Nice and Reliable - an upgrade board at an attractive price
Written: May 25 '03 (Updated Jul 31 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Reliable "All-in-one" motherboard, great "Quick guide" included for easy set up.
Cons: Documentation on CD - you need a working PC to read it
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a nice board that will handle up to an AMD XP 2400+ CPU, then this is the board to buy.
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| drgigabytes's Full Review: Biostar M7VKQ Motherboard |
Being in the computer biz for many years, I have had the chance to work with many different motherboards. Some are very complicated to set up while others - like the M7VKQ, are a snap to configure. One jumper sets the CPU FSB and the rest is mostly plug and play. With more people using cable modems to access the Internet, the built-in LAN is a nice feature. The FREE Norton Personal Firewall software, as well as the FREE Norton Anti virus and Norton Ghost applications are a nice addition.
The board comes with only 1 ATA cable and 1 floppy cable, so if you're adding more than two EIDE drive, you may want to be ready to pick up another cable with your purchase.
I've used hundreds of these motherboards for customers and I have yet to have to return a bad motherboard.
For customers who are looking for an entry-level PC with on-board audio, video (Trident Blade 3D Video Integrated (8MB Shared)), and 10/100 LAN (Realtek RTL8100B), or for customers who are looking to upgrade from 500MHz systems - this is a reliable product at a very attractive price.
The board is a micro ATX board with 3-PCI slots, 1-AMR slot, and 1-ISA slot. At first look, the total number of slots seems lean, but with the on-board sound, video, and LAN, there are an adequate number of slots for future expansion. The ISA slot is a nice feature for those who may have legacy cards that use this format - for most, it may be a useless slot and another PCI slot would have been nice. [Recently, BIOSTAR has come out with another version of this board, M7SUA (called M7VKQ Pro in the US), which has eliminated the ISA slot (3-PCI and 1-AMR slot). They also have increased the memory to 64MB shared.]
The board is very stable. I have yet to have a board that did not post and boot on the first try. The front side bus on the board is 200/266MHz, which provides CPU support for AMD Duron and Athlon XP CPU's up to the AMD 2400+ that run at 133MHz.
A 2-year warranty is offered on the retail version of this product and all the drivers are provided on one CD-ROM disk. Drivers install easily and other applications, like Direct X 8.0 or higher, are provided for on the support CD. There is even a BIOS flash utility program that can be run to update the BIOS to the most recent version - this is done pretty much automatically. For those buyers with little or no experience with flashing BIOS, this is a nice feature and makes the BIOS upgrade painless.
An additional CD-ROM for the free Norton Antiviral, Norton Personal Firewall, and Norton Ghost is provided. At one time, the subscription to these programs was 1 year but it seems that they have been scaled back to 180 days.
In an effort to keep the package affordable, Biostar has provided a one-page setup sheet that shows the jumper settings and front panel setup. This insert is pretty straightforward and easy to use. More complete documentation is available on the support CD-ROM.
The board lends itself to those who may be using the computer as a business workstation or for simple home computing. 8MB of memory from the installed PC100 or PC133 RAM is used for video. There is no provision for disabling the onboard video, so if you're planning on installing a video card, the system board will always be using some memory.
The onboard sound is adequate and can be disabled in the BIOS if you wish to use a surround sound or other sound card.
When you add up the pros and cons of this board, you'll find that the pros are numerous and the cons are few. It is a stable, low cost board that allows for an easy upgrade or new installation and the overall performance is very good.
Review written by DrGigabytes - www.drgigabytes.com
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Epinions.com ID:
drgigabytes
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Location: Rehoboth, MA
Reviews written: 1
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