MSI's Reputation?

HeyBoDiddley

Junior Member
Nov 13, 2001
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Does MSI have a history of rushing boards out to market prematurely? I bought into their i850/Socket 478 solution and so far have had quite a few problems that also seem to exist on their SiS645 boards. I was just wondering since Socket 478 still appears to be fairly new if I should be patient and give MSI a chance or call Newegg and RMA them for the higher cost Asus board.

I am having problems like:

After flashing from Bios 1.1 to 1.3, the CPU temperature now reads 21-26C instead of 41-47C. Gee... with an ambient of 27C, too. :-/

Both both versions of Bios, shutting down Win XP often results in a restart instead of a shutdown. I saw what might be a solution to this related to ACPM, but talk about obscure!

Changes made to the BIOS settings always result in system hang after POST. I have tried a subset of changes with the same results. Before flashing to 1.3, I had no problems making these same tweaks.

Various notes about system file corruption would show up at boot-up. After hitting reset thinking I had to start a repair process, it would always boot up and run fine. Now I also get BSOD's on boot up and sometimes on shut-down, but always after resetting, it boots up and runs fine.

Some of these time correlate to when I flashed the BIOS and updated a slew of drivers, so I'm going to try backing up one step at a time if I can, but it seems silly I should have this kind of trouble and I'm wondering if I should give it some more time and give MSI a chance to stabilize the BIOS code, or whether I should finally admit I got suckered and RMA it for an Asus.
 

Rhi

Member
Dec 29, 2001
135
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I'm not happy with MSI. Had a K7T PRO for 14 months and then it died. No support from MSI at all.

-Rhi
 

Insidious

Diamond Member
Oct 25, 2001
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MSI (MicroStar) is a PCB manufacturing company.
They buy production rights to various board designs and produce them.
They don't have to pay development costs and are very adept at finding cost cutting methods to make hardware that "meets spec."
This is how they are able to save $$ and offer hardware at VERY reasonable prices.
However, the downside of this is "second hand" support and the ever looming possibility that a seemingly innocent manufacturing shortcut circumvents some of the quality engineering that originally went into the PCB design.

IMO, you are just about always gonna get what you pay for.... cheaper hardware is.... cheaper hardware
 

kylef

Golden Member
Jan 25, 2000
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Hmmm... I've only owned one MSI board, and it's what I'm currently using mostly because my ECS K7S5a just died on me. It's a K7T Turbo-R with a 1.4 gig Tbird and 512 megs of Crucial CL2 ECC SDRAM.

It's not the quickest computer in its class, but I've never had it crash on me. Not even once! I demand superior stability from any motherboard that I own. I can't stand computers that fail without reason. I was pointed towards MSI because of their reputation for stability above performance.

I do NOT overclock, so I haven't experienced any of the "multiplier" issues that many have discussed with my board.

I HAVE had one problem with the board. The 3-pin CPU Fan header on the motherboard either has a bad connection or is loose, because my CPU Fan only runs at about 50% speed when connected to the motherboard. When it's directly connected to the power supply, the CPU fan works at full speed. Very odd.
 

Rhi

Member
Dec 29, 2001
135
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Well, after taking someone in these forums advice and calling the long distance tech support #, it seems that MSI will send me a new mobo! I retract all derogatory statements about MSI.

-Rhi
 

Jace

Senior member
Nov 23, 1999
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Whatever you call MSI motherboards, I wouldn't call their prices Very Reasonable. In fact, feature for feature, they are generally more expensive than their counterparts. I have noted this across many retailers.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting that MSI is producing motherboards with subpar compatibility and/or components. The most notorious of these are the K7T Pro, K7T Pro2a and KT266 motherboards. MSI has so far admitted nothing, and other than a few websites such as Anandtech having multiple K7T Pro motherboards fail, no one has proven anything. The rate of failures logged on forums such as these could be indicative of actual higher failure rates with the company's products, or just an increase in in the number of logged failures due to the increase in MSI's popularity/sales volume.

My .02 is that there are actually quality issues with MSI.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
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<< I'm not happy with MSI. Had a K7T PRO for 14 months and then it died. No support from MSI at all. >>



I read of some MSI boards just dying especially the MSI K7T Pro series ,however mine is still going strong after 16 months so I`m having good luck,it has also been very stable .

I would not have any problem buying another MSI product,,infact my AMD cpu went faulty after 6 weeks did it stop me buying another AMD cpu?...nope .

As for support well most companies are hit or miss in this area.



<< wouldn't call their prices Very Reasonable. In fact, feature for feature, they are generally more expensive than their counterparts. I have noted this across about a many retailers. >>



I would say their prices are pretty good,they are not the cheapest but when you look at say the MSI K7T266 PRO 2-RU you get alot of features for the price.

:)



:)
 

AA0

Golden Member
Sep 5, 2001
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MSI used to make some very bad socket 7 boards, very unstable and I've been leary of them always. With the huge # of athlon boards failing, I wouldn't touch them.

They seem to be cheaper because they just use the standard layout for that chipset. Their performance is usually subpar too. Occassionally you'll find them actually including features onto a board, like RAID or something.

Their latest boards all seem the same, stable, no features, first on the market, slow. Sorta like they don't care anymore.

For me, even if one board goes dead, its not worth the time to change it out, wait for a new one, par for shipping. By that time, you can get a Asus which has better performance and features on it.
 

Funky303

Member
Dec 24, 2001
65
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I partially agree with AAO

MSI is a top seller, but has a lack of real quality & experience in this business. They're releasing fast (I still can't order the Asus nForce Board or any other one besides the MSI K7N420 Pro (MS-6373) in germany).

I owned 2 MSI Boards before, one KT266 & one KT266Achipset powered. with all of them I was not satisfied, but that was the fault of the VIA chipsets.

With the usage of the K7N420 Pro (MS-6373), I'm fully satisfied. They reacted fast with BIOS & handbook update.

BUT what I do dislike is the way they promote some things, esp. the TV Out AddonCard & the Audio Riser Card for my mainboard. These were told to be optional, then NOT awailable AT ALL, but now they seem to ship them with the new Boards.

As a reputation for MSI I would count the recent good reviews over the net for their latest boards, their prices & that they are widespread among AMD users.

that's my 2 cents