Asus quality drop, anyone else noticed?

[Crashman]

First it was the P4S8X that couldn't run DDR400 (in fact I believe Asus was the one who caused SiS to recant their recommendation) and had problems with AGP8x, while Gigabyte's similar board worked fine. Now it's the A7N8X which has an abnormally high rate of defects and BIOS that throws a fit about the SPD values of PC3500. And I'm even hearing complaints about the P4PE and voltage swings, could that be an underpowered regulator problem?

Oh, I got a P3B-F, New Old Stock, from another guy. He had flashed the BIOS to the latest version, and low and behold, it would never boot again. I went to Asus's own user forums and found out it was a common problem. Is this Asus's way of getting people to upgrade? To what, the problematic boards they sell now?

Anyway, the A7N8X is still a killer board if you get a GOOD one and set it up RIGHT, but I'll only be recommending them to experienced users and novice builders who are willing to take the time to figure it out.

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[KWPLunchbox]

During the past 2 weeks I have built 3 seperate Asus A7N8X Deluxe systems with another one on the way. I haven't had a single problem yet. Granted, I started when they were already shipping the "G" bios, but still, I haven't had a single problem. I also read up on it extensively before building the first one. Of course, I've also stayed within specs and haven't used anything above PC3200 DDR. I can't fault Asus for the A7N8X board to not accept a non-standardized, outside of specs, piece of hardware. The fact that the recent BIOS versions "fixes" this should raise confidence, not lower it. I understand that as AMD users, the majority of us probably overclock and have become comfortable with using higher rated DDR for the headroom. I guess you just have to understand that for a while we reached the ceiling. At least its been raised a little higher now. Am I talking out of my ass as far as the A7N8X is concerned? Please let me know.

As for other new models, I cannot speak to. My prior system was an Asus CUSL2 board, Pentium 3/866 that is still rock solid stable. It now sits next to my bed for movies and what-not. If I only had a USB blow up doll....

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