Who are the big names in mobos - info please

[Piotr Makley]

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

Interesting. Why do you only buy Asus?

 

[Leythos]

Interesting. Why do you only buy Asus?

Intel boards are NOT hard to find and are not expensive.

 

[Butterfield]

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

Whenever I need to slap together a system and need something that will
run out of the box I get a Shuttle. Everyone I ever built is still
operating as far as I know.
Butterfield

 

[GlassVial]

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

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

Someone's been drinking the kool-aid

Asus has a history of bad support after the sale. Pick up a Maximum
PC mag sometime and read about the times Asus is mentioned in the
"Dog" report. Unacceptable.

-GV

 

[GlassVial]

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

manufacturers:

ASUS, SuperMicro, Intel

But you just said you have an Abit board too...make up your mind

By your own admission Abit has been pretty reliable for you!

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.

Then you can only give 1/2 a recommendation.

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.

What if he wants an AMD? Intel doesn't make AMD chipsets

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

How do you know any of the these boards are bad when you have never
used the AMD (or home?) equivalents of them? Not to mention if you
can point someone as to where to buy a Compaq, HP, or Sony
*motherboard only* I'd be impressed

However I think your point is that Compaq HP and Sony all suck, and I
agree, they do. If I *had* to purchase a pre-built system, Compaq
would be my choice of those 3.

-GV

 

[Leythos]

But you just said you have an Abit board too...make up your mind

And as I said, I would not recommend the ABIT boards at this time. Just
because they made a great board years ago does not mean that I still
like the ones they make currently.

By your own admission Abit has been pretty reliable for you!

Yes, but he can't buy the board I'm using now - if you had read my
statement you would have seen that my ABIT board is not current.

Then you can only give 1/2 a recommendation.

Yes, and that's why I stated that I don't buy AMD - I didn't want him to
think was not recommending AMD based on my experience with them. I was
trying to be fair and unbiased so as to not get into an AMD/Intel war.

What if he wants an AMD? Intel doesn't make AMD chipsets

As I said above, I could not make a recommendation on AMD, I'm not fully
qualified in that area. But, you have to admit, he didn't ask for one or
the other. I'm refraining from making responses about my experiences
with AMD boards (high-end ones) in the past.

I currently have 3 ASUS PC-DL Deluxe Dual Xeon systems in my home, great
machines, screaming performance, inexpensive. (I actually have about 14
servers/workstations in my home, but those three are the fastest ones).

How do you know any of the these boards are bad when you have never
used the AMD (or home?) equivalents of them? Not to mention if you
can point someone as to where to buy a Compaq, HP, or Sony
*motherboard only* I'd be impressed

I've used boards from everyone of those vendors and have lots of
experience with "Home" systems and components. In general, if a vendor
makes a mistake in a line of products, then similar lines will also
suffer (in general). Being that I've used and found issues with all of
the named vendors, were I to choose an AMD system, I would not purchase
it from my "never buy" list.

You can purchase Compaq and HP boards directly from HP. I have no idea
who makes the Sony boards and don't really care.

However I think your point is that Compaq HP and Sony all suck, and I
agree, they do. If I *had* to purchase a pre-built system, Compaq
would be my choice of those 3.

If I had to purchase a pre-built system, Dell would be the one I choose
out of those three. I spec out about $1.5 million in servers and
workstations every year, Dell has not failed me yet - can't say the same
about Compaq or HP.

So, to answer his question directly - I made my recommendation and
qualified it by saying that I could not respond concerning AMD
motherboards.

 

[DaveL]

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

I have to disagree about the Aopen boards. I built a system for a friend
base on an Aopen board last year. Their implementation of the Nforce2
chipset was shoddy at best. Had to wait for a bios upgrade before it was
able to run half way decent. Still not near Epox and Abit standards. And
what's with those mobos with tubes on them? Must be some strange marketing
gimmic. No more Aopen for me.

 

[Top-poster]

Best mobo maker by far, ATM is DFI.
They get amazing FSB and mem timings.
The power implementation is superb and there's bundles of BIOS options.
Easily the best NF2 board.
Get the Infinity and Winflash to Oskar Wu BIOS 1/21 Beta for best
performance.
Next down is Abit's NF7 series - but it's a bit passe now that the DFI is
trouncing everything.

 

[Darkfalz]

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.


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

AMD CPUs are slow and overheat (even melt!). Steer well clear of them.

I love my Pentium 4 and Pentium III for that matter. Though I do have an
AMD, AmDX2/66 and AmDX2/80. AMD peaked in the 486 days - because their
products weren't grossly inferior to Intel's line back then.

 

[Darkfalz]

Interesting. Why do you only buy Asus?

Stability and performance.

 

[Rob Stow]

AMD CPUs are slow and overheat (even melt!). Steer well clear of them.

If you buy a cheap motherboard and use crappy cooling that
allows a cpu to "melt" you deserve what happens to you
regardless of whether the processor was Intel or AMD.

If you are concerned about heat, AMD CPUs outperform Intel
processors while using less power and hence having to dissipate
less heat. AMD's heat/performance lead is especially large for
the Athlon64, AthlonFX and Opterons. A 2 GHz Athlon64 with
1 MB (ie., the 3200+) will outperform a 3.2 GHz P4 in most benchmarks
while using about 23 W less power (73 W vs 96 W). One very nice
bonus when using AMD64 processors is that you can use slower and
hence quieter cpu fans because the processor runs so much cooler
while still outperforming Intel's cpu line.

I love my Pentium 4 and Pentium III for that matter. Though I do have an
AMD, AmDX2/66 and AmDX2/80. AMD peaked in the 486 days - because their
products weren't grossly inferior to Intel's line back then.

Quite a turn around these days, isn't it, with Intel being
the company with the "grossly inferior" product line ?

It is going to take Intel a long time to catch up to the
AMD64 product line - the 64 bit extensions are a start, but
the Prescotts are still crippled by the lack of built in
memory controllers that give AMD64 processors such a huge
advantage. Building the "glue logic" into the processors
also give AMD a huge advantage in SMP systems because Intel
still relies on external chipsets to do that - which adds
still more latencies and makes the motherboards more
complicated and more expensive.

 

[Leythos]

AMD CPUs are slow and overheat (even melt!). Steer well clear of them.

I don't use AMD CPU's in any of my systems and even I know that what you
typed is false for anything they've made in the last several years.

 

[Debug]

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

And I said Asus has both. You can use it in jumperless mode and just
use the bios or choose to use the dip switches. And the reason for
that is that some say using dip switches helps with stability. I've
never seen anything to support that claim though. I use my Asus mb in
jumperless mode.

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

Well, you may have a point there but I've never looked close enough to
compare. I just know that I can OC my Asus mb just as easily as my
Abit mb and they are both stable.

 

[Debug]

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...

You don't have to use dip switches on the Asus mb. they are there
purely as an option, which is a good thing in my books.

 

[Debug]

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

Just because you had one bad experience with one mb is no reason to
discount a company. I had an MSI mb that was dead on arrival. Does
that mean I would never use MSI again? Hell no. I had a FIC mb once
and it was rock solid (AMD761 chipset) and yet many people poo-poo on
them as being cheap crap.

 

[Debug]

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

Yes, they make consumer mb's and I hear they are very good. But they
are not for overclockers because they don't have those features in
their bios. If you just want a solid mb and don't intend to OC then
Intel would be a good choice.

 

[Debug]

Intel boards are NOT hard to find and are not expensive.

--

Yep, one of the cheapest 865 mb's out there is the Intel D865PERL.

$141.45 CDN

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=9916&vpn=BOXD865PERL

 

[GlassVial]

Best mobo maker by far, ATM is DFI.

They get amazing FSB and mem timings.
The power implementation is superb and there's bundles of BIOS options.
Easily the best NF2 board.
Get the Infinity and Winflash to Oskar Wu BIOS 1/21 Beta for best
performance.
Next down is Abit's NF7 series - but it's a bit passe now that the DFI is
trouncing everything.

Never thought I'd be reading statements like this about DFI...they've
always been "bottom feeders" in most reviews. Perhaps they've cleaned
up their act.

-GV

 

[GlassVial]

I'll never buy another Asus board again, but that's just my

Just because you had one bad experience with one mb is no reason to
discount a company. I had an MSI mb that was dead on arrival. Does
that mean I would never use MSI again? Hell no. I had a FIC mb once
and it was rock solid (AMD761 chipset) and yet many people poo-poo on
them as being cheap crap.

I'm not talking just about ONE board. I've owned a few Asus boards
(before I knew any better, which now I do) and I'll never buy them
again. And as I posted, seen too many posts of no support after the
sale as far as Asus is concerned, and too many times the Dog in
maximum PC has gone after Asus. Sorry, not interested in a company
that you have to twist their arm to get some support. As far as the
Epox goes, I will admit that was a slightly older board and it was
probably time for it to die. Would I buy Epox again if one had the
features/price/etc I need? Sure, it was a good board while it lasted.

-GV

 

[Philip Callan]

And as I posted, seen too many posts of no support after the
sale as far as Asus is concerned,

This is heresay, so not all that reliable, and besides, if you know what
your doing, your not phoning them when you butcher a flash, your the
support, if you dont know computers, you shouldnt try to build your own
to save a buck.

and too many times the Dog in
maximum PC has gone after Asus.

I've seen them go after companies and later have to backtrack, when bad
capacitors struck the whole industry.

Plus a magazines interviews are almost always related to the amount of
advertising a company buys.

Sorry, not interested in a company
that you have to twist their arm to get some support.

I've had to RMA a few (very) ASUS boards and although the turnaround
wasnt spectacular, it wasnt a crawl like some companies. I think it
depends on what level of support you expect from a company.

Besides, unless its BTX, in a year, all our boards, good or bad will
'crap' to the people who are locked into that upgrade addiction.

Me, I plan on keeping this one for a long time, my home p3 asus never
failed, my p2/3 asus boards never failed, hmm, my socket 7 tx-5 systems
never failed.....

Asus has had a solid reputation for a long time for a reason.

Every company has falls of stride sometimes, its how quick they fix
their mistakes that counts.

ie Every 'weakness' in the P4C800 series, (the 3com lan, not promise ide
etc) was fixed in the P4C800-E, so those who wanted or needed the higher
end, had a choice, but those who didnt, and want to save some money,
have the option of buying a product that is just as stable, and with
some room to strech in overclocking, for less price....

Promoting something is fine, but you shouldnt have to bash everything
that doesnt conform to your view to make your point.