During a visit to Biostar's office this week, we scored some exclusive pictures of Biostar's upcoming P45 motherboards which will launch at Computex next week. The two motherboards cater to mainstream users, although one of the two boards has a bit more to offer.

The cheaper of the two boards, the T-series TP45 HP, as it'll be known, is a pretty straight forward board with a pair of x16 PCIe 2.0 slots which, of course, work in x8 mode when both slots are being used, two x1 PCIe slots and two PCI slots. It also has a pair of PS/2 ports, six rear USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel audio and six SATA ports. As you can see, Biostar is using jumpers for swapping from one to two x16 slots, although the final board will have the same kind of jumpers as the next model.

For those looking for something a bit more feature rich, there's the TPower I45, which is a bit more upscale, and it features a heatpipe which connects the chipset cooler with the MOSFET cooler. As you can see on the picture below, the jumpers on this board are easier to remove, but it's still a hassle compared to having a digital switch like you'll find on most other motherboards.

The TPower I45 features the same slot layout, but the rear I/O differs slightly. There are still two PS/2 ports, six USB 2.0 ports and 7.1-channel audio, but this board also has two eSATA ports. The six SATA ports are angled at 90 degrees on this board and Biostar has also added a post 80 debug LED display. Both boards also feature onboard power and reset buttons, an IDE connector and three headers for up to six additonal USB 2.0 ports.

We don't have pricing for either board, but Biostar told us that they should be competitively priced compared to other similar motherboards.

Biostar should also have an AMD 790GX motherboard on display during Computex, but they didn't have a board to show us before the show.


The T-series TP45 HP


The TPower I45