Biostar does have a very colorful and well acknowledged history of making JUNK motherboards. I'll add my personal experience in years past has been high amount of DOA or motherboards that go belly up in the first 2-4 months. That being said though, if you got a "good" one, they were good for the long haul. It was just a case of fishing out the ones that were good vs. bad, with a high degree of "bad" in each batch.
The new Intel based Biostar's though aren't so bad. They are basically slightly modified versions of the Intel Reference mainboard design with average components. RMA rates are improving so the TForce is a good buy. It still has some common Biostar-inflicted stupidity though (such as power leads OVER the cpu fan/heatsink and clustered northbridge where it'll get hot).. but neither of these are a big issue as you can work-around them. BIOS support has also stepped up a bit too so Biostar is back on the up swing hoping to rebutt their colorful history.
As most smart US customers here order from NewEgg, RMA isn't a big issue either way. NewEgg will turn around DOA or flakey motherboards same-day so it's really not a big consequence.
I'd also mention that Tomshardware results are almost 90% within the margin of error for the tests given. A +/- 5% in those tests is irrelevent since you can reboot 20 times and run the same tests and see the same kinds of variances between runs on the same mainboards. They are all very similar reference design and perform admirably.. but there is no "X kicks Y's keister!" given the results reported.
The new Intel based Biostar's though aren't so bad. They are basically slightly modified versions of the Intel Reference mainboard design with average components. RMA rates are improving so the TForce is a good buy. It still has some common Biostar-inflicted stupidity though (such as power leads OVER the cpu fan/heatsink and clustered northbridge where it'll get hot).. but neither of these are a big issue as you can work-around them. BIOS support has also stepped up a bit too so Biostar is back on the up swing hoping to rebutt their colorful history.
As most smart US customers here order from NewEgg, RMA isn't a big issue either way. NewEgg will turn around DOA or flakey motherboards same-day so it's really not a big consequence.
I'd also mention that Tomshardware results are almost 90% within the margin of error for the tests given. A +/- 5% in those tests is irrelevent since you can reboot 20 times and run the same tests and see the same kinds of variances between runs on the same mainboards. They are all very similar reference design and perform admirably.. but there is no "X kicks Y's keister!" given the results reported.
