Improvements

Before testing overclocking improvements, it's important to make sure that the changes between motherboard revisions haven't caused a significant decrease in performance. Hardware and software configurations were carried forward from our earlier P35-DDR3 motherboard comparison, but the board itself was updated to BIOS version P35AA615 (6/15/2007).

The new board suffered a net performance loss of less than a quarter of one percent. Let's see how much it gains in overclocking capability:

Revision 5.0 of Biostar's TP35D3-A7 Deluxe clocked an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 normally capable of 3.46 GHz at 1.50 volts to only 3.33 GHz. Dropping the multiplier to 6x allowed the board to push a maximum stable FSB clock of 351 MHz (FSB1404), which is a relatively low result that only seems impressive when comparing the board to its previous revision.

Conclusion

Biostar has overcome a major limitation of its earlier TP35D3-A7 Deluxe by making Revision 5.0 overclockable, but it cannot surpass the faster clock speeds several competing boards offer. Buyers who aren't seeking a mobo for overclocking will want to consider the board based on its many other virtues, which we described in our earlier review.

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