So, it is a really sad time

[acro666]

Hello everyone

So, it is a very sad time when Abit are going down the tubes. I have nearly always used Abit and have never experienced any trouble from them.

If this is the case, I will have to upgrade my gear to Intel i7; therefore which, according to the experts on this forum, would be the next best mobo to shoot for?

regards

acro666

[MadduckUK]

if you havent had any trouble then who is forcing you to upgrade?

[Agent]

if you havent had any trouble then who is forcing you to upgrade?

I think he's saying that when it does upgrade, who should he go for?

I've had both bad experiences with ASUS and Gigabyte. The latter I had to go to a small claims court over.

Biostar are making waves at the moment in the enthusiast area and I've read in a few places that some of the Abit staff moved to them. DFI also seem to get good reviews, although I don't have any experience with their latest boards.

[Funkstar]

I've had both bad experiences with ASUS and Gigabyte. The latter I had to go to a small claims court over.

Sounds like a really long story.

I've got three Gigabyte systems at the moment, 2x AM2 and a Socket 775, not got a problem with any of them.

[Lanky123]

Never had a problem with my Gigabyte board, though Agent's comment above does worry me a bit...

I think you're better off seeing what boards are available at the time, and just pick the one that best suits your needs rather than being loyal to a single manufacturer.

[Agent]

This was years ago. I have a Gigabyte 775 board myself and have had no problems with it.

It was purely due to the way I got treated by Gigabyte that put me off them.

The short version - they released a motherboard (7VRXP I think off the top of my head) that was inherently faulty. A resistor wasn't present on the board that should have been which lead to bad stability issues. A rev 2 was released to fix this.

They offered everyone with rev 1's a free "rework" to fix it - apart from they didn't. Emailing them left you with a fall of silence. Phoning them lead to promises of an email of how to get it done which never arrived. Letters to them never got responded too.
Dabs wouldn't take the board back even though it was a known issue. They "tested" the board, and because it POSTed fine, they said it worked. Hence the small claims bit above.

I still hold a grudge towards them both

[acro666]

Thank you for your answers, particularly you MadduckUK(?), sorry that you did not understand my reason for wanting to upgrade.

Thank you Agent for the BioStar information. It would certainly be nice to think that the Abit experts are not going to leave the Mobo-making world permanently.

regards

acr

[MrMyst]

i was using different gigabyte mobos for long time and quite happy about their stability. if i were you then for i7 platform i would choose GA-EX58-UD5

[shaithis]

IMO, at the moment it is almost pot luck choosing a motherboard, especially for i7.

Your best bet would be to look around a lot of reviews as the motherboard market seems to be going through a bit of a transition....ABit dropped out, Asus started going down the crapper, Gigabyte started to flex its muscles and Biostar appeared from no-where.....all in a very short period of time.

Everything is changing, so personally I would go by individual board reviews, instead of manufacturer recommendations.

[BUFF]

This was years ago. I have a Gigabyte 775 board myself and have had no problems with it.

It was purely due to the way I got treated by Gigabyte that put me off them.

The short version - they released a motherboard (7VRXP I think off the top of my head) that was inherently faulty. A resistor wasn't present on the board that should have been which lead to bad stability issues. A rev 2 was released to fix this.

They offered everyone with rev 1's a free "rework" to fix it - apart from they didn't. Emailing them left you with a fall of silence. Phoning them lead to promises of an email of how to get it done which never arrived. Letters to them never got responded too.

this sounds suspiciously similar to what happened with the Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 which was sold as claiming CPU support that it never got. http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...abyte+680i+sli

having said that I would probably go Gigabyte before Asus but that would be after trying either J&W or Biostar both of whom seem to have certain abit-like qualities.
although personally atm I can't justify spending £700 to upgrade to i7 when my current mobo/CPU/RAM does what it needs to do.

[Pob255]

Yes the J&W looks intresting, another one to appear out of nowhere.

[Zadock]

I've had problems with Asus before, they have diabolical customer service. This was with my old A8N S939 board... there were hellish problems with the chipset drivers (nForce 4).

(Yet I still own an Eee, Asus products are generally pretty good quality)