A Sense Of The Forum, Please

[Lavrenti Beria]

About to build a new main box after a five year hyatis, I lack a feel for the standing of today's principal motherboard manufacturers. In 2002, if memory serves, Asus was going through a bad period with lots of user dissatisfaction; Gigabyte was emerging as a serious player after having experienced a somewhat checkered earlier life; Abit was strictly an enthusiasts' board, perhaps unsuitable for business computing, and while Intel provided reliable boards, they were not as feature rich as others. I'd like to have the forum's sense on the question of the relative standing of these manufacturers today. Who is regarded most highly, who perhaps less so. I'd value having benefit of your experience.

Lavrenti Beria

 

[Heidfirst]

Strangely enough you wouldn't be far off the mark today.
abit is getting back on it's feet a year after being acquired by USI & producing some good mobos at very reasonable prices.
Asus are producing some great mobos but with little flaws here & there & their cs reputation is taking a hammering.
DFI have replaced abit as the ultimate oc mobos with extremely complex BIOS, often finicky & recently pretty pricy.
Foxconn are apparently trying to expand their retail presence & appeal to enthusiasts.
Gigabyte are producing some very good boards.
Intel have shown some signs of pandering more to enthusiasts & supposedly theirr new X38 chipset mobos may further that.
MSI are producing worthy boards but imo nothing stunning.

With modern highly integrated chipsets performance differences are often very small between mobos using the same basic components.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

I'm not loyal to any mfr. My ideal board should be 100% compatible with the stuffs that I have on hands. It should run cool and quiet and capable of pushing a good C2D CPU up to about 460MHz FSB. It should have good onboard fan control cause I don't want to spend extra $ on an external fan controller. I don't need alarm, light, bells and whistles.

Currently the Abit IP35-E ($70 AR @ MWAVE) is at the top of my buy list. Scan the MB forum for more of my review.