| Unreal Tournament 2003: | Using the built-in benchmarking app in the downloaded demo, we ran the BotMatch at 1024x768 |
| Aquamark3: | Default Settings |
| Sysmark 2004: | Office Productivity and Internet Content Creation |
If you would like for us to add any additional benchmarking software, please email us at suggestions@tbreak.com
CPU/Memory/HD Benchmarks
CPU/Memory/HD Benchmarks
The performance difference between the two boards is hardly anything and whatever little difference we see is probably because of the slightly higher base FSB of the Biostar
Gaming Benchmarks
Graphics/Gaming Benchmarks
Again, both the boards are almost at the same level although the MSI board seems to post a tad bit better scores in 3D Mark & Quake3 Arena whereas Biostar pulls slightly ahead in Serious Sam Second Encounter.
Sysmark Internet/Office Benchmarks
Sysmark Internet/Office Benchmarks
Again, we see very little difference between the boards- basically almost any K8T800 board performs almost the same as the other provided its base FSB is not too overclocked.
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Stability & Price/Packaging
Stability did not seem to be any problem on the K8VHA. We had the board up and running for over 48 hours looping Sandra without any problems. We also tried the board with a bunch of different memory modules and graphics cards and all of them seemed to work ok.
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The K8VHA comes in a very standard packaging- in fact, it’s a generic box that Biostar probably uses for quite a few of their board.
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Inside the box, you get standard cables, a user-manual as well as drivers. Biostar also includes a CD with a couple of Norton applications like Internet Security. The board is priced at under US$90 or somewhere around the AED 300/- mark.
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Summary & Report Card
The 8KVHA is a reasonable board by Biostar. It performs as well as almost any K8T800 board and offers good hardware features like Serial-ATA RAID and Gigabit Networking although we would’ve liked to see at least one more memory socket. What the board doesn’t offer is much overclocking options in the BIOS- we feel that decent overclocking options have almost become a standard now.
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Layout | ||
There are some capacitors around the CPU socket that we wouldn’t like to see that also cause a bit of an inconvenience to remove the main power connector. Biostar also places the IDE connectors below the PCI slots which should’ve been moved next to the memory sockets. |
7/10 | |
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Hardware Features | ||
The 8KHVA has a decent number of onboard options like Gigabit Networking, Serial-ATA RAID and audio by C-Media with SPDIF output. We do wish that Biostar had placed more than two memory sockets onboard. |
12/15 | |
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BIOS and Overclocking | ||
The BIOS is where this board is the weakest. Although you can tinker memory timings to your liking, there isn’t much in terms of overclocking. Biostar does not allow you adjust voltage for anything from the BIOS- about the only thing you can do is increase the CPU clock speed. |
8/15 | |
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Performance | ||
The 8KVHA performs as well as almost any other K8T800 board which is a good thing as we’ve found that at stock speed VIA’s chipset is the fastest solution for the Athlon64. |
20/25 | |
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Stability | ||
Stability was no issue whatsoever with the 8KVHA. We used a number of different memory modules and graphics cards and found the board performing flawlessly. |
20/20 | |
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Packaging / Price | ||
Biostar doesn’t use any fancy boxes or cables- the 8KVHA is about as plain as it gets. We do find some useful software inside though- like Biostar’s tweaking utilities and some Norton applications like Firewall. |
10/15 | |
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Reviewer's Experience |
+1 | |
t-break Score |
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78 |
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The official distributors for Biostar products in the U.A.E. is Empa Middle East and you can get in touch with them to find out about the availability and pricing, or to find an online retailer please visit www.pricewatch.com
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