BIOS Walkthrough

Brand new for me with this Biostar Hi-Fi A85W is the BIOS you see above. It really shocked me when it first popped up. The BIOS is, however, essentially the same. It simply comes with a different background and a new color, which is definitely more appealing to the eye.


Everything is pretty well laid out, and there were quite a few options here that I just didn't even know what to do with. That's pretty surprising to me since I do tend to cover quite a few products, and I've seen nearly every BIOS type. What Biostar provides is on a completely different level because they tend to stick with far more traditional, technical labels, which can, at times, be pretty frustrating.


All in all, however, what's here is more than adequate for the average user and is, to me, pretty close to what every overclocker needs as well, which is nice since this isn't the high-end overclocking board either. When it comes to tweaking settings, seen in the last image above, Biostar offers a pretty good, even excellent, set with the Biostar Hi-Fi A85W. Take a look at the last listing called Biostar Memory Insight.


Right there, right where you can see it as you get to the tweaking section, is a page that lists timings for your memory in an easy-to-read manner. You don't need to look elsewhere in the BIOS to find such things since it's right where you would need it to be. Only listing it on the same page as the actual tweaking utility for memory timings would be better, but that is, perhaps, yet to come. There's a section to adjust Turbo options as well, or, as Biostar calls it, its P-State Options. I suppose such terminology is actually more accurate, but the labels still left me a bit confused.


Everything else is pretty basic. There is, of course, yet another option on the exit page that allows you to save BIOS profiles to a drive, or to load them up off a drive. This can be useful for both troubleshooting and overclocking because users can share profiles, which helps in optimizing everything to get the most out of a system. It would be nice to see an upload/download section on their website for such profiles, but I couldn't find t anything of the sort while looking recently.

I know I seem a bit negative here, but that's not at all how I feel. There are a whole lot of features here - way more than is really needed - and this board is pretty cheap, let me tell you. The Biostar Hi-Fi A85W rings in at less than $100.