Biostar Motherboards....Bad?

[jaydeee]

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.

 

[SunnyD]

TH55B HD here. It has its quirks, the BIOS is a pain and doesn't automatically set certain things correctly (and impossible to do so manually in some cases). Other than that, once I realized my stability issue was due to bad ram, it's been fine since.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

I had a Tpower i45 and that board was horrible. The bios options were awful and ram compatibility wasn't much better. I couldn't see trying to clock a quad on that pos. I liked my 780i better which is pretty sad.

I wouldn't touch a "premium" Biostar board again.

 

[yakko]

I still have a Biostar M7MIA that is rock solid and runs almost all the time and has for about 9 years now. I forget what my new Biostar board is and I am not at home to look it up. I have always had good luck with Biostar and Shuttle boards.

 

[sandorski]

Never had a Biostar, so I can't really say much about them. I prefer to stick with Asrock, Asus, or Gigabyte for the extensive features and quality components.

 

[TR2000]

I recently bought my first Biostar MB (Asus, Abit & DFI before) and it is rock solid. I emailed tech support twice with a question. The first time I received a response in 20-30 minutes with a question on regarding the bios. The second time I emailed them on a Sunday night with another question on 6-core bios update and received a response the next day on Monday. I have recieved excellent and fast tech support! I have been very happy with my first Biostar MB and their support. It was also reassuring and good to a read this thread.

 

[PrimeSLP]

hmm this thread will make me maybe rethink getting a biostar. everyone in my lan group tells me to stay the hell away from biostar

but I see here that they aren't really a bad mobo company

 

[alyarb]

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.

 

[ExcaliburMM]

I heard one of DFI's good mobo people left and went to Biostar, and it appears to me that lately they've really been stepping up their game on high end boards (AM3/1366).

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

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.

This is what I have should have done before picking up the i45. I was pretty surprised to find out that I couldn't fine tune my GTLs, there were massive steps in all voltage adjustments (something like 0.025), be able to adjust the southbridge voltage, and there were a few more gripes. I couldn't imagine clocking a quad on that. Not what I expected from a "premium" P45 board. My P5Q Deluxe that replaced it was a much better board for close to the same price. I sold it in less than a week. I would look at Biostar for value boards but then again my P55A UD3 is a very impressive board priced below any Biostar P55 boards that I saw.

 

[Micheal307]

I've only had decent experiences with biostar.

 

[Deivs]

I have Biostar P4-TPT about nine years, working without any problems:thumbsup:

 

[schmuckley]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuoKNZjr8_U

 

[Smartazz]

My Biostar motherboard is still great after 2 years of serious use.

 

[ratjacket]

back when SATA was new I seen a Biostar board that didn't have a sata lock you couldn't increase the fsb by 1MHz or it would cause disaster.

 

[robertbaer]

BioStar WILL NOT answer how to modify the BIOS "splash" screen.
The so-called instructions are incomplete and do not work; read the following for details.

Please give full, complete, *working* instructions to modify / update / the BIOS boot screen.

Firstly, please do NOT refer to the motherboard PDF manual page 20 as it is useless.

Start from scratch, new configured system with (say) XP SP3.

Refer to the contents of the H61MGV3 ver 6.9 CD with (say) the windows file browser.
Traverse as follows: Setup --> Software --> and launch the BIOScreen Utility.
One sees a window labelled Confirm file deletion to remove, and message "Do you want to completely remove the selected application and all of its components?"

This is stupid and dangerous! 1) WHAT "selected application"?, 2) The BIOScreen Utility program is not available.

Now, if one boots with the CD and runs Setup then maneuvers to to the BIOS screen Utility selection line, one gets EXACTLY the same garbage as mentioned before.

Not exactly useful, to say the least.
Absolutely NO instructions as how to create and find the BIOScreen Utility.
*
After unspecified arcane wand waving and searching on the hard drive, one may find LOGO.EXE which when launched, displays that infamous screen shown at the top of page 20 of the motherboard PDF manual.

Well, you say, fine and dandy; select and load ANY of the provided logos.
Then go for broke, select "Transform" and get a FAILURE message "Transform image failed cannot transform the logo".

Totally useless garbage; IMPOSSIBLE to to update BIOS with new image if one follows the instructions.

You need MORE COMPLETE instructions and software that WORKS.
*
Now, _maybe_, if one takes a properly formatted BMP (72 dpi 800x600) file, load that then directly update the BIOS, there may be progress.
BUT that is extremely dangerous.
The image file i have is a LOT larger byte size than any of the samples, and still conforms to the specs given above.

There is NO HINT as to full requirements of a "raw" file that could be SAFELY inserted via "Load image" then "Update BIOS".
**
Again, please give full, complete, working instructions to modify / update / the BIOS boot screen.

Thanks.

 

[PingSpike]

I've owned a lot of Biostar boards, many of them recent. I never had any issues with them that I can recall, although I consider them a budget oriented board and didn't expect perfection out of the designs, just reliability and basic functionality.

Honestly, the only motherboard make I've had trouble with is MSI. I can't think of a single MSI product I've owned that didn't have at least one weird but serious problem. I kept trying them again because they were cheap but I finally had to put them on my ban list.

 

[jana519]

I've owned some Biostar motherboards, and sure, they were cheap, but I never had any issues with them. Stable, reliable, nothing defective.

 

[justin4pack]

Have also owned Biostar boards. Ocking was a little different but still got done what i needed. Lots of features for half the price of similar boards with same features. Got another biostar on the way as i type this.

 

[jacktesterson]

I had one. It was junk for me. But that was my only experience.

 

[cool.dx.rip]

i m still using g31m7te biostar mobo from its early release.Its giving me great performance.I still doubt,amazed how this low priced mobo giving so great performance.i post a thread in this forum how good this brand is.however i dont get all replies positive like u
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2306872&highlight=

 

[Engineer]

Old thread is old.

I've had two Biostar boards an no issues. Have flashed custom Bios to my P67 board a few times (once for TRIM on RAID on a P67 chipset and the other to add microcode for Xeon E31230 V2 support).

 

[robertbaer]

Seems that nobody has responded to the stated problem.
That non-functional "transform" seems to belong to (at least) the Intel series motherboards; mine is the H61MGV3.
BioStar is busy refusing to fix the problem.
If an EXACT specification of an acceptable image was available, then one could bypass the non-functional "transform" step.
Naturally, it would be better to have a working LOGO program.

For a corrected version of their BIOScreen "utility", see:
http://www.oil4lessllc.org/BioStar/

Help??

 

[crashtech]

Along with the amazing feats of necromancy, we are also entertaining complaints about a bottom of the barrel H61 board in the latter half of 2014?

 

[Carson Dyle]

Forget that the lengthy and obnoxious complaint is one about not being able to change the freaking BIOS splash screen. Horror.