BIOSTAR - BIOSTAR M7NCG 400 (nForce2) & K8NHA-M (nForce3-150) mATX Review

MicroATX motherboards, literally square in form, can reside in smaller cases with accompanying smaller PSUs. The idea is to take away unused, unnecessary PCB space yet keep stability and the features count intact. Today we’re having a look at two curious microATX boards from Biostar. Both revolve around AMD’s chips, but the significant difference is in the chips’ architecture. Let’s take a closer look.

. . . 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.

Biostar M7NCG 400 and K8NHA-M mATX boards @ HEXUS