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Firmware
Biostar’s firmware on the X870E board has been updated, mainly in EZ Mode. It’s laid out logically in sections, and the black-on-grey/white with gold accents makes it easy to read. While it has many of the basics, the overclocking options are still limited with regard to memory. If you’re into tweaking every little thing to extract every ounce of performance from your RAM, this isn’t the board that will do it. If you’re more of a set-EXPO/XMP-and-forget-it memory person, this isn’t a concern (assuming your memory is on the QVL list). Overall, we like the BIOS, and the EZ Mode is improved, but it’s still behind compared to the competition.
Software
Biostar has its Aurora suite of software, which combines various functionality in one application. In the OC/OV section, you’ll find audio functionality (volume control—Smart Ear), RGB (Vivid LED DJ), fan control (AI Fan), a hardware monitor, and overclocking functions. Everything worked as described. We like the Aorura application and hope for additional features/functionality in new revisions.
Test System / Comparison Products
We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 (24H2) 64-bit OS with all updates applied as of late September 2024 (this includes the Branch Prediction Optimizations for AMD). Hardware-wise, we’ve updated the RAM kits (matching our Intel test system), cooling, storage, and video card. Unless otherwise noted, we use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public. Thanks to Asus for providing the RTX 4080 TUF graphics card and Crucial for the 2TB T705 SSDs. The hardware we used is as follows:
Test System Components
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 9900X |
| Cooling | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420 |
| Storage | Crucial 2TB T705 M.2 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD |
| RAM | Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL36 (KF560C36BBEAK2-32) |
| RAM | Teamgroup T-Froce Delta DDR5-7200 CL34 (FF3D518G7200HC34ABK) |
| RAM | Klevv Cras XR5 RGB DDR5-8000 (KD5AGUA80-80R380S) |
| GPU | Asus TUF RTX 4080 16G |
| PSU | EVGA Supernova 850W P6 |
| Software | Windows 11 64-bit (24H2) |
| Sound | Integrated HD audio |
| Network | Integrated Networking (GbE to 10 GbE) |
| Graphics Driver | GeForce 561.09 |
Benchmark Settings
| Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings | Row 0 - Cell 1 |
| Procyon | Version 2.8.1352 64 |
| Row 2 - Cell 0 | Office 365, Video Editing (Premiere Pro 24.6.1), Photo Editing (Photoshop 25.1.2, Lightroom Classic 13.5.1) |
| 3DMark | Version 2.29.8294.0 64 |
| Row 4 - Cell 0 | Speed Way and Steel Nomad (Default) |
| Cinebench R24 | Version 2024.1.0 |
| Row 6 - Cell 0 | Open GL Rendering Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded |
| Application Tests and Settings | Row 7 - Cell 1 |
| LAME MP3 | Version SSE2_2019 |
| Row 9 - Cell 0 | Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s) |
| HandBrake CLI | Version: 1.8.2 |
| Row 11 - Cell 0 | Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX) |
| Corona 1.4 | Version 1.4 |
| Row 13 - Cell 0 | Custom benchmark |
| 7-Zip | Version 24.08 |
| Row 15 - Cell 0 | Integrated benchmark (Command Line) |
| Game Tests and Settings | Row 16 - Cell 1 |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | Ultra RT: - 1920 x 1080, DLSS - Balanced. |
| F1 2024 | Ultra High Preset - 1920 x 1080, 16xAF/TAA, Great Britain (Clear/Dry), FPS Counter ON |
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