Biostar GEFORCE 6100-M7 Motherboard

one of the best 754pin motherboard values around

Strengths: micro atx form fits into virtually any case overclocking and overvolt ability on both cpu and ram onboard high performance video

Weaknesses: might need 24 pin power supply connection early bios version seems to have some problems with improper shutdown on restart no lower multiplier bios setting

Summary: I was extremely impressed with this motherboard for only $55. Biostar makes a more "deluxe" version of this board called the "Tforce" but I didn't need the subtle differences for the extra $10 (Tforce has more fan connectors, leds onboard, fancier cables and supposedly higher quality capacitors for extreme overclocking)

While some boards have frequency adjustment for the CPU, this might be the only one in it's price value to have frequency AND voltage control on the memory. I was able to push my older ddr266 memory to ddr400 using this.

Using the fastest CPU available for 754pin, the athlon64 3700+, I was able to overclock to 2700mhz (225x12, from the default of 200x12=2400mhz) with this board. Rather impressive (remember your results may vary depending on CPU quality).

I did have to get a newer 24pin power supply as I could not make the board boot with 20pin, though I have read elsewhere that others have had success with 20pin.

The onboard 6100 video chip is actually very fast for casual gamers. You can play doom at 800x600 very comfortably. Faster than any Nvdia 5900 but of course it cannot compare to $100-$200 video cards like the 6600 or 6800. The good thing is if you ever want that extra high end video speed, the pci-e 16x slot is ready and waiting.

Last but not least I do have some problems with improper "restarts" on this board. When telling windows to restart, the board will instead shutdown, or if in DOS and you press crtl-alt-delete for warm reboot, it will shutdown. Biostar is good about releasing a new bios update every month and I hope to see this problem fixed soon.

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yah

Strengths: does have PCI/PCIe locks

Weaknesses: only up to 300fsb

Summary: 2005-11-23 09:56:45 they PCI/PCIe are autolocked bro....they did that on purpose

if you run their program taht came with it, called, warpspeeder, you can see when you up teh FSB the PCI/PCIe speed stays the same...tahts how i figured it otu

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Biostar boards are good

Strengths: name brand

Weaknesses: limited expansion ports

Summary: Ive used biostar mobo's in the past and have always had good luck with them, this is no exception. The only drawback is that its a micro ATX board.

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Not bad

Strengths: price, brand name

Weaknesses: limeted upgradeablity

Summary: I got this mobo as part of an AMD promotional package. It works good so far. PCIe and PCIe x16 slots are nice. wish it had more than 2 SATA and 2 memory slots though.....

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Good board

Strengths: Straigth forward manual, the onboard GeForece 6100 GPU is better that most GPU you can find on other motherboards

Weaknesses: only 3 audio outputs ... no center/rear speaker audio output

Summary: This board is replacing an off-brand DOA board "grrr". So far this board has been very reliable. I've never have had any problems with NVIDIA chips on mobo's or GC's for the several years I've used them. This is a Micro ATX so it looks kinda funny in a mini tower but I can't complain cuz, its almost impossible hard to find any full atx boards with decent onboard video.

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Best bang for the buck!

Strengths: PCI Express video slot for further expansion. On-board graphics that don't suck, SATA II, and PATA RAID.

Weaknesses: Not enough PCI slots. Lousy manuals, but all BioStar manuals are. No gigabit LAN. Not dual channel.

Summary: I put an Athlon 64 3400 in here and it flies! 2gigs of Corsair XMS Pro PC3200 DDR. Runs at 400mhz perfectly! You'll need a 24 pin power connector and some serious power to get the most out of this. I used a Thermaltake 480 watt power supply with at 24 pin power adapter. To get the best of Athlon 64 performance you may want to get a socket 939 or wait for the M2 systems to get dual channel support. I'm going to be buying more of these, because the processors are inexpensive! Mine also worked well with the Sempron 2600.

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