Biostar M7NCG PRO Motherboard

Introduction

The Biostar M7NCG PRO motherboard is the big brother of the Biostar M7NCG MicroATX mainboard, which I recently reviewed. The M7NCG PRO is a full-sized, solidly-constructed mainboard, which utilizes NVIDIA's popular nForce2 chipset. It's a complete solution with all the peripherals needed for a basic computer system integrated into the motherboard and includes numerous overclocking settings as well as a bunch of other features, including dual video ports.

I like this motherboard, and it can certainly form the core of an excellent, high-end gaming system (with the addition of a good video card, fast CPU, and some good RAM). The built-in video is fine for regular gaming, browsing, business, and general, everyday use. The video output is clear and reasonably crisp, although it’s not quite as good as the visual quality of my MSI FX5600. It’s too bad that one of the video ports is not a DVI (digital flat panel) connector. That would solve the slight blurriness issue at 1280x1024 resolution and above (at least if you happen to have an LCD screen).

Specifications & Features

This is the first motherboard I've ever (personally) seen with 2 VGA outputs, which means that you can run dual monitors without an additional video card, since the M7NCG PRO uses the nForce2’s integrated GeForce4 MX GPU. It’s a full-sized ATX board with 1 AGP slot (at 4X / 8X) and 5 PCI slots. The motherboard has a fast Dual Channel DDR 400 memory controller, which delivers up to 6.4 GB/s of bandwidth to the 3 DDR SDRAM DIMM slots (3 GB RAM max).

This mainboard provides Dolby® digital 5.1-channel audio for real-time cinematic 3D (positional) sound, which is powered by NVIDIA’s nForce2 APU (Audio Processor Unit) utilizing a Dolby® Digital Encoder and a Realtek ALC650 6-Channel AC'97 CODEC. All of this is topped off with a rich set of mainboard features (like most nForce chipset boards) including: USB 2.0, IEEE1394a (FireWire), LAN (provided by the MCP NVIDIA MAC), and full hardware monitoring (temperature, voltage, and fan speed). There's even a S/PDIF digital optical connection for serious audio enthusiasts.

However, there is NO SERIAL PORT, nor a back-panel plate with a cable to connect it to the motherboard. The second VGA connector is placed where the serial connection would usually be, but there is (at least) a COM1 header on the mainboard. These days, most people have no need of a serial port and probably won't miss it. I really like this mainboard and want to keep it in my system for a while, so, since I actually do use the serial port, I will now (unfortunately) need to purchase a serial port connection kit (back plate and cable, which plugs into the COM1 header).

There's no Serial-ATA or RAID-support either, which seems a little odd, given the fact that this is supposed to be a "Pro" motherboard. Last but not least, even though it supports 6-channel audio, it only has 3 standard audio connectors, Speaker Out, Line In, and Microphone. You'll need to use the S/PDIF optical out to access all six audio channels.

Like most other mainboard manufacturers, Biostar also includes its own branded technology features:

BootBlocker is a program that allows system to flash the BIOS again (reverting to the previous working version) when the system BIOS has been corrupted. That can occur when upgrading the BIOS fails or be due to a virus infection.

WarpSpeeder is a BIOS control panel which features 3 user-friendly functions of interest to overclockers:

• Overclock Manager which allows users to easily adjust the frequency manually or they get the best CPU speed with just one click
• Overvoltage Manager which helps set the CPU core voltage and Memory voltage
• Hardware Monitor which indicates the temperatures, voltage, CPU fan speed as well as the chipset information. In addition, the frequency status of CPU, memory, AGP, and PCI along with the CPU speed are synchronically shown on our main panel.

WINFlasher is a new flashing utility which allows users to easily upgrade the BIOS in Windows. Biostar claims that this is safer than using the standard boot disk method.

FLASHER integrates a flash utility function directly onto the BIOS firmware, so that users do not need to enter DOS or run a separate utility.

9th Touch: Press F9 at boot-time to choose which device to boot from.

StudioFun is a media-player based on an optimized GNU/Linux distribution so that you don't need to boot Windows just to watch a DVD in your living room. It plays DVD, VCD, MP3, Audio CD and other multimedia. This is an optional CD and was not included in the materials sent for review.

You can find the full specs HERE.