Somewhere on teh intarweb "Peter Huebner" typed:
> In article <>,
> says...
>> Not trying to start a bar fight. I was ready to buy a new Asus
>> motherboard, but noticed some comments about them on some of the tech
>> sites. Looks like Asus has a bit of smoke in the cockpit as of late.
>>
>> Some say that Gigabyte is now a better bet (yeah, it's always a
>> gamble), but to be fair, I've seen other comments that say "Asus is
>> getting as bad as Gigabyte."
>>
>> Again, I know I'm just playing the odds, but is there any truth in
>> comments about Gigabyte having any edge in quality of components,
>> etc.?
Hi Peter.
> I've had a few Asus boards over the years, and they've been up
> and down. The TX-97 I had was crap, another one was ace. Their
> good ones have always been *good*, their not so good ones ...
> ouch. And that's been going on for the 20 or so years that I've
> been messing about inside computers' guts.
I've been a relatively recent convert to Asus but haven't had a bad board
yet. Luck? Going by build quality of the boards I have, I don't think so.
Also, *not* buying the cheapest in a certain range probably has a bit to do
with it.
> I've also been an Abit fan for a long time. But - um, I've no
> idea what happened with them.
Abit are still around, just not so prominently. I keep hearing rumours that
they're going out of the mobo market....
> One thing I know, all the Abit
> boards I had were very very good, except for the bx-133-raid
> which had the bad capacitor issue, but was brilliant while it
> worked.
And that board is the only one that I couldn't ressurect by replacing
capacitors. I messed with it on and off for a couple months but no luck. :-(
Mind you, I have a better stock of better quality replacement capacitors and
better access to suppliers now. :-) Shame I binned the board a while ago,
I'd try it again now with my improved skills/stock. (Then again, maybe the
rot went deeper than capacitors.) I'm still running a few BX boards with Tui
Celerons in them. To get past the ATA33 limitation of the chipset it's just
a matter of a PCI IDE/SATA card. :-)
> But I declined to buy one of their new ones because
> they've excluded too much backwards compatibility. Sorry, but I
> still want a com port, a parallel port and a couple of IDE
> ports on my mobo.
Heh! I gave up on compromising my mobo choice for things like that a while
back. I have a parallel port PCI card (not in use), a few IDE/SATA 1.5GB PCI
cards and a couple of external Edgeport USB Expansion Module (Industrial
Series) USB to 4 serial port boxes. (Do you want one? Model 4i, P/N
301-1000-24. Email me if you do.)
> Comes along Gigabyte. I had issues with one board in the past,
> and sent it back. I now think the problem was actually my
> satellite internet card, but that's beside the point, couldn't
> install OS & drivers properly at the time.
>
> But I've built a number of machines for other people with
> Gigabyte boards since, and not a hitch, not a one.
>
> For backwards compatibility I chose the N650sli-ds4 from
> Gigabyte. This has, so they claim, especially been designed for
> durability. Solid caps, more voltage regulators around the cpu
> than any other mainboard of its class, 2 ide, legacy connectors
> at the back. It's been simply brilliant in the 9 months or so
> that I've had it now. Rock solid.
Although I use Asus these days, one thing I like about Gigabyte is that they
were the *only* motherboard manufacturer to completely own up to the bad
caps issue. Right up until about a year ago, if you had a Gigabyte mobo that
had failed due to bad caps they would either fix or replace it at no cost,
regardless of warranty status. Now that's what I call impressive! They
learned from it too, and TTBOMK, were the first to go to good quality solid
caps.
Actually, now I think about it, Soltek went part-way towards doing a similar
thing. I know of a few people who complained to them and recieved packets of
replacement, good quality capacitors in the mail. However, within a month
(and before I found out they'd send out replacements and got a chance to
request some caps for the two Soltek boards I have that had blown caps)
they'd disappeared from the face of teh intarweb.
> I sometimes wonder why I never see any queries or comments
> about this board here. Either it's so bloody good, that nobody
> has problems, or else nobody but me bought one. I wonder .....
I've found that, often, the models that we get here aren't sold world-wide.
LOL, that's why I don't recommend certain models without checking location
and availablity anymore.
> Gigabyte tried to break into the market by being a cheap
> manufacturer. Now that they are established, it's my impression
> that they are trying to make a reputation for themselves by
> building *solid*, i.e. reliable and robust stuff. I've used
> plenty of their various cards (video, mostly, but etc) and
> they've all performed reasonably well or above.
I have to agree. Gigabyte are certainly in the top 5, possibly the top 3.
Cheers,
--
Shaun.
DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it.
If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to
me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-)
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