Reviews - Is there a perfect high-end Intel motherboard? We find out

[Steve]

We look at four Intel-based motherboards, taking in Intel and NVIDIA chipsets, DDR3 versus DDR2 performance and three-card CrossFireX and triple-SLI scaling.

Interested? Read on...

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=13827

[format]

The link for the MSI board on the last page is borked

[civil]

Thanks Dude!
Really helps with my new pre-nepalem build -great to see the BS the companies spin(Nvidia and boyz).
Good Job!

[Michael H]

The link for the MSI board on the last page is borked

Thanks for the heads up, looks like scan are out of stock.

I've added an ebuyer link for those interested in the board.

[Nub1]

Personally I'd stay away from EVGA if you live outside of the US.

Late last year (Nov or so) they advertised the step up program from the 680i to the 780i.
This didn't start in Europe till late March early April. After they had finished servicing most of their US customers (this is, I agree understandable).

However, the boards were first supplied to wholesalers before supplying their already waiting customers in the step up program. Again understandable when you realise that EVGA wanted to increase market share as XFX had already beaten them to the market. Understandable not acceptable.

Add to that, that the price increased for UK customers in the step up program as the dollar decreased in value and the Euro increased. EVGA made an extra $10 per step up.

Nope, I'm not finished yet. EVGA then asked for the 680i boards to be sent in. It subsequently turned out EVGA were in the middle of moving to new premises in Germany in order to give a more efficient service

So people sent in their 680i boards only to have the new 780i step up delayed because of the move. THEN it comes to light that EVGA ran out of 780i. boards. I mean at this point people had only been waiting 5 months to start and complete their step up and EVGA couldn't allocate enough boards to cover a fixed number of participants. Some individuals had to wait without a motherboard for over four weeks.

Hopefully you're not yet. There are many threads on the EVGA forums about this. I'll link to the main one, here. Please note EVGA only posted once in that thread, giving information that turned out to be wrong, the thread in 16 pages long. The same thread shows that someone from New Zealand was left 6 months with a dead board while waiting for a RMA. Also be careful of any company that prunes it's RMA forum to just two pages.

Laying my cards on the table I am one of those that was due to step up to the 680i. I found the above behaviour by EVGA to be unacceptable and chose to drop out of the 680i step up and have chosen to not give them any more of my money. I emailed JDarwin, head of EVGA marketing in the US, WTismer, in Germany and LRossiter the UK rep. None responded.

You may think I was just unlucky. This happened to everyone on the European 680i step-up. No apology was given, we were not kept appraised of any problems that EVGA were going thru. Simply put we heard nothing from EVGA.

Rant over. phew.

Back to the review.

A good read, I reckon going for a DDR2 board makes most sense. Saves you pot loads of cash on the memory and the board. Keep it for the next generation and by that time the DDR3 will have dropped in price.

p.s. apologies for the Rant but I feel people should be aware of what has happened.

[rapidman17]

Well we can see once again that the board manufacturers are interested only in our money. I would expect a board over £150 to be absolutely free of errors. The more people buy these boards, the more the companies will know that they can charge huge amounts of money for a not-so-good product. Anyway, could i request that hexus do a roundup of all the latest mid range motherboards? Their last one was a long time ago and the mid range is where most people would select their motherboard from. Also, there have been so many introductions of motherboards in this price range that it is hard to know which one to go for. Thanks, rapidman17.

[DeSean]

Well we can see once again that the board manufacturers are interested only in our money. I would expect a board over £150 to be absolutely free of errors. The more people buy these boards, the more the companies will know that they can charge huge amounts of money for a not-so-good product. Anyway, could i request that hexus do a roundup of all the latest mid range motherboards? Their last one was a long time ago and the mid range is where most people would select their motherboard from. Also, there have been so many introductions of motherboards in this price range that it is hard to know which one to go for. Thanks, rapidman17.

Couldn't agree more. Board manufacturers should be named and shamed for releasing boards that aren't stable, and particularly for not correcting errors through bios updates. I still have memory problems with my P5K Premium for example.

I do find the choices of motherboard a little odd though. Nothing from the market leaders, ASUS and Gigabyte? And I always find it very surprising nwhen reviewers mention DDR2 (in the DFI board review). There are virtually identical DFI boards that support DDR3, making the point about DFI's choice of DDR2 meaningless, whether it was praise or criticism.

Anyway, still an interesting read. I still can't imagine me buying a new board until next year though (Nehalem etc), and if I do, I have to confess that ASUS will be the place I will look first.