BIOSTAR TForce TF7050-M2 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 7050PV HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: A beautiful board as any in the tforce series! Solid onboard graphics and sound! A great brisbane overclocker as well.

Cons: Almost gave it 4 stars because of the BIOS issues. Currently available BIOS has no PWM fan settings(even though there are two pages in the manual dedicated to it) , will not cold boot my WD 500 GB SATA hard drive, and the temperatures are off by 10 degrees C for the brisbane chips. Yes there is a beta BIOS on AVS forums that fixes all of the issues but it should have been that way in the shipped BIOS. Also the northbridge heatsink needs to be slightly bigger. They kept it small so the board would fit in the box with the swag bag.

Overall Review: Yes it is a great overclocker but people who make claims of 3 GHz from a 3600 brisbane need to start mentioning memory and settings in their reviews. Also if you don't Prime95 test both cores for 12 hours I'm not buying your OC results. Don't run one copy for an hour and say its overclocked. Look on the web for instructions how to max both cores to 100%. I am running my brisbane 3600 at 280 x 9.5 for a OC of 2660 MHz with a 1 GB stick of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 675 memory. The memory is an allstar as I have it running 4-4-4-12 at 760 MHz. The hard wall is around 2750 but if I went with the same brand of memory in DDR2 800 I probably could have done better. If money is no issue I would go with the 2.3 GHz Brisbane. That way you can keep your HT multiplier at 4x and speed at 1000 MHz with a 250 bus speed. This will give you 2875 MHz on the CPU without having to be as agressive with the memory overclock.

Pros: It's been quite stable for over 3 months with a modestly overclocked CPU. So far I haven't taken advantage of this board's full display flexibility, so I can't comment on TV output yet, but this is my first taste of built-in video, and I may never go back to an add-in card. The onboard video works great for everything I do, including movies. There's always room for a display card if you like action games. This board strikes a good balance between price and features, and 3 months with it hasn't made me regret the choice (though I've cursed a bit). And Newegg's site and service are nearly always top-notch.

Cons: [be sure to read my comments below] Biostar's driver support is very deficient. Their USA website's driver page for this motherboard has not been updated since July 24 (over 3 months ago), and it has several broken links! They may have abandoned it or forgotten that it even exists. Fortunately, the Taiwan website is a little better, and it is the only apparent source for regular BIOS updates (I just flashed the October release 2 days ago). I think Biostar's inattention to drivers is their biggest shortcoming.

Overall Review: More recent drivers are available if you know where to go. BIOS updates are available on the Biostar Taiwan site, along with an update of their T-Utility flashing program. Realtek has October updates for both the network and audio drivers on their site, and Nvidia has a September update of the video driver on their site, and all of these are compatible with the chips on this motherboard (assuming you are careful to get the correct model numbers). I can't post the links here, but they're not hard to find on the respective websites.

Pros: This board is microATX and is a powerful overclocker. With a Thermalright HR-05 on the northbridge, the board tops out at 324MHz for me which is very high for a relatively cheap board. It includes all overclocking options ever needed and the board is very solid. Right now I have my X2 3600+ brisbane at 2.9GHz (306x9.5 1.33v). Very solid board, good features with a happy pricetag.

Cons: Still pretty new, so no updated BIOS' yet. Biostar Tech support is pretty lame and the respondents cannot spell for their lives. I asked about a faulty CPU temperature reading in the BIOS and they responded with a solution to set "optimized defaults"....right?

Overall Review: Great paired with a X2 3600+ Brisbane 65nm

Pros: All the features I wanted, except for firewire.

Cons: VGA error on boot. Must try several times to try to boot. Some previous messages here claim it's a power supply problem. Seems more likely that motherboard has a design flaw. My supply is an Apevia PS500 (X-Qpack2 case)

Overall Review: Biostar's web site and customer support do not inspire confidence.

Pros: Contrary to the printed manual and a review below, the chipset DOES support 2GB sticks for a board maximum of 8GB (as per Newegg and Biostar website specs). I used 4 2GB G.Skill F2-6400CL5S-2GBPQ DDR800 sticks and the full complement of memory was seen by the chipset, MB, Athlon 64 X2 Windsor 6000+ and Feisty Server AMD64. The CPU/MB/Memory bandwidth benchmarks about 80% faster than the configuration I am replacing (X2 4800+ with DDR400). The video is more than adequate for my purposes, hosting VMs.

Cons: Minor assembly annoyance: the plastic HSF mounting bracket on the MB has tabs on it that won't let the stock retail Windsor HSF seat properly. Luckily the bracket can be easily removed and filed down enough for the heat pipes to clear.

Pros: Has pretty much everything you need!

Cons: This isn't a Con, actually, but do make sure you put the motherboard on properly or else you will ground the motherboard and it will not turn on.

Overall Review: A friend of mine and I purchased this motherboard for use in creating MythTV systems. Once we got through all the hoops and jumps of Linux we were both pleased with our purchase... ...It really does have everything onboard.

Pros: Works great with 4000+X2, 300 Gb SATA, EVGA 8800GT, and FSP AX400 PSU. Would not even post with 8800GT until updated to bios N68PMB12.BST from the Biostar global site. Onboard gfx let me troubleshoot and fix the problem.

Cons: Bios update was confusing. A previous review here guided me through it!

Overall Review: I got this setup for one nephew with a 7900GS and it was so good his brother wanted one too. With all SATA drives it's so snappy that I'll be going SATA soon also.

Pros: easy setup, booted the first time. The DVI- HDMI converter that comes with it has outstanding picture quality for a inexpensive board. I used an Acer 19 widescreen monitor and the person I built it for was amazed at the quality of the DVD movies she viewed. This is not a high end gamers setup but will play the older games like Call of Duty with no problem...

Cons: none so far

Overall Review: For the money this motherboard is an great buy