Best motherboard

[NoADSLyet]

Agreed on the Asus support, heard some horror stories plus downloading anything from their site is an exercise in frustration! Thankfully I've never had to deal with their technical support. Most problems I've had were fixed by a BIOS update. Gigabyte's more recent boards are pretty much equal with Asus in terms of features and performance so in future the better technical support may swing my money their way.

Also Tyan++

Never had problems with ASUS, there was some minor bugs on some boards but usually a Bios update fixed it. Some that was not fixed was livable, like some boards with SiS chips (Now prevent them when possible)
Main thing for me if someone brings an OLD PC with Asus board I still get support on their site. Never dealt with them directly as it was practically never required. I did get responses from their forum, although it took time. Asus is a huge corporate conglomerate probably receiving millions if e-mails daily so how can you beach if they miss your poor e-mail. They just do not have the time and why should they with a well functioning support page. If the problem that bugs you was so predominant then there definitely will be thousands with the same problem and you will find it on the net and there will be an updated Bios to fix it. If Asus had to "fix" everyones minor issue there would not be an ASUS.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Asus is a huge corporate conglomerate probably receiving millions if e-mails daily so how can you beach if they miss your poor e-mail.

It's OK to ignore your clients because you're big? I work for a huge company. If we take this attitude, we lose business. ASUS maybe huge, but so is Gigabyte, and so is HP (who's server blows too but they at least send you an automated response and some sort of follow-up within a few days, even if it's just to say they can't help). Any company (especially one of that size) should have ticketing systems to deal with client support issues. That's what they're there for - to help manage the flow of support calls and make it workable.

They just do not have the time and why should they with a well functioning support page.

Their support page was not "well functioning" and that was part of the problem.

If the problem that bugs you was so predominant then there definitely will be thousands with the same problem and you will find it on the net and there will be an updated Bios to fix it.

There were several. I don't remember the model number of the board, but it was one of the last AthlonXP boards, with the VIA KT880 chipset. I bought it for the dual channel memory. You can google it, you'll find all the references. The problem was that with an ATi card, the PC constantly froze, regardless of OS or drivers. It also mis-detected the FSB on a two year old AthlonXP CPU, underclocking it. Every couple of days it would complain during POST that "Overclocking failed" even though it wasn't overclocked at all, at which point it would reset all the BIOS settings. I thought the board was faulty, and the shop was kind enough to exchange it (at their cost since they persuaded me to buy it instead of getting the Gigabyte I wanted elsewhere), but the problems persisted.

Several people reported this on various forums, everybody bitched because ASUS never bothered to reply to any of their support queries. I sent ASUS a lot of detailed information on what hardware I was using, how to reproduce the problem, what hardware I've swopped out to isolate the problem, OS details, driver details, log files, even strace output of some things. The magic BIOS fix never came and after about six months I lost patience - was still working on my old KT133 board out of necessity - and bought a Gigabyte GA-7VT600-1394 which not only ran stably out of the box, but also, dispite having only single channel memory controller outperformed the ASUS.

Incidently, a BIOS update did come out several months later, that fixed the CPU detection issue, but the unstability and "overclocking" issue remained.

I can accept that one motherboard out of every so many would be a lemon. I can accept that even a whole model from a very well respected and reliable manufacturer would have issues. But the way ASUS dit absolutely bugger-all about it for so long is what keeps me from buying anything from them again.

 

[koffiejunkie]

To add to this I looked it up. It was an ASUS A7V880 board. Here is the BIOS page:

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

First release was 2004/04/14. I bought it in May that year. Only TEN MONTHS after releasing the board, did they fix the CPU detection issue (2005/03/14). A beta BIOS was released on (2006/02/14) and nothing since. The other issues were never fixed.

I threw my board away when I moved. Looks like it still wouldn't be working properly anyway.

 

[supersunbird]

There were several. I don't remember the model number of the board, but it was one of the last AthlonXP boards, with the VIA KT880 chipset. I bought it for the dual channel memory. You can google it, you'll find all the references. The problem was that with an ATi card, the PC constantly froze, regardless of OS or drivers. It also mis-detected the FSB on a two year old AthlonXP CPU, underclocking it. Every couple of days it would complain during POST that "Overclocking failed" even though it wasn't overclocked at all, at which point it would reset all the BIOS settings. I thought the board was faulty, and the shop was kind enough to exchange it (at their cost since they persuaded me to buy it instead of getting the Gigabyte I wanted elsewhere), but the problems persisted.

Several people reported this on various forums, everybody bitched because ASUS never bothered to reply to any of their support queries. I sent ASUS a lot of detailed information on what hardware I was using, how to reproduce the problem, what hardware I've swopped out to isolate the problem, OS details, driver details, log files, even strace output of some things. The magic BIOS fix never came and after about six months I lost patience - was still working on my old KT133 board out of necessity - and bought a Gigabyte GA-7VT600-1394 which not only ran stably out of the box, but also, dispite having only single channel memory controller outperformed the ASUS.

Incidently, a BIOS update did come out several months later, that fixed the CPU detection issue, but the unstability and "overclocking" issue remained.

I can accept that one motherboard out of every so many would be a lemon. I can accept that even a whole model from a very well respected and reliable manufacturer would have issues. But the way ASUS dit absolutely bugger-all about it for so long is what keeps me from buying anything from them again.

I wont ever buy a VIA chipset board again. Only nvidia or Intel for me please...

 

[antowan]

Depends on your needs. I found the ASUS mobo with nvidia chipset to be stable and tweakable to my needs. Go for names you know and always check out the problem logs on forums before buying a specific mobo. I made the mistake of buying a Epox mobo with known issues. Capacitors went sour quickly due to factory fault (which was a result of them unknowingly buying caps from a guy who got it via industrial espionage) and the mobo stopped working completely!

 

[CodeMaster]

Before buying any hardware from any manufacturer, I ALWAYS look for reviews, good and bad.

 

[koffiejunkie]

I wont ever buy a VIA chipset board again. Only nvidia or Intel for me please...

This was not the chipset's fault. Other boards with the same chipset work without any problems. VIA's chipsets had problems in the late 90s (latency issues, etc) but that has been a thing of the past for a long time, and their chipsets have been superb (I don't say the fastest) ever since.

 

[dotVIBE]

I vote for ASUS with nvidia chipset. has always served me well.

 

[The_Techie]

I'm using a Gigabyte with NVIDIA NForce4 chipset and it works great