At first we would like to thank BIOSTAR for offering their A68N-5000 Motherboard for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About BIOSTAR:

 

“In 1980, the IT industry was growing at a phenomenal rate. With wide experience in buying and selling electronic parts as well as researching on future demands for mainboards and add-on cards , the founder of BIOSTAR GROUP, established BIOSTAR MICROTECH INTERNATIONAL CORP in 1986.

 

In the early years, BIOSTAR concentrated on the manufacture of mainboards built for XT form factor. To maintain steady business growth, BIOSTAR managed to keep a large portion of its capital and manpower invested on the design and development of new products, which at the same time has enabled it to stay competitive in the rapid evolution of the computer industry.

 

BIOSTAR has enriched its competence in the design and manufacture of products such as add-on cards, multi-media and system products to develop the market and meet the demands of customers for more integrated solutions. In order to expand its capacity to meet customer demand globally, BIOSTAR was the first to establish a manufacturing facility in China in 1990. In 1998, its sales revenues exceeded US$130 million and it ranked 227th among the top 1000 enterprises in Taiwan. Furthermore, BIOSTAR obtained an ISO 9001 certification in 1999 and became a publicly listed company in the same year. BIOSTAR’s future has limitless possibilities.”

 

AMD Fusion APU A4-5000 Quad-Core Processor

This motherboard supports integrated AMD Quad-Core Processor A4-5000 with AMD Radeon™ HD 8330 Graphics. This revolutionary APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) combines processing power and advanced DirectX 11.1 graphics in one small, energy-efficient design to enable accelerated performance and an industry-leading visual experience. It features single-channel DDR3 1333 memory support and accelerates data transfer rate up to 2.5GT/s.

HD Audio

Provides high quality sound with minimal loss of audio fidelity.

DX11.1

Direct3D 11.1 enables Direct3D 10 APIs and Direct3D 11 APIs to use one underlying rendering device. And it allows developers to achieve a high speed, fully conformant software rasterizer.

Integrated HDMI with HDCP

Onboard HDMI connector allows full video & audio support. It has industry-leading high definition video quality.

SmartSpeedLAN

SmartSpeedLAN is a free software application which monitors and manages your PC's network behavior. With user-friendly GUI, it allows you to select and prioritize different types of network traffic, including gaming, media streaming, communications or web surfing.You can also set any specific applications, choosing to prioritize or block accordingly. SmartSpeedLAN can feature automatic management options that use adaptive networking intelligence to ensure that you are getting the best online experience possible.

Charger Booster

Charger booster is the best and efficient charger solution for apple devices such as iPad, iPhone. Basically, Charger booster Technology is able to boost the charging time to be more efficiency and faster once any apple goods connecting to our Motherboard. With charger booster technology, you are able to charge your apple devices up to 42 % faster.

SATA 6Gb/s

High Efficiency of Data transfer rate

SATAIII 6Gbps provides a higher bandwidth to retrieve and transfer HD media. With this super speed data transfer, SATAIII allows an incredible data boost which is 2x faster than the SATA 3G.

USB 3.0

Experience Fastest data transfers at 5 Gbps with USB 3.0--the new latest connectivity standard. Built to connect easily with next-generation components and peripherals, USB 3.0 transfers data 10X faster and backward compatible with previous USB 2.0 components.

Dual DDR3-1600

It supports 2 or 4 DIMM Slots DDR3 memory that features data transfer rates of DDR3 1600/1333. The processor support 2 memory channels and setting the memory multiplier, allows selection of the channel speed. These clearly uplift the band width and boost the overall system performance.

Moistureproof PCB

With the popularity of PC usage and working environment has getting deteriorating and moist(such as rural, coastal). The PCB will be oxidizing easily by damp or absorbed moisture. And then ionic migration or CAF(Conductive Anodic Filament) will be generated. Moisture-proof PCB meets high density and high reliability requirements for moisture proofing.

Low RdsOn P-Pak MOS

Low resistance design can significantly reduce the current out of the energy loss.

Low temperature, small size, excellent thermal conductivity.

X.D.C (eXtreme Durable Capacitors)

Biostar adopts low ESR and high ripple conductive solid state caps that provide sufficient, stable power supply to the CPU. The life span can also be more than 6.25 x of ordinary liquid caps.

ESD Protection

ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) is the major factor to destroy PC by electrical overstress(EOS) condition, ESD occurred by PC users when touch any devices connect to PC, which may result in damage to motherboard or parts .ESD protection is designed to protect the motherboard and equipment from damage by EOS

USB Polyswitch

On board dedicated power fuse to help prevent USB port failure. It prevents USB Port overcurrent and safegurand your system and device lifespan.

BIOS Virus Protection

When enabled, the BIOS will protect the boot sector and partition table by halting the system and flashing a warning message whether there's an attempt to write to these areas.

OC / OV / OH Protection

All BIOSTAR special circuit design detects overvoltage conditions and prevents voltage surges from spreading in real time. It also actively cuts off the overvoltage supply to protect your system. Over current protection, avoid motherboard from damage when doing overclock or an unusual current import. Over heat protection, avoid motherboard & CPU from burning when exceeding the temperature limitation.

UEFI BIOS

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a brand new framework that provides a revolutionary interface. It is a modern clear and easy-to-use graphical user interface. The UEFI comes with a colorful easy-understand icons leads users into the setup layer directly.

Header Zone

Users can easily assemble their own computer, a simple-swap data discs and other accessories.

BIO-Remote 2

BIO-Remote2 Technology is featuring users a better Home Theater environment. Users who own either Android mobile or Apple goods are able to access and control your PC remotely; At this moment, you’re smart device became a intelligent and functional remote controller; more than that, BIO-Remote2 also includes both function of mouse pad and power point presentation mode. more...

BIO-Flasher

Update BIOS effortlessly from a USB flash disk before entering the OS.

BIO-Flasher is a convenient BIOS update tool. Just launch this tool and put the BIOS on USB pen driver before entering the OS. You can update your BIOS with only a few clicks without preparing an additional floppy disk or other complicated flash utility.

 

 

Not long ago we have reviewed an interesting BIOSTAR board featuring the Celeron 1037U dual core processor which did deliver quite a bit of performance; now it’s time to look upon a platform from AMD, featuring a soldered Kabini APU, based on the Jaguar architecture. This quad-core APU includes a Radeon HD 8330 GPU with 128 Radeon Cores, has a TDP of 15W, and the clock speed is 1.5GHz. The total quantity of L2 cache is 2MB and the GPU functions at a frequency of 500MHz. These new cores offer higher IPC when compared to Bobcat, higher frequency at the same voltage and also improved efficiency.

The motherboard is shipped inside a cardboard box of small size and on the frontal side BIOSTAR has placed small icons representing supported technologies:

 

 

 

On the bottom side we have the board features explained in a little more detail:

 

 

 

Right after lifting the top, we will be welcomed by the documentation:

 

 

 

The Installation Guide is accompanied by the disk with drivers and applications:

 

 

 

With the board, BIOSTAR has also included two SATA cables along with the I/O Shield:

 

 

 

On the underside layer we have the main product, which is wrapped inside an anti-static bag:

 

 

 

For this board, BIOSTAR have went for a dark brown PCB, yellow slots and a golden heatsink for the APU; as it can be clearly seen, this board does need a fan for keeping the temperatures at bay:

 

 

 

The APU VRM is driven by the Intersil ISL62771 multiphase PWM Regulator for AMD Fusion Mobile CPUs:

 

 

 

 

Nearby we will be able to spot the Realtek RTL8111G Gigabit Ethernet Controller:

 

 

 

The audio interface is driven by the Realtek ALC662 CODEC, and in its vicinity BIOSTAR has placed the F_AUDIO header:

 

 

 

The PCI-Express x16 slot is meant to provide a graphics boost by installing a discrete graphics card, or another type of expansion:

 

 

 

Between the APU heatsink and the PCI-E slot we have one SPDIF_OUT header, two USB 2.0 port headers and also two SATA ports:

 

 

 

On the right side we have the SuperIO ITE chip, the F_PANEL header, one Parallel header, one COM port header, but also the BIOS chip along with the CMOS reset jumper:

 

 

 

Further to the right, we will spot the 24-pin ATX power connector and the CMOS battery:

 

 

 

The two memory slots are placed on the top side of the PCB:

 

 

 

Finally we get to see on the ITX boards from BIOSTAR the nice looking UEFI interface, which is more pleasant to navigate. As we have seen on their previous boards, the menu buttons are located on the bottom side of the screen and some live monitoring details are also available on the left side. The Main section shows additional system details and here we can also adjust the interface language, system date and time:

 

 

 

The Advanced section contains several sub-menus:

 

-PCI Subsystem Settings

-ACPI Settings WakeUp Event Control

-CPU Configuration

-SATA Configuration

-USB Configuration

-Smart Fan Control

-Super IO Configuration

-H/W Monitor

-Network Stack

 

 

 

The PCI Subsystem Settings section allows modifying the PCI Latency Timer, VGA Palette Group option and some PCI-Express Settings:

 

 

 

The PCI-Express Settings can be seen in the next screenshot:

 

 

 

The ACPI Settings WakeUp Event Control contains the usual power saving options:

 

 

 

Some more details on the CPU can be found out from the next menu; here we will be able to also work with some states, HTC temperature limit and Core Leveling Mode:

 

 

 

Next we have the SATA Configuration menu, which allows customizing the storage controller:

 

 

 

The USB Configuration sub-menu is self-explanatory:

 

 

 

From the Smart Fan Control menu we can adjust the fan header setting:

 

 

 

SuperIO Configuration sub-menu contains sections regarding the Serial and Parallel ports configurations:

 

 

 

The H/W Monitor menu displays live monitoring stats and we can also adjust the Shutdown Temperature:

 

 

 

Network Stack sub-menu has only one option which we can modify:

 

 

 

The Chipset menu has a similar construction with the following sub-menus:

 

-South Bridge

-North Bridge

-Onboard Device

 

 

 

South Bridge sub-menu takes care of the USB Configuration and HD Azalia Configuration (audio):

 

 

 

 

 

The North Bridge configuration sub-menu allows working with the HDMI Audio Interface, but also with the IGFX:

 

 

 

 

The Onboard Device section is in charge of the PCI-E NIC functionality:

 

 

 

Next we have the Boot option, which allows setting the boot priorities and more:

 

 

 

Security menu can handle the Administrator and User Password, but also some options regarding Secure Boot menu:

 

 

 

We can fine-tune the system parameters by using the Performance section; here we have available P-States Configuration, Over-Voltage Configuration, DRAM Timing Configuration, MCT Configuration but also BIOSTAR Memory Insight:

 

 

 

If we select Custom P-States, we will be able to select a certain multiplier for the APU; unfortunately we cannot go over 15x:

 

 

 

For different types of RAM, we can adjust the voltage with the appropriate setting:

 

 

 

Next, we have the option to set the memory speed along with the timings:

 

 

 

MCT Configuration menu takes care of some miscellaneous options:

 

 

 

Memory Insight will show detailed information regarding the memory modules:

 

 

 

 

Lastly, we have the Save & Exit menu, which allows saving, discarding or loading factory defaults:

 

 

 

In order to start testing the A68N-5000 board from BIOSTAR, we equipped it with one AVEXIR 4GB DDR3 1333MHz memory module, but also a Hitachi Travelstar 5K250 250GB HDD. We installed the latest Windows 7 x64 from scratch and got the tests going. Here is some information that we could obtain on the internal hardware, thanks to the specialized programs:

 

CPU-Z CPU Information Tab

 

 

CPU-Z CPU Caches Tab

 

 

CPU-Z Mainboard Tab

 

 

CPU-Z Memory Tab

 

 

GPU-Z Graphics Card Info Tab

 

 

AIDA64 gives us even some more details regarding the computer components:

 

CPU Information

 

 

Motherboard Information

 

 

 

 

IMC

 

 

 

 

SB

 

 

The Kabini graphical solution from the A4-5000 APU is named AMD Radeon HD 8330 and has 128 Unified Shaders:

 

 

 

Temperature tests

 

To test the computer thermals, we have first left the computer in IDLE for about 30 minutes and then we fired up 3DMark2003 in loop mode, for an additional 50 minutes. The minimum and maximum temperatures of all internal components were recorded by the latest HWINFO utility. During the time of testing, the ambient temperature was 27.5 degrees Celsius:

 

 

From the performed test, we can clearly say that this board must be used inside a case which has optimal airflow, since the APU can reach about 90 degrees Celsius after 37 minutes of stress testing.

 

Power consumption test results

System Full Load measurement was recorded while running the AIDA64 System Stability Test and checking on Stress CPU, Stress FPU, Stress Cache, Stress System Memory, Stress GPUs.

In IDLE, we have recorded a value of 31.08W, while in Full Load about 45.64W.

3DMark 2001

 

3DMark 2003

 

3DMark 2005

 

3DMark 2006

 

PCMark 2005

 

PCMark Vantage

 

PCMark 7

CrystalMark

 

SuperPI 1.5 XS 1M

 

wPrime 32M

 

CineBench R10

 

CineBench R11.5

 

 

x264 Encoding

 

Counterstrike Source

 

 

The BIOSTAR A68N-5000 has a small footprint and the A4-5000 is a balanced APU for light gaming and office/browsing activities. While the per-core power is not as great as with the Celeron 1037U, the whole CPU matches the mentioned Intel processor and even surpasses it in applications which are able to use all of its cores.

 

We also do like the fact that BIOSTAR has went for a fan-less solution; while this can be enough in low-intensive applications, we have ran some stress testing and the temperature has went pretty high, so our recommendation is to either place a small fan onto the large heatsink or install the board inside a well-ventilated enclosure and the temperature drop will be really noticeable.

 

Despite the low price-point, BIOSTAR has fitted the board with an UEFI interface so we can easily navigate through it with the mouse, as on their ATX-sized variants. The BIOS lets you change further down the CPU frequency, but does not allow performing overclocks.

 

Speaking of the outputs, we have legacy connections available (PS/2 mouse and PS/2 keyboard ports), one HDMI port for connecting to our HDTV and also supports older monitors or TVs by providing a VGA port. Plenty of USB 2.0 ports are available (two in the back and two headers on the board for an additional of four ports), but also two USB 3.0 in the back. The only objection regarding the interfaces is the fact that we only have two SATA ports available so we have a small limitation here.

 

One of the most important factors potential customers are looking for is the price, so here we go: online, the board can be acquired for as low as 61 Euros, so we think that it offers a lot of bang for the buck.

 

BIOSTAR A68N-5000 Motherboard is Recommended For:

 

 

We would like to thank again to BIOSTAR for making this review possible!