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Favorite Mainboard company?

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I've made MSI, Abit, Asus, IWill, FIC, and Shuttle based systems using Celerons, PIII's, Durons, T-Birds and P4's. For some reason I've had bad luck with the Abit boards. Right now my wife is using my Shuttle AK31A/XP1600+ system and my system is an Asus P4S533/1.6A (running at 2.24Ghz). I love the Asus system...fast, stable, lots of tweaks in the BIOS.

Dave
 
Asus.

Not every mobo they make gets top stops in every comparison, but they tend to allways make reliable stable mobos, unlike most other manufacturers who make one great board, then a crappy one, then a great one, then a so-so one, and so on.
Heck, I still have an old TX97 mobo still going strong after all these years, as well as an old SiS based mobo, from the original P5 era, that while I dont use it, was still working last I checked, not too long ago.

Also, their manuals are allways top notch, and their homepage is easy to navigate.

Intel boards are extremely stable and reliable as well, but they're out for two reasons, bad for overclocking, and(obviously) Intel only mobos.
 
Epox for the most part. I am tired of Asus, and getting faulty Asus boards. Asus tech support sucks donkey balls. It seems that when I finally get a good Asus board it is killer, but I am tired of playing the RMA process. It all started with the crappy A7V mobo.....
 
I used to like Asus more than I do now. Their overclocking features on their 815 xUSL2 and 845D/E P4Bxxx are very poor. The Asus 845G looks pretty good though. I used Gigabyte for my last 815E setup and am using an Epox for my 845D rig. Both of them blow away the Asus 815 and 845D boards. I use whoever makes the best board at the time I need to buy it. Last couple times around Asus was not it.
 
Asus finally made up for my sh!**y a7v way back when with the p4b533 that i have now.
 
Tough call but I like Epox and MSI,Soltek for the price,as for Asus well I believe they are not the top brand in my books, people like to say that so they feel better spending all that extra money that Asus gets 😉,seriously I do believe other brands are up there now with Asus and some even above them.

🙂
 
Intel:

great quality

stable

documented BIOS updates and errata up the wazoo

easy driver downloads

and the website works most of the time
 
I don't know who the "best " is, but I have been well satisfied with my MSI boards. While I am sure Asus and Gigabyte are very good, I like MSI for the combination of price, stability, features and perfromance, in that order. (note emphasis on price 😱 )
Chuck
 
Asus is not without problems if you are an overclocker

CUSL2, TUSL2
1) Above 140 FSB all memory timings go to slowest settings, AGP goes to 2X. A GF3 card will LOCK IMMEDIATELY when using any 3D app. This is a big problem I had with my CUSL2 with a mild overclock on a PIII 1 GHz to 1.125 GHz. So many people have this problem that a guy in France made a hacked BIOS to fix the problem. If it weren't for that, I would have been stuck.

2) They also do not support manual 1/3, 1/4 PCI settings like other 815 boards do. This is a problem if you are overclocking in the sub 133 FSB range

P4B266
1) Above 133 FSB all cas timings go to slowest, with no adjustment possible
2) no 3:4 mem ratio availalable over 132 FSB, only 1:1
3) no true PCI/AGP lock "turbo" dividers
4) USB ports do not function when overclocked
5) low Vcore range (1.6 max). You have to "wire trick" it.

When I put together a PIII-S system, I went for a Gigabyte GA6OXET board because of the TUSL2 limitations. It worked very well. On the 845D, I got an EPOX 4BDA2+, which rocks and has none of the problems the Asus 845D does.

When you buy a mobo, get the best one, don't just stick with one brand. I'll buy Asus again if they put out a board with the features I need without the odd overclocking limitations and bugs I've seen with them.
 
I've had a K7V, P4T-E and will be getting a P4T533 when it comes out. The first 2 have been trouble free. Of course I don't build as many machines as everyone else here so I can't comment on the other manufacturers.
 
Alright, who's the chucklehead who voted for FIC...I want names.
Click to expand...

More to the point why`s FIC in the poll and no MSI or Soltek,you might as well add Chaintech to make it a fair poll with the board brands.
 
Epox has been very good to me. 8K7A all the way!!!

Asus was pretty good when I had them (the only time I ever had an Intel rig w/my P3 450 o/c 600).

Biostar makes good cheap stable boards, but recently something burned on my friend's Biostar so I don't think I'll go with them anymore.

ECS also makes good cheap stable mobos.

I hear alot of horror stories about Abit so I don't think I'll ever go with them.

Gigabyte is great too....I got the Epox b/c they took to long to release their 7DXR, and it was too expensive.
 
Interesting results! Yea, and who's the chowderhead that voted for FIC? 😉

Added MSI and Soltek..

Vote away!
 
My vote goes for MSI, my K7N420 Pro worked out of the box no problems, and came with so many extra USB ports i dont know what to do with them all.

The big Thumbs down goes to Asus and Iwill. My first athlon board was an Asus, I never got the damn thing working right, would get between 3-5 fps in any game no matter what i did. And the Iwill gets a thumbs down for my KK266 not working correctly with my Radeon at the time, i had to edit several registers in the bios to get it working correctly, not my idea of the most stable board around.

my 2cents 🙂
CrackRabbit
 
well, my old Epox 8KHA+ had tons of bios problems...my SOYO just died somehow and Asus being far too expensive and Abit being sauch a strong overclocker...I say Abit no question about it
 
I'd say EPoX rock, but I've personally only used 1 MSi (ALi Aladdin V, had nothing but trouble), 3 ECS/PC Chips (all worked great🙂) and most recently a Shuttle.
 
Originally posted by: Biggs
Another vote for Asus.
Click to expand...

Had my ABit KA7 run out on me, not sure what the problem is, saw on another site say they have a high failure rate, didn't read the article just yet.

I'm still trying to see if I like EPoX or not, but the one I have now 8KHA+ is doing pretty good except for that cap. by the AGP has me worried about upgrading to a GF4, 5, ATI R300 or anything else from what I have now.
 
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