The Biostar
TPower N750 is a motherboard that seems to be a little bit confused about its
place and purpose in life. It's priced like a premium performance motherboard
but it lacks critical features that enthusiasts have come to expect from other
motherboards in the same price range.
It's got video options that seem to cater to the
introductory and low-cost PC builders, but it supports dual-graphics modes that
are normally reserved for enthusiast gaming rigs. Even the layout of the PCB and
the need to manually set jumpers for SLI mode shows Biostar's confusion over
what to do with the nVidia nForce 750a chipset.
In PCSTATS performance benchmarks the
TPower N750's overall CPU and memory performance was on par with most of the
other integrated motherboards. The nForce 750a SLI chipset's integrated Geforce
8200 graphics still manages better gaming performance than Intel's IGP
offerings, but in most situations is slower than AMD's 780G/790GX on-board
graphics performance. This chipset also supports SLI mode, which seems a little
out of place for a motherboard with an IGP. SLI mode is also a bit of a
compromise, with dual Geforce graphics cards limited to x8 lanes of PCI Express
2.0 bandwidth each in SLI mode, rather than the x16 lanes of bandwidth per card
possible on the nVidia nForce 780a SLI chipset.
Firewire and 3.0Gbps eSATA are conspicuously absent from
the Biostar TPower N750 motherboard. The Biostar TPower N750 overclocked to a
moderate 270MHz in our labs. Extensive BIOS and overclocking options give a
lot of control over individual timings and speeds, which is handy not only for
pushing the system beyond its original specs but also for making the motherboard
more compatible with finicky hardware.
A DVI-to-HDMI adapter allows HD video output over
HDMI cable with audio, great for HTPC builders. The Biostar TPower
N750 showed low CPU usage when playing back HD files and Blu-ray movies, with no
hitching or skipping noticeable.
Once everything is tested, though, these positive points
aren't enough to justify the Biostar's $200 CDN ($160 USD, £100 GBP) price tag. It's possible
to get excellent IGP motherboards that are just as
suited for HTPC or home computing purposes for considerably less money, and
include important features like analog video output. In the same vein,
enthusiast motherboards come with greater bandwidth for SLI configurations. The
Biostar TPower N750 is somewhere between these two extremes, offering benefits
from both ends of the spectrum but also inheriting a few too many flaws to be
fully recommended.
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