Who are the big names in mobos - info please

[David Peters]

Which manufacturers are reckoned to make the best motherboards?

I know Asus has a great name with overclockers and it has very good
market share. What about Gigabyte? Are they known in general for
making good boards. Abit? MSI? Others?

I am getting a new motherboard and sorely want an Asus just because
of it reputation! (Stupid, I know.)

But Asus don't do a board with the spec I want. Who else should I
be looking at?

 

[CB]

Which manufacturers are reckoned to make the best motherboards?

I know Asus has a great name with overclockers and it has very good
market share. What about Gigabyte? Are they known in general for
making good boards. Abit? MSI? Others?

I am getting a new motherboard and sorely want an Asus just because
of it reputation! (Stupid, I know.)

But Asus don't do a board with the spec I want. Who else should I
be looking at?

Uh? Read your own message:-(

 

[Gregory Toomey]

Which manufacturers are reckoned to make the best motherboards?

I know Asus has a great name with overclockers

News to me.

and it has very good market share.

They produce the biggest volume of motherboards.

What about Gigabyte? Are they known in general for
making good boards.

Gigabyte are known for making very stable boards. And they have reasonable
overclocking potential

Abit? MSI? Others?
ABIT is generally regarded as the best board by overclockers, since it has
full support for changing multipliers and FBS speeds in BIOS.

Some other boards only allow you to change the FSB, or offer a limited range
of multipliers.

Also consider Epox.

gtoomey

 

[Debug]

ABIT is generally regarded as the best board by overclockers, since it has
full support for changing multipliers and FBS speeds in BIOS.

Asus has that too. I have an Asus P4B533 and an Abit IC7 and they are
both great mb's with similar bios features. But the Asus mb allows you
to use dip switches and the bios to adjust FSB and clock frequency.
All Intel cpu's are multiplier locked anyway and those settings in the
bios are only good for setting the multiplier manually for when you
OC. I don't see Abit having any OC'ing features over Asus, and vice
versa.

 

[GlassVial]

Which manufacturers are reckoned to make the best motherboards?

I know Asus has a great name with overclockers and it has very good
market share. What about Gigabyte? Are they known in general for
making good boards. Abit? MSI? Others?

I am getting a new motherboard and sorely want an Asus just because
of it reputation! (Stupid, I know.)

But Asus don't do a board with the spec I want. Who else should I
be looking at?

I'll never buy another Asus board again, but that's just my
preference. Abit is fine, Gigabyte I haven't heard of many problems
with. I had an Epox once upon a time and it was a great board, till
one day it suddenly died (didn't take anything else with it, thank
goodness, it just quit). If Soyo is still around I had good luck with
those boards too. Can't speak to MSI I've never owned one of those
but the reviews for the most part seem good.

-GV

 

[Mr, Mrs, Master & Miss Hammond]

Epox and Abit are the most overclockerble!!!!!

News to me.

They produce the biggest volume of motherboards.


Gigabyte are known for making very stable boards. And they have reasonable
overclocking potential

Abit? MSI? Others?

ABIT is generally regarded as the best board by overclockers, since it has
full support for changing multipliers and FBS speeds in BIOS.

Some other boards only allow you to change the FSB, or offer a limited range
of multipliers.

Also consider Epox.

gtoomey

 

[Ørjan Langbakk]

In

Which manufacturers are reckoned to make the best motherboards?

I know Asus has a great name with overclockers and it has very good
market share. What about Gigabyte? Are they known in general for
making good boards. Abit? MSI? Others?

I am getting a new motherboard and sorely want an Asus just because
of it reputation! (Stupid, I know.)

But Asus don't do a board with the spec I want. Who else should I
be looking at?

Others have mentioned Soyo and Epox - both good, although slightly
expensive motherboards.

Also, Intel makes motherboards, although I'm not sure if they make many
"consumer-oriented" boards.

Shuttle makes motherboards, never heard much about those though, neither
good nor bad.

AOpen makes quite good motherboards too, especially the more expensive
models.

Basically, motherboards' quality equals price (often, anyway), up to a
certain price point. Motherboards that cost more than $200 are either
equipped with some extra features, or just not worth the money.

It all depends on what you're going to use the computer for. Different
motherboards might have strenghts in different areas.

 

[Gregory Toomey]

Asus has that too. I have an Asus P4B533 and an Abit IC7 and they are
both great mb's with similar bios features. But the Asus mb allows you
to use dip switches and the bios to adjust FSB and clock frequency.
All Intel cpu's are multiplier locked anyway and those settings in the
bios are only good for setting the multiplier manually for when you
OC. I don't see Abit having any OC'ing features over Asus, and vice
versa.

Abit has no dip switches - you adjusy everything in BIOS.

And like i said, "full support". There are some multipliers that ABIT
supports that others don't; others dont decode all available bits.

gtoomey

 

[Nanga Parbat]

Asus has that too. I have an Asus P4B533 and an Abit IC7 and they are
both great mb's with similar bios features. But the Asus mb allows you
to use dip switches and the bios to adjust FSB and clock frequency.
All Intel cpu's are multiplier locked anyway and those settings in the
bios are only good for setting the multiplier manually for when you
OC. I don't see Abit having any OC'ing features over Asus, and vice
versa.

Abit also has some nice underclock features like lowering Vcore below
stock voltage.

Nanga

 

[@ndrew]

Epox and Abit are the most overclockerble!!!!!

Would also consider DFI above epox or for that matter Asus ... my 2
cents o)

regards

@ndrew

 

[Tim]

Nanga,

Have you tired this? Can you get a mobo to run in an ultra cool and quiet
state OK on abit?
I used to do this with an athlon on an Asus - running a 1400 at 1000 -
worked well.
- Tim

 

[Darkfalz]

Which manufacturers are reckoned to make the best motherboards?

I know Asus has a great name with overclockers and it has very good
market share. What about Gigabyte? Are they known in general for
making good boards. Abit? MSI? Others?

I am getting a new motherboard and sorely want an Asus just because
of it reputation! (Stupid, I know.)

But Asus don't do a board with the spec I want. Who else should I
be looking at?

I only buy ASUS. Anything else is inferior (well, Intel brand boards aren't
too bad, but they are hard to find and expensive).

 

[Nanga Parbat]

Have you tired this? Can you get a mobo to run in an ultra cool and quiet
state OK on abit?
I used to do this with an athlon on an Asus - running a 1400 at 1000 -
worked well.

I have a TbredB 2100+ in an old Abit KT7 motherboard running at
15x100Mhz with a Vcore of 1.3V. The CPU as a very big aluminium
heatsink, recovered from a Compaq Proliant, on it with no fan. Works
great and quiet.

Nanga

 

[Noozer]

ECS provide a good mainboard FOR THE PRICE...

The quick rule is..."Fast, Cheap, Reliable... Pick any two"

 

[Nanga Parbat]

I only buy ASUS. Anything else is inferior

I only bought Abit until a couple of weeks ago I tried an A7N8X dlx.
Too bad you can't undervolt Asus boards (I didn't know that before).
That's why I went back to Abit for my next boards.

(well, Intel brand boards aren't too bad, but they are hard to find
and expensive).

Intel? You can't even put a decent CPU in those boards

Nanga

 

[Tim]

Yes, to true. When will they bring out an Athlon board - I've been waiting
for years for one.

 

[Chip]

Nanga,

Have you tired this? Can you get a mobo to run in an ultra cool and quiet
state OK on abit?
I used to do this with an athlon on an Asus - running a 1400 at 1000 -
worked well.

Athlon XP at 11x100 at 1.2v with no fan. 44C under load.

Chip.

 

[Chip]

Which manufacturers are reckoned to make the best motherboards?

I know Asus has a great name with overclockers and it has very good
market share. What about Gigabyte? Are they known in general for
making good boards. Abit? MSI? Others?

I am getting a new motherboard and sorely want an Asus just because
of it reputation! (Stupid, I know.)

But Asus don't do a board with the spec I want. Who else should I
be looking at?

Well what do you want to do with it? And what features do you want?

It all depends. Do you want to overclock? Do you want lots of features?
Is price important to you? Intel or AMD? How important is stability
compared to speed. What about support - do you need any? Does that matter
to you?

Its impossible to recommend anything without knowing what you want.

Chip.

 

[Leythos]

Which manufacturers are reckoned to make the best motherboards?

I know Asus has a great name with overclockers and it has very good
market share. What about Gigabyte? Are they known in general for
making good boards. Abit? MSI? Others?

When it comes to a reliable motherboard, I purchase from the following
manufacturers:

ASUS, SuperMicro, Intel

Since I don't buy AMD products, I can get a very good quality
motherboard for high-end workstations or servers from those three
companies and not have to worry about any quality problems.

I have also used ABit, and have a Dual CPU Abit system that's been
running for almost 5 years without any problems.

I would stay away from any motherboard that does not use the Intel
chipset. Gigabyte use to have a good name in the home market, I've not
used them so I can't say how they are currently.

I would never buy a MSI, Epox, SOYO, ECS, Compaq, HP, E-Machines, VAIO,
DFI, Shuttle, AOpen (never from AOpen).

None if this was meant to start a AMD/Intel flame war, I can only speak
about Intel based systems at this time.

I am getting a new motherboard and sorely want an Asus just because
of it reputation! (Stupid, I know.)

Actually, that's a good reason - If you don't buy from a company with a
good rep then you could easily be buying junk and not know about it
until after the purchase.

But Asus don't do a board with the spec I want. Who else should I
be looking at?

So, how come you didn't tell us what you are looking for?

 

[TomG]

not saying one is better than the other but I hate using DIP switches and
much prefer to use bios setups that employ menus like SoftMenu...

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