jaydeee
Member
one of my PC has Biostar on it. I got this board by accident coz I can not find any board that supports my proc (sempron). I was surprised that it was rocking my gaming experience.
Biostars are stable are price competitive. below $60, my main concern is whether or not the board can start up. biostar is pretty reliable in that regard. I have one 760G system running an Athlon II X3 at 3.5 GHz and I also have a G41 running a wolfdale-based celeron at 3.4 GHz. The overclocking options are adequate but definitely not full-featured such as you would find in a Gigabyte ultradurable BIOS. Most of their AMD systems come with the SB710, yet my 760G didn't have any ACC in the BIOS, of course. It's stuff like that. Biostar isn't going to go out of their way to put features in the BIOS for you, but there are adequate options in the value boards, and they also have enthusiast boards like ASUS/Gig/MSI.
I have built two gigabyte G41 machines this past week, and I have to say getting a bottom-end board from ANY manufacturer will probably be a nightmare. With the latest BIOS, these Gigabytes (G41M-ES2L) would not detect my CPU at its stock speed and (using DDR2 800 5-5-5-15) did not come with any memory straps (it only has the "2.66C" multiplier that most gigabyte people will recognize). it was the most half-ass BIOS i ever saw, and from Gigabyte no less. Basically I had to overclock the FSB in order to get the CPU to run at its rated speed, but the RAM was still below spec and with the high FSB the GMA was way out of spec and causing the windows 7 GUI acceleration to sporadically crash the display driver, so I had to settle for 275 FSB, which means my RAM is at 740 MHz and my CPU is still below spec. just unacceptable. lucky for me the computers weren't that important and i'm not returning them, but this would be a case where I wish I got the Biostar G41 instead of the Gigabyte G41. The Biostar G41 detected everything right away on the first POST.
I'm saying this not because I like biostar, but because I like gigabyte, and am still appalled at the lack of attention to detail they are capable of. Before you buy a motherboard, you need to plan ahead on what you want to do with it. Think ahead about what BIOS features you want to have, and which BIOS features you absolutely need. Then download the .pdf user manual of that motherboard and make sure those bios features are already in place before you buy.