Thursday, May 10, 2001

Introduction

Biostar, a company unknown too much of the buying public, was established in 1986 under the name of BIOSTAR MICROTECH INTERNATIONAL CORP. With sales of more than $130 million US in 1998, Biostar obtained ISO 9001 certification for the year 1999. Today, we'll be reviewing the first motherboard we've ever received from this manufacturer; the Biostar M6TSS - a Socket 370 board which implements the i815EP chipset. Let's take a look...

Configuration

Configuration of the Biostar M6TSS is accomplished primarily from within the BIOS. Only a single array of on-board jumpers relates to system configuration - JCLK11 - which can be used to force the FSB to 66MHz, 100MHz, or 133MHz.

Few Overclocking features are present however, indicating that the M6TSS is targeting an audience other than Overclocking fans.

Contrary to convention, BIOS functions related to the configuration of the processor are not found in the "Frequency/Voltage Control" menu, but rather in the "Advanced Chipset Features" menu.

From there, it's possible to set the FSB to frequencies ranging from 66MHz to 166MHz in 1MHz steps.

The clock multiplier can also be set to between 3X and 8X.

Finally, the M6TSS benefits from an independent memory bus which permits users to set their memory to operate at 100MHz, 133MHz, or allow the system to set the frequency automatically.

Next: Technical details.