Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe

Verdict: Very overclockable, but poorly laid out

Biostar might sound like the name of a secret, planet-destroying weapon you might see in a 'Transformers' movie, but it's actually a Taiwanese manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards and SFF bare bones.

Confusingly, the TForce P965 Deluxe isn't the result of a weird interbreeding experiment between the nForce and P965 chipsets - in fact, it's based solely on the latter. Some P965 boards now support CrossFire but, sadly, the TForce P965 isn't one of them.

Alongside the single 16x PCI-E slot are three PCI slots, one 4x PCI-E slot and one 1x PCI-E slot. Also along for the ride are four RAID-capable S-ATA II ports and a single EIDE port. Intel HD Audio is supported, thanks to a Realtek ALC883 chip, and is provided with a full set of analogue jacks, plus coaxial and optical S/PDIF outputs. Ten USB 2 ports and two FireWire ports round off the spec. Biostar also bundles lots of extras in the box, including a headset, rounded EIDE cable and, bizarrely, a set of mobile phone USB chargers.

However, the TForce P965 Deluxe is let down by its poor PCB layout, which is perhaps a result of it being 2cm shorter than most ATX motherboards. This means that the components are more closely packed together. For example, both the 24-pin ATX and 4-pin ATX12V sockets are located between the CPU socket and the 16x PCI-E slot, which forces you to trail these bulky cables across the motherboard, restricting airflow to the CPU and VRMs.

Like all the P965-based boards, the TForce P965 Deluxe performed very well at its stock settings. Biostar has programmed the BIOS of the TForce P965 Deluxe with various options, although it can only supply a maximum of 2.2V to the RAM, which rules out the use of some high-end, overclockers' DIMMs. Even so, we successfully overclocked the FSB of our Core 2 Duo test CPU from 266MHz to 360MHz, which is an overclock matched by just two other boards in this Labs test.

The TForce P965 Deluxe performs well and overclocks even better, but its poor PCB layout is a letdown. In the tough world of P965 motherboards, it doesn't have what it takes to beat the Abit AB9 or Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP, although it's worth considering.