FYI..............I have been around this forum alot longer than what is indicated and I have been around many boards that do reviews and testing as well as comdex las vegas for 10 years.It is precisly what Anand and others had said about the Abit boards that led me to buy them and use them.It was there reviews that lured me to Abit because I happen to like bios tweaks with the case closed.
It is misleading to claim that Abit is the only manufacturer with the BIOS tweak. Sure the reviews said a lot of good things, but almost always, they said a lot of bad things about Abit as well. Abit is the pionner in OC/BIOS tweak, they first developed these stuff, and in order to compensate for the development costs, they cut corners in other areas, therefore reliability and quality suffer.
Anand is not the end all answer to all reviewers.He would acknowledge that himself.His reviews are good and he as well as Tom and Boot Mag(now Maximum PC)all get boards fresh from the manufacturers right after they are introduced. The reviewer takes what ever he has available in the way of cases,pwr sups,video,sound,etc and puts the coals to it.If it fails somewhere,bad rap.If it fails miserably,we all know about it toot sweet.
I commend Anand and respect the reviews his team does,but if you think the only mobo's anyone should buy are the ones Anand gives the editors choice award,you are too nieve for me.
I never said Anandtech is the ultimate source, as far as I know Anand's opinion is widely respected, better than Sharkyextreme, better than FiringSquad, better than HardOCP, and sometimes even better than Tom. It is not wrong to consult with Anand's opinions when it comes to choosing these type of stuff. And like you mentioned, we shouldn't just take Anand's words, true, other web sites has stated the same problems from Abit as well. The thing is, if Abit sucks, Anand shouldn't be the only one that knows it. FiringSquad is the only web site I've ever read that kisses Abit from head to toe, because they're hard overclockers. They appreciate what Abit has to offer, but that doesnt mean Abit's solutions are practical to everyone else.
I use the Abit boards.I have hands on experience over a long period of time.I test my systems with the same software as Tom Pabst and Anand Shimpi and ZDNET. The difference is I capitilize on there previous reviews and incorporate what does work in my systems,NOT what doesn't.
You on the other hand only tout what you read about in some forum. Pity. You should try something before you bad mouth it the way you do.Thats what does a dis-service to the reader.
I don't care what you do with your Abits and what type of experience you've had. But in my experience... should I just say unpleasant, to be nice. I've seen many of them crap out on me, I've witness my friend's Abits go down, I've heard gazillion of complaints about Abit on hardware forums like this one. Granted, there are lucky customers like you, who has never taste what it's like for a mobo to die on you. Do you know why Abit was never selected by any OEMs? No, it's not because they have those tweaks, and no it's not because they're not up to their requirements, it's because they're not reliable. The standard for reliability is an extremely high demand among OEMs, the Abits simply cannot compare when it comes to reliability/quality. Intel motherboards are most widely used, so is Asus, even the crappy BioStar and FIC were chosen by OEMs.
On the other hand, I do agree with you to an extent. Abit has been making some very innovative prograss in the motherboard market. Their motherboards are very well designed and attractively priced. I also want to mention that they work wonders when they're work, but they just dont work at all when they dont. Since they released BX6 2.0 they havent really been able to produce a true winner. MSI rises and Asus makes a comeback, with superior designs, in my opinion, better than what Abit has been doing. I've also seen far less Asus and MSI die than Abit.
You have your opinion,I have mine.
True enough, our experience with Abit is greatly different, which is exactly why it led to our dramatically difference in opinion towards Abit. Im just trying to recommend according to my experience with Abit, I understand that you're just doing the same thing.