Biostar I945P-A7 (Intel 945P)
Performance
While determining the starting FSB speed, the board overstated it by 1 MHz.
In our test setup, we used the following hardware:
| Test setup |
| Processor |
Intel Pentium4 LGA775 540 (3.2GHz) |
| Cooler |
Gigabyte 3D Cooler GP Edition |
| Video Card |
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5750 (PCI Express x16) |
| Sound card |
- |
| HDD |
IBM DTLA 307030 30Gb |
| Memory |
2x256 MB DDR2-533 SDRAM made by Samsung (timings as per SPD) |
| Housing |
Inwin506 with PowerMan 300W power supply unit |
| OS |
Windows XP SP1 |
Let's first take a look at the results of synthetic benchmarks.
Now on to the gaming benchmarks.
Final Words
As is easy to notice, compared to motherboards built on i915P and i925X even such a value-level board like Biostar I945P-A7 looks quite attractive. In particular, in terms of performance it surpasses the previous generation of motherboards built on Intel chipsets. There is also the advantage at the expansion options due to support for the SerialATA II and the south bridge ICH7R.
As regards the competition of Biostar I945P-A7 versus other i945P-based models, the situation is not so bright. For instance, the board wouldn't run with Pentium4 660. Besides, the retail price and the precise list of bundle items are is still unknown.
From the viewpoint of the PC enthusiast, this board is absolutely not interesting because of its poor overclocking capabilities (quite probable this shortcoming will be fixed in the forthcoming versions of the BIOS).
Conclusion
Pros:
- High stability and good performance level;
- Support for SerialATA IIRAID (4 channels; ICH7R);
- Integrated 8-channel audio and (Gigabit Ethernet) LAN controller;
- Support for USB2.0 (8 ports) and IEEE-1394 (Firewire, 2 ports).
Cons:
- Partial incompatibility to Kingmax DDR2-533 memory modules;
- Partial incompatibility with Pentium4 6xx processors.
The board's specific features:
- Poor overclocking features;
- Unclear situation with the package bundle items.
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CPU & Memory:
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