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Biostar TPower I45  (Source: DailyTech)

ATI Radeon HD 4850  (Source: OCWorkbench)
Biostar announces Intel P45 motherboard aimed at the serious overclocker

For the computer hardware enthusiast, the most exciting trade show of the year is often Computex in Taiwan. CES in Las Vegas is a great show but many computer hardware makers typically hold most product announcements for Computex.

This year at Computex new motherboards are out in force and many of them are sporting the anticipated Intel P45 chipset. Among the new crop of motherboards to use the P45 chipset is the Biostar TPower I45. While the TPower I45 is the top of the line motherboard with the P45 chipset from Biostar, the series will include several motherboards that will hit different price points. The models in the P45 series will include the TP45 HP, TP43 HP, TP45D2-A7, TP43D2-A7 and P43-A7.

The TPower I45 is aimed at the overclocker and features 100% solid capacitors, updated TPower utility, 8+2 channel HD audio, twin PCI-Express x16 slots and a new thermal solution called Cooler Harbour. The board supports CPUs with front side bus speeds of 800/1066/1333/1600 MHz and DDR2 RAM at 800/1066/1200 MHz. ATI CrossFireX is supported and the board offers 10 USB ports (including headers). Asus will also be launching its own line of P45 chipset motherboards at Computex.

Other early Computex product information includes some shots of the upcoming ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. This card is reported to feature 512MB of GDDR3 and will retail in the $179 to $219 range.

The launch date for the new card it rumored to be June 18. The card is supposed to be available as soon as it is launched at Computex rather than being yet another paper launch. A higher performance HD 4870 featuring GDDR5 is supposed to come later, how much later is unknown.

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ATI 4850?!
By FaceMaster on 6/1/2008 2:37:22 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
will retail in the $179 to $219 range


That's very cheap for new technology... VERY cheap. Mid range, even. Maybe this will PWN Nvidia and regain some market share which AMD severely needs at the moment. Or maybe they're relying on the 3850's reputation to sell cut down hardware and the 49xx series will be the real deal. WHO KNOWS?!?!




RE: ATI 4850?!
By ninjit on 6/1/2008 2:39:58 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
WHO KNOWS?!?!


I do, but I'm not telling...


RE: ATI 4850?!
By Gul Westfale on 6/1/2008 3:02:52 PM , Rating: 2
well i doubt it's "new technology", i think it's just a bigger, fatter, faster HD38xx card. so development costs are lower than with a completely new core, and ATI knows that they must stay realistic with their pricing against nvidia.

i hope the card performs well, a 4870 might be my next upgrade. i currently have an nvidia 8800 (320), and i'm pissed that nvidia still hasn't fixed the HDTV support.


RE: ATI 4850?!
By hadifa on 6/1/2008 8:24:06 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
...bigger, fatter, faster HD38xx..


Seems like that, but my question is how did they keep the TDP at the same level as the 3850 without shrinking the transistors ?


RE: ATI 4850?!
By teldar on 6/1/2008 9:44:08 PM , Rating: 2
As far as HDTV goes....
I replaced my Nvidia 7600 in mt HTPC with an ATI 3650 card and I couldn't be happier. I can't tell you how TERRIBLE ALL TV display was with the NVIDIA card. Anything dark was pixelated and terrible. The ATI card is phenomenal in comparison even though it is supposed to be significantly slower.

T


RE: ATI 4850?!
By Gul Westfale on 6/2/2008 12:57:08 AM , Rating: 2
for those who have a similar problem with 8800's on an HDTV, here is a little nvidia registry hack that solves the overscan issue:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/... - scroll down to where it says "File Attachments".

through HDMI i have fewer issues than with DVI-to-VGA input, but if i could get a card that was just as fast (or a little faster) than my current one and resolve this issue permanently then i'd be a happy camper. the stupid thing is that the driver does not recognise the TV as such if the VGA input on the monitor is used, and thus the driver hack above doesn't work (it won't let you resize the desktop). it does work under HDMI, but then i have to plug the PC back in after every time i use the PS3... and playing a game in a resolution other than the desktop one always resets the driver anyway, forcing me to restart the system twice while re-applying the little hack... you'd think a company with nvidia's resources would have found a way around this by now, but nooooo... they can't be bothered.

so my next card might well be an ATI, if the price/performance ratio is right.


RE: ATI 4850?!
By FaceMaster on 6/2/2008 6:06:28 PM , Rating: 2
Your Mum said that last night


RE: ATI 4850?!
By Nihility on 6/1/2008 3:02:25 PM , Rating: 5
How about we wait for the benchmarks before we get all excited?


RE: ATI 4850?!
By Nik00117 on 6/1/2008 3:33:59 PM , Rating: 2
I've dealt with biostar before, and quite frankly they suck. I'd never buy their MOBO period again its a matter of prinpile for me. A MOBO which was less then a year old was considered to be a legacy product and I have to e-mail their tech support to get the speacil download link. Quite frankly my dads 5 year old ASUS drivers are sitll avaible on the ASUS site, granted you'll never see me actually go to the ASUS site unless I have to since it sucks, however you'/d also never see another biostar anything in a PC which I build.


RE: ATI 4850?!
By BruceLeet on 6/1/2008 8:09:11 PM , Rating: 2
Your standards must be low if your all about prinpile


RE: ATI 4850?!
By bigboxes on 6/1/2008 9:46:58 PM , Rating: 2
LOL


RE: ATI 4850?!
By GlassHouse69 on 6/2/2008 6:55:41 PM , Rating: 1
ASUS boards have been made like shit since k6 era.

p5a was the beginning of absolute crap. oh, people "like" them but they are ALWAYS plagued with some "minor" bug.

really cant stand that company and how it brainwashes instead of making stable motherboards that are thoroughly tested with current devices.

abit is a better board manufacturer hands down. and they get a worse rap.

biostar is a very decent board manufacturer, having installed hundreds of them. the only really great ones are Tyan, and then 2nd tier are intel and abit.


RE: ATI 4850?!
By larson0699 on 6/3/2008 2:17:20 AM , Rating: 2
A very personal experience turned FUD.

The system I'm using has a Biostar board; granted it's a six-year-old nForce2 type, it isn't the OC beast that its counterparts were. I am here to tell you, it is nothing special and your claim of "very decent" is quite unverified.

I wouldn't [again] turn to ASUS for server products (the only area in which you're right about them, "minor bugs" and all) but as long as you're not buying the el cheapo golden-brown types with the sh!tty caps on them, you're generally A-OK. Especially after Conroe have they really cleaned up their act.

It's funny that you mention (glorify) ABIT, since--at the time my Biostar board was made--they were under fire (literally) for their choice of caps boiling over and/or exploding. The bad rap rests on the heels of that. I've no doubt they as well have joined the elite ranks by now, but for my dollar, they (nor most others) can shake a stick at Gigabyte. That's not to call GB flawless, but innovative and worthy. DualBIOS was the first of many great things from them, and now Ultra Durable 2 and DES bring even more value.

ASUS isn't far (if at all) behind with their enthusiast offerings. Have you seen MAXIMUS II FORMULA? Would you buy this Biostar board over that?? I wouldn't.

The 4850 should be promising after it's out of engineering-sample status (seen here) but as another said, the benches will dictate that.


RE: ATI 4850?!
By nitrous9200 on 6/2/2008 7:24:52 PM , Rating: 2
Hmm, my Biostar nForce 4 board has been chugging along happily under all sorts of load for the past 3 years, hasn't skipped a beat. Another computer I made has one as well (a T-Force) and for 2 and a half years it hasn't acted funny at all (it's 400 miles away at my grandfather's so I can't easily fix it...good thing I don't have to). It all boils down to personal experiences and first impressions; Biostar seems to have the best featured boards at the lowest prices without being ECS or PC Chips cheesy. That board looks pretty nice and I'm sure it's relatively inexpensive.


What the?
By MonkeyPaw on 6/1/2008 2:39:51 PM , Rating: 2
What the heck are those red things between the 2 PCIe slots on the Biostar motherboard?




RE: What the?
By ninjit on 6/1/2008 2:41:53 PM , Rating: 2
I think they might be jumper settings to determine the distribution of PCIe lanes


RE: What the?
By AmazighQ on 6/1/2008 2:45:22 PM , Rating: 1
mosfets


RE: What the?
By armagedon on 6/1/2008 2:58:31 PM , Rating: 2
looks like Sata headers to me


RE: What the?
By ninjaquick on 6/1/2008 3:44:03 PM , Rating: 1
mosfets, the sata is at 90degree angle on the side by the IDE.


RE: What the?
By Einy0 on 6/1/2008 3:00:26 PM , Rating: 2
Those look like jumpers, to set the PCIe Lane config probably.


RE: What the?
By Stacey Melissa on 6/1/2008 6:11:34 PM , Rating: 2
Exactly, they're jumpers with user-friendly handles.

This mobo has a superb layout, but looks to be missing Firewire, and it only has 3 fan headers that I can count. I noticed the onboard code readout says "CPU Temp" next to it, so I guess it's for that instead of POST codes.


RE: What the?