Shootouts

AMD 890FX Roundup - A Quartet of AMD's Finest

By Vincent Chang - 12 May 2010

Biostar TA890FXE

Biostar TA890FXE

After the extravagance of the ASUS Crosshair IV Formula, the Biostar TA890FXE is a return to reality. For the typical user who has no urge or need to tweak voltages, overclock or in general fiddle with their motherboards in their free time, this Biostar board looks like the vanilla board that they require. Even then, given the enthusiast nature of the 890FX chipset, Biostar has included some touches that hint at its hidden potential.

These are the overclocking utilities in the BIOS and the software version available on the manufacturer's disc. While they will not make this Biostar a favorite among enthusiasts, they, along with BIOS functions that unlock cores on AMD processors and allow the flashing of the BIOS directly, will contribute to raising Biostar's profile among enthusiasts. Already, the ability of Biostar boards using the previous generation of chipsets to unlock AMD processor cores has been quite well-documented and known among enthusiasts, especially as an affordable alternative.

Features-wise, the TA890FXE follows the reference chipset, with five SATA ports and one eSATA. There are no perks beyond a VIA controller that provides FireWire and IDE support. It's pretty boring if you're used to exotic features that you're unlikely to use regularly but then that's not the market BIOSTAR is targeting. Unfortunately, this board is restricted to dual CrossFireX configuration, due to the lack of PCI Express lanes on the remaining two PCIe 2.0 slots. Besides, with the layout of the expansion slots as it is, it would not be practical to have more than two graphics cards, especially the dual-slot variety. 

Don't expect too many frills from this BIOSTAR 890FX board, which is the most affordable of the lot.

A decent selection of rear I/O ports, including six USB ports, eSATA, FireWire and both optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs. The only thing missing from this board compared to the other three boards is USB 3.0 ports.

There are only five SATA ports onboard, with one eSATA, so those who have many devices will find this a bit of a limitation. An LED for debugging is also found, with POST codes available in the manual.

The DIMM slots are rather standard and normal. Color-coded for easy installation, with ample allowance on both ends of the slot for the latch mechanism.

A nice looking set of power and reset buttons. The placement of the IDE connector here looks a bit awkward but it doesn't actually interfere with your add-on cards, unless you have a really long card installed in the PCI slots.

Despite the four PCIe slots, only two (in white) have the maximum 16 lanes of bandwidth. The spacing at least allows for dual-slot graphics cards.

Both the HD audio and Gigabit Ethernet uses Realtek controllers. We wished there was a USB 3.0 controller to bring it on par with the other boards.

A rather typical implementation for the Northbridge heatsink and the passive heatsink array for the power delivery components.  

Overall, we found the Biostar TA890FXE to have a pleasant and simple layout, with no jarring mistakes. It does have fewer features than the other competitors here, which helps for the layout but it appears to be a rather competent board. Perhaps due to the cost factor, the chokes on this board are not as expensive as those chosen by the other three vendors, but at least there are solid capacitors throughout.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.