Most Stable Boards At Present

[jlowell]

Of Asus, Abit, Gigabyte and MCI, which company today is generally reputed to offer the most stable and reliable boards? Five years ago, Asus was having problems and seemed to be going out of favor, Gigabyte was ascendant and Abit was the enthusiast's board par excellence but a shade unpredictable. Where do things stand today?

jlowell

 

[systemlord]

A lot of people seem to like Gigabyte over Asus, even though I have an Asus and love it. Their both great mobo's but I have to be truthful Gigabyte has less RMA/bad boards versus Asus. MCI is ok if you make a lot of long distance calls, lol I couldn't help myself. I would stay away from MSI for now. Asus tech support is a "joke", got a problem you might as well fix it yourself. Do you have any other questions please ask.

 

[HyperBladeST]

It's hard to go wrong with Asus or Gigabyte. Gigabyte is also less expensive than Asus though.

 

[asoccerplayer99]

I've also heard really good things about Abit. Generally, if you're looking for a P35 board, the Asus P5K, Abit IP35, or Gigabyte P35-DS3R are all solid

 

[SuicideSilence]

Asus boards are good, but there overpriced and there tech support sucks (i know ive gone through it) abit and gigabyte are good, i have NOT had good luck with MSI though. ouch
it depends really, on the chipset ext.

 

[jlowell]

systemlord,

"MCI is ok if you make a lot of long distance calls, lol I couldn't help myself."

I suppose I deserved that.

Thanks for the reply.

Thanks also to HyperBladeST, asoccerplayer99, and SuicideSilence.

A follow up question for all of you: Abit is supposed to have gone though a tough time financially a couple of years ago but has since been bought out. What impact has the buy-out had on the company, has it been positive overall for its boards or not? Used to be that Abit was a kind of scrappy challenger, placed a lot of emphasis on imaginative BIOS features. But the boards were too unpredictable for some. Is that still true?

jlowell

 

[3Ball]

I prefer ABIT, since out of 1000 boards used in one project for a school not one was bad and they are all still going strong 2+ years later. I have never RMA'd one, and I have never RMA'd a Gigabyte either, so from personal experiance I can recommend those, but I do like ASUS as well and their Intel boards are usually quite strong. So I would recommend ABIT as a whole, but between ASUS and Gigabyte it is all about what is offering the most for the money with me. I dont bother with any other boards...except DFI, but that is if I am considering really pushing my system hard. They tend to run warmer than most other boards...hense the extra heatsinks all over the boards...lol, but its all good man! lol hope this helps!

Best,

3Ball

 

[apache_lives]

Of Asus, Abit, Gigabyte and MCI, which company today is generally reputed to offer the most stable and reliable boards? Five years ago, Asus was having problems and seemed to be going out of favor, Gigabyte was ascendant and Abit was the enthusiast's board par excellence but a shade unpredictable. Where do things stand today?

jlowell

Forget MSI, ASUS i see alot of PS2 port issues (still strong motherboards, using one atm), Gigabyte - there boards with Intel chipsets are like rocks, and Abit i dont trust still.

Dont get a motherboard with a fan for cooling a chipset - asking for issues.

 

[GeoMan]

I'm onto my 4th Gigabyte board, they're all rock solid, the Bios is easy to work with, and they overclocked really well.

We had a Gigabyte in the machine at the bar i used to work at, it was used for playing music and watching movies on those horribly slow Tuesday nights. That baby survived having brandy, cane, vodka, whiskey, rum, water, sambuca, shnaps and beer spills. We managed to kill PSU's, DVD drives and hard drives on that machine, it worked in a hot humid, smokey, dusty environment, it got dropped a couple times, but the mobo and chip just never died. So if you intend to use a computer in hell, i recommend gigabyte

Not sure why i added all of that, I must have nothing better to do right now

 

[opentoe]

Of Asus, Abit, Gigabyte and MCI, which company today is generally reputed to offer the most stable and reliable boards? Five years ago, Asus was having problems and seemed to be going out of favor, Gigabyte was ascendant and Abit was the enthusiast's board par excellence but a shade unpredictable. Where do things stand today?

jlowell

Almost an impossible question to answer. Each board is like a snow flake for each user. One board could work perfect for one person, then work like crap for another. I've owned every board manufacturer, including Asus, Abit, DFI, GigB, MCI, Tyan, and a whole slew of others. They all had crappy points and all had good ones. My last Asus, the P5AD2-E Premium is a great P4 board for Windows XP, but throw Vista on it, not a good choice. At least in my opinion. I've learned not to like Asus because over the years, their drivers have always been a plague to me. Then their website downloads area was made by kids and the up keep of old stuff just completely dies out and no support for anything that's a little old. Opinions of course....

 

[boner]

Gigabyte!!!!!!! with ALL solid capacitors