ASUS Responds Angrily To Gigabyte

ASUS today released an official statement in response to recent development stemming from a Gigabyte press event held in Taiwan. Tom’s Hardware reported on the event, and noted that Gigabyte made several claims that ASUS had mislead customers by quietly modifying product specifications listed on the ASUS website without actually changing any hardware.

In its response, ASUS says that "a certain Taiwanese Motherboard Manufacturer" made false claims against ASUS motherboards. Specifically, ASUS is pointing its fingers at Gigabyte. In Gigabyte’s detailed comparison, the ASUS boards — specifically the P5K series — utilizing the ASUS EPU power saving system was nothing more than "cheating" users.

We found that [Asus’] EPU in 4 phase mode CAN NOT act PWM phase changing while Asus still claims EPU is a hardware based energy saving chip. Don’t get fooled. The EPU (AIGear3+) is pure software based, not hardware!

In its statement, ASUS points out that claims made by Gigabyte are false, and that the "disinformation" is extremely damaging to ASUS and misleads the consumer. ASUS did not point out which claims made by Gigabyte exactly, were false.

"These claims have given rise to false information being communicated in both the mainstream media and technology channels. ASUS wishes to clarify the issues and so avoid any further confusion."

In an official second statement following up to the first, ASUS pointed out that its products do perform as claimed. However, the second statement talks about the P5Q Deluxe, which is not the same motherboard that was used in the Gigabyte tests — which was the P5K series. According to ASUS’ website, the new P5Q Deluxe uses an entirely new EPU-6 chip for power management, and a new 16-phase power design. In Gigabyte’s original claim, the EPU (apparently an old one now) was nothing more than a chip that responded to software, and did no hardware control of any kind. The P5K claimed only 4-phase power and Gigabyte’s comparison indicated that the P5K did not perform any phase changing at all to save power.

In related note, users have begun to pay close attention to things being posted on websites from both ASUS and Gigabyte. One reader noted that ASUS response did not attempt to talk about the details in question at all. In an analysis by The Tech Report, a Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 bested the ASUS P5K Deluxe by a significant margin with the ASUS P5K Deluxe coming in at last place on every power consumption test.

Why Asus don’t just do a live demo in front of the media with the same setup as Gigabyte if the accusation is bullshit? Asus has no such ability? If so, that means Asus is not technically as good as Gigabyte. If not, why not just showing us?

At the end of ASUS’s first statement, the company pointed out that it would look into legal action against "any individual, organization or corporation which creates or spreads such rumors." At this point, our educated guess is that ASUS may take legal matters to Gigabyte’s door steps as well as us at Tom’s Hardware. Gigabyte tells us that it is "not worried about an ASUS lawsuit."

Tom’s Hardware will conduct its own independent comparison of the ASUS P5K series and the Gigabyte EP35-DS3L. At this time, we’re still waiting for a response from ASUS that specifically answers the claims we spoke about in the original article.

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