Gigabyte vs. ASUS

[chadr6]

Should I get the Gigabyte 7n400-L or the ASUS A7N8X? I've heard of problems with Gigabyte, but not sure if they are true or not.

 

[Mr54mk]

Gigabyte is solid. I have a 8INXP and it's a great board. I'm not gonna argue with Asus quality though, they are great for overclocking. Gigabyte tends to have more features though. If you're gonna overclock go with Asus.

 

[rocketbubba]

I vote for ASUS. I really like mine.

 

[Concillian]

I really like my A7N8X-E Deluxe boards. One of the few with Gigabit and SoundStorm APU. It has it's limitations though, FSB overclocks aren't so great on the ASUS board compared with some of the others unless you voltmod the chipset. Not sure how Gigabyte stacks up with FSB overclocks.

I have two of the -E Deluxe boards and there are only two problems I had:

1) On earlier BIOS revisions, if you overclocked too far so that the RAM or CPU wouldn't boot, you had a chance of BIOS corruption, rendering the board useless until you re-flash the BIOS (non-trivial when you can't boot. This happened to me, and I bought a second board before I knew it was the BIOS, I thought I had killed the whole board. This has supposedly been fixed in later BIOS revisions. Once I knew it was the BIOS, I re-flashed the chip in the new board, and both boards work same as ever now.

2) One set of RAM I have (2x512 Kingmax PC3500) won't work in dual channel mode at all in my boards. It works great in Single Channel, and all the other memory I have works fine in dual channel (2x256 Kingmax PC3500 with 1x512 Kingston PC2700 @ PC3200, 2x256 Mushkin PC3500 Level 1 with 1xOCZ PC2700 2-2-2 @ PC3200, and a set of 2x512 Mushkin plain green PC3200 all work fine in dual channel) I assume it is the memory causing the issue, but I thought I'd mention it.

If you decide to go with the A7N8X let me know, I'm selling one of my -E Deluxe boards, since it's extra. Now that I've revived the BIOS, I don't really need it anymore.