Biostar?

[Demerzel]

Hey, I'm looking at buying a new board and found one which looked appealing, except for the fact that I have heard nothing about the brand who makes it. Does anyone know anything about the reliability of Biostar boards? Here's the specs for what I'm looking at, any feedback is appreciated.

Specifications:

Biostar M7VIB Socket A XP Motherboard w/ Audio

Processor
Socket A

AMD Athlon XP (V1.2 , BIOS-0926) 5, Athlon and Duron Processor
200 / 266MHz FSB

Chipset

VIA VT8366(KT266) / VT8233

Memory

4 x 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM

Maximum 3.0 GB

PC1600 / 2100

Expansion Slots

5 x PCI

1 x AGP

1 x ACR

1 x CNR

I/O

1 x Parallel, 2 x Serial

1 x PS/2 Mouse, 1x PS/2 Keyboard

2 x Rear USB

1 x Game Port, 1 x Speak-out, 1 x Line-in, 1 x Mic.-in

1 x Floppy

4 x IDE Hard Disk Devices

Ultra DMA33/66/100

Integrated Video

None

Integrated Audio

AC'97 2.2 Audio CODEC Onboard

Hardware Monitor Function

CPU Fan Speed

System Voltage

CPU Temperature

Size

ATX Form Factor

Dimension: 30.5cm X 24.4cm ( W x L )

Warranty
One Year

Thanks.

 

[lagger]

well I can't vouch for that board specifically but my old biostar mtlc6 p-2, 233 mhz is still up and running .. 4 years old.. they supported it with about 3 bios upgrades over the years .. the last was to go from udma (ata) 33 to 66.. never had any problems with the board

lagger

<b><font color=blue>Checking under my North<font color=red> AND</font color=red> South bridges for <font color=green>Trolls</font color=green></font color=blue>

 

[prfstrkr]

well, BIOstar is going down and down these years. I think their mobo will not have serious quality problem, but I am just concerned if you'll get enough support from it. (ie. BIOs fixes, Driver updates,etc) It is kinda like buying a VOODOO 5, which is better than a MX200, but just not enough support any more.

Never trust in any unknown online vendors!!!

 

[Demerzel]

Thanks for the help. It's good to know that I shouldnt have any major troubles, and it has a 1 year warrenty, so it would be a year at least before I got burned. Why do you say that support might fail? It seems to have been supported well to this point, recieving bios revisions taking it's amd xp support to 2000. Is there risk of biostar going out of busniess or getting baught like 3dfx?

 

[Demerzel]

BUMP

 

[King_Aaron]

do not buy this mobo! at all costs avoid biostar! i have gone through the horror of owning one of their boards before. no support what so ever. they said they would, but they never did make a bios update after i bought it. they update the bios just enough to stay 2-3 months behind everyone else adn then stop all together at some point when they stop carring for the customer. one of my friends bought one of their boasrds adn got screwed, b/c biostar forgto to mention that the board he bought doesnt suppport his cpu(athalon XP). he then went through another one of their boards and that one was approved, ut melted the cpu and itself when turned on one day.i would highly recommend an Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Soltek, or Soyo mobo. these guys areee the best and WILL stay the best.