Best mobo brand?

[willawake]

Re: Best mobo brand?

so why don't you just buy intel board if you don't have such weird conditions as i do...oh..hold on...you just did!
good for you!
<wink>

btw. is that small intel board quiet?

i did again. i must be kwazy



yes they are both so quiet

[i4004]

Re: Best mobo brand?

acstech i ment intel as mobo mfr.
(though it means it's also intel chipset on them, but oh well..)

like i said elsewhere i wouldn't mind getting amd system if it can pack more things i need, and at cheaper price(i mentioned media playback pc)

I do not see it as very harsh, since they are pretty much saying that Windows is an unsupported system in a way

i'm not justifying that, it's crap support indeed, but i've learn to not even go there.
what will i get?
they won't even understand the issue let alone fix it.
no, i'm not speaking about asus in particular but MOST of those companies.
it's truth that you need to figure it out yourself, and not rely on them.

i'm sure i would get hard at that point too, but i wouldn't BE in such situation because i wouldn't bother with them.
fuck'em.

That's in my first mail to them, and a few upstream also, missed that part maybe now did you? (Yea, I could have worded myself better, then again English ain't my native language so I don't really feel ashamed)

no, didn't miss it, but that was when you were talking about issues prior to os booting...
ie any boot problems may as well dissapear once windows takes the control of the hardware...

you could have worded it better, true, but again, that way you would only be wasting more time.

i essentially didn't miss anything you said, there were just some things that were not clear to me. now they are, thanks for that.

Umm, hasn't it been out for like atleast 4 years now?

sure, but penetration of 64bit os is not that high, less people use it, so less people will report problems, which means they'll be solved at slower pace etc.

Yea, I assumed you lost data, so sorry I was making assumptions
I'll try to better myself
And yea, I assumed you used XP x64, it's something I just got in my head, sorry, so article was not relevant

no problem.

No, it's not really Asus fault and I know so aswell, tho for them to fix the issue I must bring it to their attention (they actually did fix the problem with my LSI 8704ELP RAID controller in a BIOS update after me reporting that (it's the first time they manage to fix something I've whined about))

i think they(asus) should solve ALL bios problems, as that's essentially only piece of software they include on that board.
like i said, after boot windows takes control, so aloot of the stability is up to os and it's drivers...

so just to spread that guilt a bit, because it's hard to blame JUST one if many brands are involved in making that board.

to mention another unpleasant thing i had with this board; i updated the bios, and board remained looping, turn itself on, reboots without showing anything on screen , loop repeats, etc.
clearing cmos helped, but hell...it was scary.
i updated bios thinking perhaps it could solve network issue...yeah, silly me...

i REALLY don't expect same will happen if my nephews update their intel mobo bios to put 2core cpu...

Yea, that would have made me conclude to not buy a mobo with Intel ICH RAID controller, since it has these issues

exactly.

So that would not help

perhaps one of the reasons i dislike raid so much...hehe...

perhaps situation is better with amd, nvidia and others?
perhaps it's worse(?)

i did again. i must be kwazy

big one this time?
nice.

[acstech]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Intel manufactured boards are generally ok stability wise, but they don't offer the control that I want in the BIOS, and they generally cost too much.

There are some great AMD Biostar motherboards available for multimedia playback; go have another look.

[i4004]

Re: Best mobo brand?

sure, as soon as i need i'll look...

i don't know why you mean intel mobos cost too much?
stuff i made for few people was dirt cheap, with all rubycons and so...
this chipset
http://www.intel.com/Products/Deskto...Z-overview.htm
few years ago...

it realyl proved to me that these putting cheap caps onto mobos aren't really saving anything, if a board with all good caps can be so cheap....

[kc8adu]

Re: Best mobo brand?

your support questions are likely being answered by a bot or some guy in india .
do you really expect them to help?

[zandrax]

Re: Best mobo brand?

It appears that the Asus A7V8X-X was just a version that had only some features removed and may be newer than the A7V8X.

Sorry if my text wasn't clear: I know the A7V8X-X is a less featured A7V8X, a "stripped down" version.
My point is Asus sells two types of less featured boards: an existing model without some "premium" features (e.g. A7V8X and A7V8X-X: see the blank space for ICs on the A7V8X-X pcb) and a new model unrelated to the one bearing the suffixless name (e.g. P4P800 and P4P800-X: completely different layouts). Why bothering to design a completely new board for a low line, low cost product?
My personal reply: because Asus can outsource these productions to a partner, maybe Hsing-Tech a.k.a. ECS a.k.a. PC-Chips and already involved with Asus in Asrock. Unfortunately I don't have any evidence supporting my claim.

Zandrax

[gg1978]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I favor Asus and Gigabyte personally.. For build quality and reliablity anyway.. Intel boards are OK, but i like to O/C too much to really consider one..

[Per Hansson]

Re: Best mobo brand?

your support questions are likely being answered by a bot or some guy in india .
do you really expect them to help?

Well usually when manufacturers grow large support goes out the shitter

But that's only greed, because the bigger company can take the burden of support calls easier than a smaller company with less money to work with

So IMO manufacturers (like Asus) which don't give a damn are also not worth my money
DFI, which has very good support is worth my money

And LSI (the RAID controller manufacturer) I can recommend whole hartedly.
They actually _phoned_ me up to help me solva an issue I had with the RAID controller after I made a support request on their site (In the end it turned out it was just I that did not press the right buttons... Error 40 you know...)
But man, what a service! (they also have Windows 2000 drivers for the card, just to give a hint...)

EDIT; i4004, damn, just saw the valve hardware survey;

Windows XP 32 bit (-1.49%) 67.18%
Windows Vista 32 bit (+0.73%) 23.92%
Windows Vista 64 bit (+0.71%) 7.53%
Windows 2003 64 bit (0.00%) 0.76%
Windows 2000 (+0.01%) 0.28%
Windows XP 64 bit (+0.04%) 0.25%
Other (+0.01%) 0.08%

Windows 2000 is more popular than XP x64! (not that I don't think it deserves it of course, best damn OS ever!)
And x64 OS only account for 8,33% of the total, man, I thought it would be much much higher, atleast over 30%!
And what are Microsoft on about Vista being a success? Since this survey will also of course include pirated software but people still seem to prefer XP over Vista (tho it did drop 1.49% to Vista in the last month, half of which went to the x64 version even!)

[i4004]

Re: Best mobo brand?

>(not that I don't think it deserves it of course, best damn OS ever!)

boot and shutdown times are extremely slow for me(perhaps because it wasn't clean install, but transfer from old system..but 2k was never really fast to boot anyway...and service packs just bring shutdown time to be almost same as boot up...uh) and power management sux, because (s3)stby is not working, something that works without issues on xp.
(stby when hdds, cpu fan and psu are quiet(and 5w is consumed from mains) is such a neat thing!)
reading some microsoft docs it seems acpi is not ok for more cores(cpus) systems...uh...

still, i'm not moving anywhere from 2k...too lazy to move tons of software i have on it...enormous hassle...(i installed xp on another partition, and did some work on it, but it's just like a month worth of work there...screw that while 2k is working..and work it will...by now my experience is that only bad hardware can make 2k stop...i also like the fact it's so old exploits will soon probably cease, esp. after windows7...)

windows7 will probably be a great success, for new hardware...i dunno how much people will upgrade xp to 7, i mean if they have a working system that does everything they need....those with vista probably will..i mean they went from xp to vista too, didn't they?

>DFI, which has very good support is worth my money

i dunno if you can really prove this based just on the call to ask for bios features...
you should try resending the asus mails to them(reference some of their mobos) and then see what would their reaction be...
ie i also expect they would give up at mail (what was it the number where asus quit) no.8(?)

i believe with any brand you can bump onto issues they just can't solve.
(would really be interesting experiment to have dfi baord with same components, and try it in same config to compare results, don't you think?)

[bgavin]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Microsoft is quite clever about Vista being a big success. They do it by talking up the numbers "shipped".

My buddy works a State office here, and handles the new Vista machines. He gets in a new machine, wipes Vista off, and installs their XP volume license. These are Microsoft "Vista Success" machines, albeit they are not in production.

He told me Microsoft is invalidating the Vista license if it is not registered promptly. How nice. They buy all these licenses only to have MS invalidate them because they choose not to use them right away.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Best mobo brand?

i4004; I've had S3 standby work in Win2K, I do agree it's hit an miss tho, it's been many more times it has not worked, much better in XP and especially Vista
The long startup and shutdown of Win2K don't bother me, I rarley restart my system (But I know it is an important user request which MS satisfied very well with XP)

I do agree it would be very interesting to see Dfi's response to the same questions
however Dfi support went much further than that, they had paid techs that responded to the threads on their support forums
Other manufacturers I liked that did this was Epox over at the aoaforums

You get a feel for when you are talking to someone that wants to help you, in the case of Asus it feels like talking to a wall!
But in the case of Dfi (and this being on an open forum) it really felt like talking to real techs, many people got allot of useful help (just like on these forums we have right here!)

I know my experience is limited, but it's also the only experience I have and therefore what I will base my shopping decisions on...

[larrymoencurly]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Whats strange is gateway uses mostly ECS motherboards, while all the emachines I have seen use Intel motherboards with Panasonic and nichicon caps.

I have a Gateway with 466 MHz Celeron, Intel 810i-based mobo, and 90W PSU, and it has Sanyo polymer caps on it.

The engineers and techicians at work like Supermicro mobos because the company's tech support is the best, and it's one of the few brands with ISA slots available (2 ISA slots, SATA, and gigabit Ethernet).

[c_hegge]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I like Gigabyte Ultra-durable for modern boards. They use only polymer caps - even the small ones. The caps on mine are all Sanyo SEPC, so I doubt if it will ever get leaking caps! It also has a temperature-controlled fan plug, so my side fan doesn't annoy me.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I've seen A LOT of Gateway boards [pre eMachines buy-out] and I've never seen a Gateway-ECS. Wouldn't surprise me at all though.

I have seen Gateway use: Intel [some skt 370 and 423 and A LOT of skt 478], MSI, GVC, TriGem[before ECS], FIC, Foxconn, Jabil, and maybe a dozen others many of which aren't even around anymore.

A Gateway TriGem Florida-TG skt 370 board is the only motherboard where I've actually seen Daewoo caps on a mobo. I think it's still around here in a junk box.
.

[ratdude747]

Re: Best mobo brand?

i use what i can find. mostly oem crap that someone gives me for free cause they think its "old", but yet i can run linux on it no sweat. i got ___ this way:

- a p4 prescott emachine, only needed a new psu

-a couple p3 boxes. they run ubuntu well for some reason.

-a couple of socket a boxes- my server is a mash up of the 2.

[370forlife]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I've seen A LOT of Gateway boards [pre eMachines buy-out] and I've never seen a Gateway-ECS. Wouldn't surprise me at all though.

I have seen Gateway use: Intel [some skt 370 and 423 and A LOT of skt 478], MSI, GVC, TriGem[before ECS], FIC, Foxconn, Jabil, and maybe a dozen others many of which aren't even around anymore.

A Gateway TriGem Florida-TG skt 370 board is the only motherboard where I've actually seen Daewoo caps on a mobo. I think it's still around here in a junk box.
.

These are new gateways I have seen them on. Can't remember the model number's, they are my friend's sister's. AMD 4400+'s. ECS with OST's and a healthy sprinkle of G-luxon, luckily has a delta power supply, which is littered with Ltec and capxon. psh. Same junk, different day.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I thought Gateway folded recently.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

>> Best mobo brand? <<
A lot depends on specifically what the build is for.
I don't do that many play-toy systems so I don't use brands that focus on that market very often.
-
If to buy new I first look for a Supermicro or Intel board that will do it.
[Maybe Gigabyte for a play-toy.]
If I need some specific feature or feature combo I can't find in those then I'll look for used: Supermicro, Intel, Itox, Gigabyte, Abit, Tyan, or Foxconn [Intel clone models.] that have what I need.
DFI [or sister co I-Will] maybe. I haven't had one of those in ages though.
-

[toastygoodness]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I thought Gateway folded recently.

nah gateway's still owned by acer

[toastygoodness]

Re: Best mobo brand?

But yeah, PCBONEZ is pretty much what I go for: supermicro, intel, gigabyte, DFI Lanparty, and maybe ASUS