BIOStar P4TCA Pro: Good Basis With WLAN, Continued
Included with the Biostar.
The board ran factory-set with the maximum possible timings (DDR400 CL2.0-2-2.5), so that the manufacturer did not have to do any follow-up work on the BIOS. On top of this, the board offers a good standard of performance and was convincing from the start due to its high stability.
BIOStar has introduced cost-cutting measures in the case of the RAID controller (VIA VT6410): in practice, sporadic problems arise when recognizing drives - this would, for example, be less likely to occur if the Promise chip was used.
The VIA controller causes frequent problems with the recognition of IDE drives.
Our assessment in brief: BIOStar has made radical improvements compared to previous tests. Arguments for purchasing the board include the integrated WLAN function for 802.11b and its high stability in the case of aggressive memory settings. Even the BIOS update at the press of a button works perfectly, albeit not via Windows XP or the Internet.
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