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Firmware, Software and Test System

Firmware

Biostar’s firmware on the X670E boards, like the others, doesn’t receive a significant facelift outside of some options exclusive to the new platform/CPU. There’s an EZ Mode and your more standard advanced mode with the different sections spanning the top. While it has many of the basics, the overclocking options are limited, especially with regard to memory. If you’re into tweaking every little thing to extract every ounce of performance, this isn’t the board that will do it. If you’re more of a set EXPO/XMP and forget it on the memory, this isn’t a concern (assuming your memory is on the QVL list). Overall, we like the BIOS, but it isn’t as polished as some of the other board partners and is limited with some overclocking functions.

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Biostar X670E Valkyrie — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Software

For software, Biostar has the Aurora suite that combines various functionality in one application. You’ll find audio functionality (volume control - Smart Ear), RGB (Vivid LED DJ), fan control (AI Fan) a hardware monitor, and overclocking functions in the OC/OV section. Everything worked as described. But, overclocking is limited to BCLK adjustment and voltage (no CPU multiplier adjustments). Overall, we like the Aorura application and hope for additional features/functionality to be added in new revisions.

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Test System / Comparison Products

We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver. Additionally, we updated to F1 22 in our games suite and kept Far Cry 6. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:

Test System Components

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CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
Memory	GSkill Trident Z DDR5-5600 CL36 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK)
Row 2 - Cell 0	Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL36 (KF560C36BBEAK2-32)
GPU	Asus TUF RTX 3070
Cooling	Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
PSU	EVGA Supernova 850W P6
Software	Windows 11 64-bit (22H2, Build 22622.601)
Graphics Driver	Nvidia Driver 522.25
Sound	Integrated HD audio
Network	Integrated Networking (GbE or 2.5 GbE)

EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the 1.2KW monster we used previously) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for testing.

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Benchmark Settings

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Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings	Row 0 - Cell 1
Procyon	Version 2.1.459 64
Row 2 - Cell 0	Office Suite (Office 365), Video Editing (Premiere Pro 22.6.2.2), Photo Editing (Photoshop 23.5.1, Lightroom Classic 11.5)
3DMark	Version 2.22.7359 64
Row 4 - Cell 0	Firestrike Extreme and Time Spy Default Presets
Cinebench R23	Version RBBENCHMARK330542
Row 6 - Cell 0	Open GL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded
Blender	Version 3.3.0
Row 8 - Cell 0	Full benchmark (all 3 tests)
Application Tests and Settings	Row 9 - Cell 1
LAME MP3	Version SSE2_2019
Row 11 - Cell 0	Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLI	Version: 1.2.2
Row 13 - Cell 0	Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX)
Corona 1.4	Version 1.4
Row 15 - Cell 0	Custom benchmark
7-Zip	Version 21.03-beta
Row 17 - Cell 0	Integrated benchmark (Command Line)
Game Tests and Settings	Row 18 - Cell 1
Far Cry 6	Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HD Textures On
F1 2022	Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, Ultra High (default) Bahrain (Clear/Dry), FPS Counter On