The Motherboard Thread...

I'm just starting this one to discuss motherboard's and motherboard companies.


Companies that I think are good: Asus, Tyan, SuperMicro, AOpen.
Companies that are coming along: Abit, Epox
Companies that suck: FIC.

Agreed, Asus is good, but I've found my Abit boards just as good and way more overclockable & tweakable.

What reason do you have to be so against Abit, you used to even have a "AntiAbit coalition" tag in your sig ?

BTW, the mobo is not the place to save on if you are building a quality system.

H.

I take FIC over ECS anyday of the week Brian

If I'm ever looking for a no frills, low on features motherboard but one that is absolutely rock solid and wont fail I'll take a look at an Intel.
I'm also getting quite keen on Chaintech's too.
Just cannot get on with Soyo's, not tried the very latest ones from them, but in the past I've just had failures for no apparent reason.

Currently an ASUS user and very happy to be one.

For client use, Intel only.

For personal use, I favor ASUS. I have a SOYO right now and it has worked really well, but I have a friend that has had really spotty performance with his (Athlon with Via chipset). I don't really have a strong opinion about any of the others.

Well, before my current Abit board, the NV7-133R, I had yet to have an Abit board that didn't give me any crap. The BE-6 wasn't very stable, nor was the VP6---gave me crap errors from time to time. KG7-RAID in another guys system was defective after 2 days and the replacement had to have the CMOS cleared before it would even power on.

I think Abit has been getting better, especially since a few people who haven't been impressed with Abit in the past said the NV7-133R was extremely stable. I have 1 blue screen and that didn't seem to be the board as much as some BIOS setting. I don't know if I just got some bum boards or what, but so far the 3 out of 5 boards that went out don't do good for the faith in Abit.

FIC: horrible website--to be fair it's been at least 6mo since I checked it. All the local shops refuse to carry anything but their Socket 7 boards--and that's simply because they're the only ones that make them still apparently. I will avoid FIC simply because of how horrible their boards have been. Even with a BIOS flash, their AZ11 was unstable at best. Add to that the horrible support at the time, and I have no really good reason to buy them again. I can get better boards with better support.

I've not used Soyo before, but I've heard local shops and my geek buddies have had too many defective boards by them to want to touch the companies product again.

ECS: I hear mixed results about them.

Tyan, Asus, and SuperMicro all have treated me well even though they used a Via chipset on the boards I use(d) from them. Rock solid.

I used to use gigabyte (like slotA era and before) and that was extreamly stable and reliable, even had some overclocking options. Ive owned more abit boards by far though now, and i really have no complaints about the actual boards, they are still all working perfectly. Some instability probs with some of them, but they were the via ones and nothing the latency patch couldnt handle.

The Abit TH7-II is the best board i have owned to date and ive very happy with it

I keep thinking i wanna try an asus board but they seem to take ages to actually release the board and by that time ive bought the abit alternative

I was also very suprised with MSI, the board at the time was very cheap cos it was just going in my dads system for word and excel but its ended up being used for games and its 100% stable and ive no complaints at all, and thats a via kt133 board

I take it the AA coalition is disbanded now?

Not necessarily, there are still boards that make the infamous list, tho some I can't really justify putting on, like the BP6--with it's major influence. The AAC has taken a breather

ASUS personally.

I would probably only use an ASUS or INTEL in one I build for someone else, unless they have specfific thing they want.

ABIT are nice too.


FIC suck ***

How about MSI?

I've been using Asus for a few years, and for a good reason....they work. My buddy has an Abit KT7A-Raid, and it's total horsesh*t. We changed-out 3 sticks of ram, 2 videocards, and even a simple NIC, and his board still BSOD's about once a day.

I'm ordering my new system this week: Asus P4B266, P4 1.8A, and 1gig of Mushkin. I'm sure all will go well....As I have total faith in Asus.

-Klark


PS: One thing I have noticed, is that most of the people who claim Asus is junk, have been using generic ram. I have used Mushkin ram in my Asus boards for almost 3 years, and I never have a problem. Mushkin is expensive, but the benefits far out way the minimal price increase.

I haven't seen anybody describe ASUS as junk yet

Yeah me neither and MSI are suprisingly good.

MSI are ok. I have had great boards, like the KT266 but they had two different versions of that board, the other of which fried 2 sticks of my ram, one at a time.

MSI is pretty good too. I used generic sticks of RAM on my Asus A7V, but the chips were Micron and Infineon, and the system is solid as a rock still today.

I still think Gigabyte are spot on. My GA-7DXR+ has the full works, all the overclocking abilities,raid udma133,USB2,Dual Bios. I love this board and i would definatly stick to Gigabyte in the future.

I'm refering to people in other forums, who are totally against certain brands....Just as many of you participating in this post dislike the FIC brand. If you dig deep enough into the hardcore overclocking forums, you'll find plenty of people that believe Asus is junk. Granted, they are few and far between....But these are the people I was refering too....

Abit seems to have gone from good to bad to better than bad. I build alot of computers with BH6s.

MSI have been pretty good to me. Had one go really freaky after a bios flash.

Soyo I just moved from the TISU and it was a rock with a P3-700 overclocked to 933. I just put a 1.3 Celeron in it overclocked it to 1.5 and it is a little screamer.


FIC long ago was fast but flacky the floppy NEVER worked even after 2 replacment MB!

I'm using a P4T-E right now so far it has been great.

Overall from what I have used personally it really depends on the version of the MB. I know that the first version of any Tyan MB is going to SUCK after 2 or 3 changes they get it right.

Is there a best company? Never used a Aopen but they seem to always have good reviews. Same with Epox or Gigabye.

I go with what a few certain people comment on and my experiences.

It is still a crap shoot.

Well so far my KT7A Raid v1.3 appears to be behaving itself quite nicely. I've read plenty of bad things said about earlier versions of this board - especially the original KT7 & KT7-RAID, but [hopefully] Abit seem to have sorted things out with this version. 1 thing to mention - I'd read somehwere that whilst P4 boards quite commonly had the function to shutdown if the CPU fan kicked the bucket, this was a lot less common on Athlon boards. Well I'm glad to say that this Athlon board has it, which means 1 less thing to worry about.

This MB sucks. AMD Irongate (Northbridge) AMD 756 Viper (Southbridge). Absolute nightmare with my 768M PC133 non-name & Athlon 550. Buying new stuff. What should I get? Not into hard core gaming.

Whaddaya looking for?

My current board, an AOpen AX6BC, has yet to give me any serious trouble.

my list

The Good: MSI, Soyo, Abit*, Asus*, IWILL, Gigabyte, SuperMicro, Tyan, EPoX, ECS(their K7S5A is a great ****ing deal. Fast, stable, and CHEAP AS HELL!)

The Bad: Asus, Abit(yes, these get voted twice. ****ers at Asus neglected a CMOS reset switch in the A7V133. But my old CUSL2 went up to 170FSB. As for Abit, I've had 4 boards. The BX6 didn't overclock past 103 mhz FSB, where the Soyo 6BA+3 went to 153mhz before the RAM went out. The SA6R couldn't match the CUSL2's 159mhz standard OC. 2 NV7ms went bad last week after the first one's BIOS update(Abit's batch file the readme said to run) went bad, and the second had a bad controller. I fixed one of the NV7ms by swapping BIOS chips, and use it on my LAN box. I'm posting from it right now.),

The Ugly: PC Chips, Chaintech(PB OEM!!!), FIC


AMD:
If I have to buy an SDRAM board, I'll buy an IWILL KK266+. DDR, I'll buy an MSI board. I love my KT3 Ultra ARU, and my brother's K7T266 Pro-2RU. The Soyo Dragon+ has a better RAID controller(in that it can be set to UDMA controller only), but USB2.0 is more important to me than an $8 NIC.

MSI pwnz0rz j00!

It seems a little unfair to "slate" a motherboard just because it doesn't or doesn't like being run above and beyond specification.
Just my opinion, but saying a motherboard or manufacturer is terrible because the BX chipset wouldn't go above 105Mhz FSB when the BX chipset is only specificed for operation at 100Mhz doesn't seem too fair.
I guess what can be considered a good or bad manufacturer depends entirely on what you are planning on doing with the board in question.

I've come to believe that a board is not good if it cannot work fine at stock speeds and settings. If it fails here, what good is it to overclock? I'm all for overclocking, but only if it can work in a non-OC'd environment.

DFI is nothing fancy, but their boards seem to be nice from what I've read and the test systems at college they have for us to play with.

Asus is my pick, next would be MSI and then Abit.
ECS, FIC, DFI, and Gigabyte, I try to stay away from these.
I can't comment on these though AOpen, and Tyan.
I get put off by Soyo because the price is cheap, but apparently they reliable, my friend has one with a Duron 850 running in one, no problems at all.