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Review: Biostar M7NCG 400 and K8NHA-M mATX boards

by Tarinder Sandhu on 11 November 2003, 00:00

Tags: Biostar

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Thoughts

I believe we've proved that it's a fallacy to state microATX boards cannot compete with full-blown desktop offerings in most respects. Manufacturers have become acutely aware that the form factor is an important criteria in the decision-making process of potential buyers. Couple up a mATX board housed in a small case, add in a TFT, stylish keyboard, mouse and multi-speaker set, and you'll soon have systems that the average consumer would like to own. The Small Form Factor systems have adequately shown that high specification machines need not be housed in antiquated cases.

Biostar's two mATX boards reviewed today highlighted that stability was a non-issue as far as either motherboard was concerned. That's perhaps the most important point. Reducing PCB size shouldn't, and doesn't, impact on the key area of stability under prolonged load. Each board had its individual idiosyncrasies, but every board does. We've yet to meet the perfect motherboard in three years of reviewing.

The nForce2-powered M7NCG 400 is a strange beast. On the one hand it supports the 200FSB Barton straight out of the box. On the other, though, it's only rated to support dual-channel DDR333 memory. We feel that takes away most of the performance advantages of running high FSB speeds on an AMD K7 architecture. The cumulative effects of high latencies incurred by clock buffering and the lower bandwidth delivered by DC DDR333 almost negate the need for an XP3200+. One might as well place a Barton XP3000+ in the socket. That's especially true with the GPU-bound onboard graphics. With the onboard graphics used, it refused to run with DC DDR400 memory, irrespective of settings.

The M7NCG400 was adequate on the features' count, but we feel as if Biostar needs to address the documentation that it ships with. A 12-page English manual is forced into brevity on important issues, especially the BIOS. We also feel as if Biostar missed the boat by not incorporating a S-Video socket on the I/O panel. It's a good board, but it had the potential to be a whole lot better.

The Athlon 64 3200+ / nForce3 150 K8NHA-M is the first Socket-754 board we've come across that allows the user to input manual DRAM timings. Performance with 2.5-6-2-2 latencies was suitably impressive, and it became the fastest Clawhammer board to date. Whereas performance excelled, the feature count could do with a makeover. We'd like SATA support, FireWire and S/PDIF input / output as standard. The problem with the K8NHA-M isn't necessarily the board - it's the CPU. The barrier to Athlon 64 entry arrives in the form of a £330 CPU price tag. We wish AMD would release lower-graded A64 CPUs immediately. It's only then that the S754 motherboard platform can truly flourish. We'd also be keen to see NVIDIA launch an upgraded, integrated GPU with the nForce3 line. That, though, doesn't look all that plausible with a single-chip bridge.

We hope that this has been an illuminating insight into the world of powerful mATX boards. Biostar knows how to manufacture decent boards. Let's now hope that they can extend each board's value by looking at some of the shortcomings we've pointed out here. A good start, however.

- M7NCG400

- K8NHA-M


HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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It's a good input by saying “it's a fallacy to state microATX boards cannot compete with full-blown desktop offerings in most respects.”. Totally agree with that….
QUOTE:
“Biostar uses the Realtek ALC650 sound CODEC as a physical layer for sound output. It's a decent match for NVIDIA's 20-bit audio resolution ability, but it's not quite as nice as Realtek's newer ALC658 CODEC that's been seen on the ABIT AI7 Springdale, for example. 6-channel sound, albeit software-driven, isn't to be sniffed at. Biostar has opted not to take advantage of the digital S/PDIF transfer option, either by providing a working header on the PCB or compliant input / output jacks on the I/O panel, which is a shame.”

“ Biostar keeps a number of older ports here, including Parallel and two Serial. S/PDIF inputs or outputs are conspicuous by their absence.”

I own this board. I have not yet utilized S/PDIF but the website here: http://www.biostar-usa.com/mbdetails.asp?model=m7ncg+400

says that it DOES infact have S/PDIF. (header)I suppose this is a newer revision of the motherboard.

I am using Corsair XMS PC3200 low latency 2X256MB with a Tbred rev.b Athlon XP 2100+
O/C using 10X200 with Geforce3. (unlocked lower multipliers with wire trick) Using the ddr400 has had no problems even though not supported. I haven't tried the ddr400 yet using the onboard video yet though. Good board for the money. No major problems. thanks Hexus.net for the review, it was very informative.
There's nothing wrong with that approach if the price is keen, but what's the real point right now when the only available CPU costs in excess of £300 ?.

Good review but it needs updating to reflect the fact that significantly cheaper A64s are now available - the 3000+ is listed at Komplett for £160, and that becomes a WAY more economical proposition
Hehe,

One of the pitfalls of mentioning price. Amended.
I think most readers understand the fact that cpu prices fall on a monthy (if not weekly basis). However, a reader may not understand that new revisons of the board often have upgrades/changes as in my original post (above) concerning the S/PDIF