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Abit Says Farewell to Motherboards

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US | B 26 comments

Once again the rumor mill is churning with reports about enthusiast motherboard manufacturer Universal Abit. Reports have circulated that the company will be closing its doors for the last time on December 31st.

As many in the enthusiast community will know, Universal Abit has been a source of market departure rumors since it was acquired by Universal Scientific International (USI) in May 2006, when it ceased to operate under the brand name ABIT. Some of these rumors have come from south-east Asian distributors, who reported that Abit would stop shipment of motherboards by the end of 2008, but continue to honor warranties for another 3 years.

Just this week, Tweaktown received word that USI would dissolve Abit entirely on 31st of December. This would mean that the expected 3-year warranty period would need to be handled by USI directly, or not at all. Fortunately, after being contacted by Hardware Info, Universal Abit sales manager Fernando Benito ensured the community that, while the company will no longer produce motherboards, it will not be closing down entirely.

“ABIT will definitely continue to manufacture products, these will not be motherboards and we have not got a 100% clear picture yet on what products will be made... Products now made by USI that are not sold to OEM's will get the ABIT branding.”

Abit claims that despite the cease in motherboard production, it won't be going anywhere. But the abit that we all know will soon become only a memory, as it is shifting focus from enthusiast hardware to consumer electronics, such as the FunFab digital photo frame that was unveiled at Computex; a change that is clearly noticeable just from looking at the company's home page.

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  • 1 Hide
    seezur , December 19, 2008 5:48 PM
    It's a real shame to see abit go. I have used abit boards in the past and have been nothing but rock solid stable. 1 NF7-S w/ athlon mobile 2500+ and a AN8-SLI w/ athlon x2 3800+ both overclocked and both boards are still running several years after without issues.

    In the end abit took a wrong turn somewhere and went downhill fast and now they just can't compete with the likes of ASUS and Gigabyte. So they got to go.
  • 1 Hide
    pug_s , December 19, 2008 6:12 PM
    Sad, Sad, Sad. They revolutionized the motherboard industry by making good, high quality, inexpensive, jumperless, easily overclockable motherboards like the BH6 about 10 years ago. I had that motherboard for about 5 years until it blew. I was so happy that I was able to overclock the cheap Celeron 300a to 450mhz. Wow, that's the heydays.
  • 0 Hide
    that_aznpride101 , December 19, 2008 7:11 PM
    What wrong turn did Abit take? I'm curious myself...
  • Display all 26 comments.
  • 0 Hide
    Pei-chen , December 19, 2008 8:07 PM
    Sad sad day for the industry. ABIT and EPox are no more but ECS, Jetway and Biostar will last forever.
  • 0 Hide
    kelfen , December 19, 2008 8:54 PM
    sad, ABit is rock solid
  • 0 Hide
    hackztor , December 19, 2008 9:57 PM
    ip35 pro was so dam good too.
  • 0 Hide
    FrozenGpu , December 19, 2008 10:08 PM
    Funny part is, I was wondering when to expect the P45 abit board, and then the x58. This explains quite a bit.
  • 0 Hide
    frozenlead , December 19, 2008 10:33 PM
    Running an Abit NF7-S2 on my desktop still. Good company, good board.

    Oh well.
  • 0 Hide
    cl_spdhax1 , December 19, 2008 10:57 PM
    salute
  • -1 Hide
    manifesto , December 19, 2008 11:12 PM
    Three years ago after building systems with ASUS, EPox and Gigabyte boards I decided to give an Abit AV8 3rd Eye a try. They touted solid reliability with Japanese caps and enthusiast features such as mGuru.

    It was and still is the worst board I have ever worked with. Returned three times and three times it came back with different problems, either no post, no sound or random crashes. Finally after the fourth return, I received a board that worked... for a year that is. Then it was back to the random crashes I had experienced earlier.
    Their return policy for this board was that they wouldn't return my money, they would instead fix the problem as an RMA. Even Newegg refused to get involved and soon after they dropped the AV8 from their product lineup.

    I never bought Abit boards again. With such a competitive field as the motherboard market, they could ill afford to put out such bad products.

    I for one say good riddance. They won't be missed.
  • 0 Hide
    graviongr , December 19, 2008 11:24 PM
    abit (lower case) was one of the best motherboard manufacturers, imho. After terrible experiences with Asus I went abit. Granted, I haven't bought an Asus board in... 11 years.

    But abit boards have always served me well, I really wanted to build an i7 system with an abit board. I still won't buy an Asus board, they may have come a long way, but it also takes a long time to get over a bad product experience. (As evidenced by the poster who says "I for one say good riddance. They won't be missed.")

    I'll probably go Biostar. I have a very solid Biostar board right now and I've been pretty pleased with it.
  • 1 Hide
    malveaux , December 19, 2008 11:48 PM
    Weird, what happened to them?

    I remember a decade ago scrambling to buy the best Abit boards. They made top notch stuff. Did they piss off the Pope or something?

    Cheers,
  • 0 Hide
    gsteacy , December 20, 2008 3:45 AM
    gravionGRabit (lower case)

    Looks like the editors picked up on my "bad" grammar and corrected it ;)  I wonder why abit decided to go with a lowercase name. It just looks weird except on the logo.
  • 0 Hide
    Anonymous , December 21, 2008 4:37 AM
    i'm glad they've bidden farewell to motherboards, every abit motherboard i've had was plagued with issues and they have horrible support.
  • 0 Hide
    millwright , December 21, 2008 9:04 PM
    I think USI buying them was the downfall. Abit was the king of overclocking at one time.
    I still run nf7s and my wife has a p4 Abit board, never had a problem with Abit, but haven't bought one since the nf7s. Sad
  • 0 Hide
    neiroatopelcc , December 22, 2008 5:10 AM
    bullzii'm glad they've bidden farewell to motherboards, every abit motherboard i've had was plagued with issues and they have horrible support.


    You must be the most unlucky person around then. I've never seen an abit board die within the first 3 years of running, and never had to fix any issues with one. In fact I think a friend still runs a rig on an abit board with canterwood.

    I guess anything has an end though. All motherboard manufacturers I've come to like, except gigabyte, are now gone. (abit, Soltek & Epox)
  • 0 Hide
    Railgun1369 , December 22, 2008 12:51 PM
    I was wondering what happened to their site...

    The first board I had from them was the BP6 and needless to say what a great board that was. Other than from me doing something stupid with their boards, I never had any issues with them and the ones I did out of the box, I never had issues with any RMA support.

    But, the market is somewhat saturated (relatively speaking) with enthusiast mobo manufacturers. It will nonetheless be sad to see them go.
  • 0 Hide
    eodeo , December 23, 2008 2:16 PM
    I have 2 abit boards. one for celeron d (ic7) and one for barton 2500+. I have them for 4~ years now. Runing couple of hours every day. Rock solid, stable. I have nothing but words of praise.

    Sadly, for my newest build I didnt even consider it. I couldnt find anything but competitoin b/w asus v gigabyte. I opted for asus in the end- point is- 4 years ago, abit was a clear choice, today.. it wasnt even a choice..
  • 0 Hide
    shovelman , December 23, 2008 3:25 PM

    My first was a BE6 in 99 or 2000.
    Since then I've had probably 3 or 4 motherboards and at least one video card by them.

    My current (and final) abit board is the AB9 and to be perfectly honest, I bought it for the price, nothing more. (In mid-to-late 2006 for my then-new Core 2 Duo)

    The board has been fairly stable but has well-known deficiencies as well as a BIOS that doesn't seem to remember certain settings very well.

    I still remember being in an IRC chat session with a top abit sales manager and one of their top (at the time) PCB designers back in 99 or 2000. He was the guy that designed the BE6, BP6 and several other hits. Those were truly the good-ole-days for abit.

    At any rate, so-long, abit. Was nice to have you around.
  • 0 Hide
    Anonymous , February 2, 2009 5:05 PM
    Good riddance. I used to love them. I ahd a BX6 2.0 for 7 years and went from PII 333 to P3 1ghz on it. It was awesome and totally stable.

    Then I went up to an AS8-V due to the upgrade to USB 2.0 and to keep using an ATI AIW 9800 Pro AGP TV tuner and the resultant pc non-function chaos almost cost me my marriage. Finally, I was forced to by an HP from Best Buy so we'd have a warranty.

    I snuck in buying an ASROCK 4Core Dual SATA AGP board for $80 a couple of months and finally, after 3 years of insanity I got my pc back.
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