Value & Conclusion
- The Biostar Hi-Fi A88W 3D should be available for under $100.
- Pretty decent audio rendering for less than $100
- Great power consumption figures
- A total of eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports
- Full ATX expansion capabilities
- Simple color scheme that can easily match other components well
- Fully functional AMI UEFI BIOS including mouse support and support for 3 TB+ drives
- Default AMD TurboCore/APM not fully adjustable via BIOS
- Overclock design on APU platform leads to limited performance gains
- No SLI support
The last Biostar AMD board I looked at didn't leave me too impressed. It worked alright, but seemed to miss the mark a bit. The Biostar H-Fi A88W 3D, on the other hand, removes nearly all of my complaints and provides a great stable platform for a new FM2+ system.
It is a bit unfortunate that overclocking isn't fully supported every cores of my installed APU, but memory overclockability and the options to get a bit more added performance with relative ease do exist, although overclocking an APU's CPU cores might net very little performance, while overclocking the GPU and memory portions of AMD's FM2+ platform provides truly tangible benefits, and that side of the board works.
AMD's APUs don't offer the highest performance you can get right now, but what is offered for the dollar is pretty tempting considering you get decent GPU performance other entry-level platforms simply do not have. Keeping that in mind, the Biostar Hi-Fi A88W 3D is a great option for users in the budget range or as the base for a light-weight but gaming-capable HTPC. Don't forget to let us know what you think by creating a forum post!