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Hardware

Mass Motherboard Review 287

Posted by CmdrTaco from the rating-and-ranking dept.
Niscenus writes "The folks at AnandTech are buzzing about this article originally posted here at CS. It's an extensive comparison of motherboard manufacturers, which is great for people who want to build their own system." All the biggies look to be here. Good timing for me since I'm planning on building a system in another month or so.
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Mass Motherboard Review More

Mass Motherboard Review

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  • In Case It gets Slashdotted (Score:4, Informative)

    by AnyLoveIsGoodLove ( 194208 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @08:08AM (#3259728)
    Quick Reference

    Conclusion

    Top Ten.

    1st - Abit,Asus
    3rd - Epox
    4th - Iwill
    5th - Gigabyte
    6th - Tyan
    7th - VIA
    8th - MSI
    9th - FIC, Shuttle
    11th to 20th (in order) Soyo, Aopen, Soltek, DFI, Acorp, Intel, Supermicro, Chaintech, ECS, NMC.
    There you have it, the top motherboard manufacturers there are, all summed up. Personally, I prefer Asus boards, I have bought quite a few, and used all myself. I don't consider price, as motherboards are just too important. To be honest, even though DFI might be rated low, they have a high stability rating, and since its hard to tell how well they perform by human eye, if you own one, you'll be very happy. There seems to be a growing trend for cheap motherboards out there, and I don't like it one bit.
    You might hear that AMD is unstable from a lot of intel zealots, but the real problem is people are buying extremely cheap motherboards, there are major problems and issues popping up on the forums from this. Just look at the recent boards, ECS's SiS board must have set a record for number of problems, Soyo, MSI, and Shuttle sold a lot of boards, and they really are causing a lot of problems. From what I've seen on forums, there are few complaints about Asus, Epox, Abit or even Iwill boards (with the exception of the initial Epox shipping error).
    Remember, just because your chipset is good, doesn't mean your motherboard will be. The boards RAM timings need to be perfect, and cheap boards making 4 DIMMs available is just major problems. So do yourself, and everyone else a favor, don't be a cheap ass, pay a little more and get the quality boards. Even though I know most of you will say "I bought 10 Shuttles or ECS boards and never had a problem" It still doesn't mean the boards are good, and it doesn't mean you won't regret it in the future. For people that say VIA chipsets are unstable, or anything to that matter, these are the people you should never, ever take advice from. Why? Simple, they buy the cheapest boards possible, and while VIA chipsets aren't perfect, they are 100% stable, and its the motherboards which aren't stable.
    If a manufacturer is not on this list, then avoid them. They obviously don't like to send out boards for review, and there is most likely a reason for it. I've excluded a lot of names that show up occasionally, and review very poor the few times they are done.
    So next time you are confused about which board to get, and why, you have an unbiased opinion to help you. Asking in forums will only yield a bunch of zealots recommending one brand constantly for no reason, and they don't even take into consideration your needs. Decide for yourself, you'll be happier that way.

    Previous page - Acorp

    • Tyan Thunder will always be #1 for me. Rock solid and it comes with more whiz-bangs and doo-dads than my new car.
      • Tyan Thunder will always be #1 for me.

        I also have a Tyan thunder and it works really well. I have not had a system halt since I moved the system to XP (the machine is pretty much dedicated to Tombraider)

        I find the article to have a skewed sense of priorities, they put 'performance' above all, even stability. That might be good for the overclocking crowd, certainly not for me.

        While people compare the uptime of operating systems my experience suggests that unreliable hardware is at least as big an issue. I didn't notice much difference between the stability of DEC UNIX or VMS, both would stay up for months, VMS would stay up for years. There was a huge gap in the reliability of DEC and Sun hardware five years ago.

        The odd thing about reliability is that you can have a Mac user complain about the machine going down twice a day one minute and then rail against the reliability of PCs the next.

        I tend to conclude that reliability is largely ignored because it is tedious to measure accurately.

        • Re:In Case It gets Slashdotted (Score:4, Insightful)

          by NutscrapeSucks ( 446616 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @03:28PM (#3261279)
          I have trouble trusting any random person's perception of reliability (unless say they come from a VAX background :)

          People are just too beaten down with poor expectations bred by years of working with crappy hardware, crappy OSes (DOS/Win or MacOS), and beta-level video drivers. In the average person mind, a few reboots a week is probably perfectly acceptable as "rock solid". Plus they may feel the need to conform to the majority opinion that (Mobo) or (Chipset) is a good thing and avoid getting flamed.

          It's also tough because the whole hardware hobbiest culture (the people who are hands-on and publishing the info) seem to treat their computers as disposable game consoles with 6 month upgrade cycles. For the most part they reject stability features like ECC RAM in favor of miniscule performance increases.

          Anyway, I would kill for some reliable information about reliabity. My expectation has been set by my last couple boxes (Compaq and IBM 'workstation' stuff) that could run NT4/5 24x7 without trouble.

          The problem is not unsolvable or necessarily overly tedious, just at some level we have to give up our faith in experts.

    • Re:In Case It gets Slashdotted (Score:4, Informative)

      by Toraz Chryx ( 467835 ) <jamesboswell@btopenworld.com> on Sunday March 31, 2002 @09:04AM (#3259937) Homepage
      Abit quality control is very poor.

      By the way, they seem to have stopped putting QA markings on boards.. I know of more than 25 Abit boards that have _no_ mark in the QA box on the sticker on the last expansion slot.

      15 of those boards are either problematic or outright dead >:(

      The article seems to put featureset ahead of stability, oh, and VIA chipsets (KT266A/KT333 _possibly aside_) aren't 100% stable, they can be very twitchy (the Asus P3V4 I've got here isn't exactly a cheap board, the Abit KT7 in my dad's machine is the most twitchy and unstable board I've had the misfortune of using, and yet it comes highly recommended from most hardware sites because they are blinded by featureset and "Hey, it managed to run quake 3 demos for 4 hours without crashing!"

      On the other hand, I know of around 80 ECS K7S5A's being used out in the field that are working without any problems whatsoever (including the machine I'm sitting at right now.)

      Now, in general, I wouldn't trust ECS all that much.. but I have yet to get burned by them, Abit have burnt me several times :( gah.

      • Re:In Case It gets Slashdotted (Score:5, Insightful)

        by leiz ( 35205 ) <leiz@juno . c om> on Sunday March 31, 2002 @01:34PM (#3260826)
        >the Abit KT7 in my dad's machine is the most twitchy and unstable board I've had the misfortune of using

        again, more anecdotal evidence, abit motherboards are popular and I too own one and I can just as easily say I go 6 month without rebooting.

        It's easy to blame the motherboard for other problems such as a cheap unreliable power supply or bad ram or a misbehaving pci (ahem, sound blaster live) card. Some boards/chipsets are more sensitive to these problems than others. (In your case, the 80 ECS K7S5As are from a different manufacture and they have a different chipset)

        I personally believe in buying name brand hardware backed by a good tech support and a good return policy. A lot of times it's the luck of the draw and people end up with bad boards. But I like the fact that ABIT is frequently releasing new BIOS revisions to add new features and bugfixes to their boards. I know the KT7 has had at least 10 bios releases in the past year. And of course, buying it from a store that you know and trust is much better than buying from some shady, cheap place just to save $10. I mean, who knows where they get their crap.
        • It's _impossible_ to get ahold of Abit UK, so they are right off my list.

          Twitchy boards + lousy support (in this area of the world) = me not buying Abit

          btw, the KT7 has Crucial PC133 and an Antec 350w psu feeding it, it does have an SB Live! on it but the twitchiness it shows is NOT the usual live/686 problem, It'll lock randomly unless ALL the ram timings are dropped to their slowest and all the performance enhancing features (4-way interleave, enhance chip performance etc) also need to be turned down.. bah

        • Abit boards DO NOT HAVE A CONSUMER WARRANTY! Well they do, but it's solely done through your retailer, and they'll only offer the retailer 1 year. You're 100 percent at the mercy of the retailer. And what fraction of retailers do you trust for no-hassles service?

          ASUS is 3 years, and it's direct through ASUS.
      • I had 2 ECS K7S5A's ordered from the same vendor crap out on me when trying to build new systems for the family. Since the opinions on this board are so starkly polarized, I assume they had a bad lot somewhere that got distributed by mistake.

        As for the article, they rated these vendors almost exactly how I would have were I to be asked about reliable motherboards. ECS and Tyan mobos have given me no end of troubles. Asus boards have been the rock of stability. Not that I'm an expert; however, I build PCs for non-tech friends and family regularly that *must* be reliable. It seems that the article also makes this paramount. Then again, why shouldn't they? If a mobo is fast as hell but crashes every other boot, who cares?

    • Look at all the bullshit they said about Abit (Score:4, Informative)

      by DABANSHEE ( 154661 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:59AM (#3260532)
      You can tell the writer worships their arse.

      Going on about Abits history of great stability/support/reliability etc.

      Bullshit, just a couple of years ago Abit had worse RMA rates than bloody PC Chips/ECS, AT 10%. Ontop of that Abit charged a RMA fee
      (even when it was 100% their fault) of $20, forcing retailers to charge an extra $2 on every Abit board to make sure they didn't lose out on the 10% that failed.

      Mind you they're improved since then, the box I'm typing this on has a Abit board.
      • Since I just had an SH6 (i815E board) that was a little over a year old suddenly get REALLY flaky for no apparent reason, I'm not about to trust Abit in a hurry.

        I will give them credit for one thing though, they know how to lay out a board well.

        the SH6 is/was about as close to perfect in physical layout as a slot 1 board can get. if only they were using more highly trained monkeys for QA.
    • Quick Reference

      Conclusion
      Top Ten.
      Quick reference:
      Conclusion:

      Asus and Intel are the only vendors that score 10/10 for stability.

      As far as I'm concerned, any board that causes a machine to crash, ever, is faulty.

      Now, I may be misunderstanding the author's definition of stability, but I don't think so. As far as I'm concerned the primary requirement is that the board works. Features, performace, value for money are all subsidiary to that -- sure, they'll be the deciding factor amongst boards that work, but I just have no interest in buying unreliable products...

      • stability is a loose term. When the epox 8kha+ was sitting with a 200Mhz FSB, how stable was it?

        For me, stability is top notch too, but I couldn't make a decision for you in the article, saying stable is #1. Lots of people buy ECS boards to save money, obviously, they couldn't give a shit about stablility. The unfortunate thing, is 9/10 reviews ignore the stability of boards, which is the primary reason I wrote this.

        Many people always use the term the board is like a rock, but their definition of a rock is quite poor. I've seen like a rock system crash routinely, but to them, its much more solid then the junk they had before with a cyrix chip in it.
        The term also varies through time, even intel boards used to crash in the p1-early p3 days, but now, things seem to be right. The OS and hardware are more mature.
        • The unfortunate thing, is 9/10 reviews ignore the stability of boards, which is the primary reason I wrote this.
          I agree, this is one of my main complaints about all hardware reviews.

          It's inevitable really. Unless a product is seriously unreliable, you're not going to be able to usefully measure reliability and stability without testing at least a dozen samples over several months.

          Sadly, but unsurprisingly, reviewers don't have the resources to do this.

        • I haven't had _one_ crash from this ECS board.

          I had plenty from my Abit's, I've had quite a few from the Asus board I've had sitting around.

          Whilst I've had, ZERO, yes, ZERO hardware related crashes (I had a heat problem, but that was my crappy Coolermaster HSF) with this SiS 735 board.

          I probably wouldn't use one for something mission critical (that's what Supermicro/Intel/Tyan boards are for) but for a workstation?, sure.

          (btw, until I rebooted it to install an IE patch this morning, this machine had been up for 20 days)
          • After seeing the ECS/PC Chips writeup in the article I promptly hit the back button in my browser, the guy is obviously either biased, or simply never used any of the boards himself.

            I've got *tons* of SiS 735 based systems in use either at my home, or friends who I recommended them to. None of them crash, none of them have any other problems, they have good onboard sound, 100mbit LAN, onboard modem, and 5 PCI slots. How is this not feature rich? These boards were more honestly reviewed at tomshardware (who is accused of being biased himself, obviously the review of the SiS boards wasn't).

            /. needs to stop giving these idiots attention.
    • You might hear that AMD is unstable from a lot of intel zealots, but the real problem is people are buying extremely cheap motherboards, there are major problems and issues popping up on the forums from this.


      Yes. The last several computers I have built, I passed on the savings I gained buying Athlon and bought Asus MB's(and I always pay a few extra bucks for ECC RAM). I've been very happy with these choices.

  • I had a lot of problems with my AMD Athlon XP 1700+ with an Asus A7V133-C motherboard in Linux. I thought it was the Athlon/AGP bug, but the fixes for that didn't help. Programs kept segfaulting/causing bus errors, and sometimes the system hang.

    Then I happened to find an upgrade to my BIOS, flashed it and suddenly everything worked perfectly. If you have weird problems that you can't seem to get fixed, try to look for a BIOS update! It's always a good idea, even if your system works, to check for new BIOSes regulary.

    A motherboard without a BIOS is like a car without an engine. Make sure the BIOS is a good one!
    • "A motherboard without a BIOS is like a car without an engine. Make sure the BIOS is a good one!"

      Hmmmmm...

      More like

      A motherboard without a BIOS is like a car without a steering wheel. If you can't steer it, your screwed...
    • Can't be sure, but I thought that this board (I might have the older A7V) needed a bios upgrade to SUPPORT the Athlon XP? At least that is what I read on the ASUS website. That said, unless the fixed it recently, I still have GNOME (2.0 Developer snapshots as well as 1.4) lock up on my system. KDE 2.XX works just fine and I have used one up in KDE for hours. I love my ASUS board. Kick butt board and when I get the bucks to step up to a true Athlon XP board(one that supports all of the faster speeds and with USB 2.0) I will look at ASUS!
      • The original board came with a BIOS that did not support the XP processor. Later, a BIOS update came out which added support for it, and that BIOS was shipped with the motherboard so that it could be sold as an XP board. Something like 2 weeks ago, a new BIOS came out, apparently just a bugfix release, which fixed the problems I had with it in Linux.
      • Don't go up to an Athlon XP board! If you already have an A7V under the hood then you have enough power to wait until next christmas to get a ClawHammer.

        That's what I'm doing. I bought a 1.2Ghz Athlon with an Abit KT7A last summer (system is ROCK solid) - and I'm going to hold onto it until the ClawHammer comes out - then it is just a recompile of Gentoo [gentoo.org] and I will be running a 64-bit OS.

        This chip is going to rock.

        Derek
    • I know several people with the A7V133, and they are all sorry they bought it. I am a big Asus believer; I have a P5A with a K6-2 450, an A7A266, and now an A7V266-E, just bought 2 weeks ago. I only buy Asus. However, that one was a stinker. Some problems can be fixed by getting just the right BIOS (note: not necessarily the most recent bios, but the one that works in your situation), and some can't.
  • I agree with the ratings ... I have been using an Asus-K7V for 2 years and it has been stable as a rock. I have seen a couple of MSI's break down after just around 1 year in service ... the break downs were mysterious and numerous.
  • They seemed to be determined subjectively by someone named "AA". It is hard to say how they reflect the true qualities of the motherboards in question.

  • What a bunch of biased anecodtes... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @08:26AM (#3259800)
    Each motherboard manufacturer has been in business for a couple of years, and (as is necessary in the industry) completely changes their product line every 9 or 12 months to keep up with technology. Most sell a range of chipsets for both AMD and Intel.

    Yet they manage to slam or highly recommend MB makers based on their historical record going back a couple of years, and almost completely ignore the variation between individual models that are available today.

    I suppose this is to be expected. The various "hardware review" sites have been consistently dropping their technical information (almost all simply include a JPG from the manufacturer's home page listing features, for example) and the only varying item to gain prominence in reviews is The color of the motherboard. (And if it's not the color of the motherboard, it's the color of the CPU chip which leads the day's news.)

    Don't believe me? I found a half-dozen examples from Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com], not because they're the worst offender, but because they've got such a good search engine. Completely typical quotes from motherboard reviews:

    • this motherboard by its nice red PCB color
    • What gives the PCB its green or brown color
    • A"roundup" review [tomshardware.com] that seems to concentrate entirely on color, based on what you see from the second page:
      • AOpen was the first manufacturer that introduced a special PCB color. One year ago, it released the AX6BC Pro II Millennium Edition, which was colored black. The latest idea is a board that is pinkn Europe or the United States people aren't exactly awfully keen on pink motherboards, with the possible exception of Brighton/UK or San Francisco. I took this photo at CeBIT2001 a few weeks ago at the AOpen booth. The Japanese are obviously crazy for extraordinary hardware, as it is the only market where AOpen is selling those boards. Maybe we are going to see more colors?
      • Thanks to the black color, the motherboard looks pretty cool.

    Now I realize that this post of mine is almost certainly going to be modded to "flamebait", but I've just got to get this off my chest. All of the web-based hardware review sites are completely ignoring the technical innovations that are really taking place, and instead they concentrate on silly stuff that only the marketing department of the hardware manufacturer could've picked.

    • I agree with you. They shouldn't bash them for their previous wrong doings, but in some cases, the motherboard manufacteror will continue in a trend. I own 4 Asus boards, from my Pentium Pro to my Athlon XP, and I can say that I love all of them. I will stick with Asus forever...
      • I have an Asus dual athlon & it's not worked well since I've got it.. I know they can work (we have a few MSI's at work and they work flawlessly). It usually takes about 20-30 attempts to boot (half the time it only sees one of the processors), and the BIOS doesn't support power off via the front power switch (it does support power on so I know the switch is connected OK) - even in Windows.

        It's really put me off Asus, as I've never had a really bad motherboard before... (With the exception of Abit, but then they don't count because they're bargain bucket junk).
    • tbh given the choice I'd buy a pink motherboard over a green one, black sounds cool too.

      so long as they work moderately well, raw performance is not an issue for nearly all of the apps that I run day to day.

      If I ended up with 100 fps and a MB that would generate some "come and look at this that I found" fun when I see my irc buddies at LAN parties I'd be happy.

    • So whats a good mainboard? I'm in the market for an AMD 1600 to 1800 with 512 DDR Ram? I'd like embedded NIC, Video, USB as well. Its a server of course so I don't need much. Any pointers? How much should I be willing to part with?

      Tomshardware is frustrating! No list to compare between mainboards.

      Thanks for any help
    • I have to agree -- this is nothing but a collection of anecdotes (we all know everything you read in a public forum is unbiased and absolutely accurate, right? :), rated more or less on how well they agree with the reviewer's existing prejudices. It ignores some major mobo mfgrs entirely, and much of what's said goes wildly against what I've personally seen in the market.

      And to rate "value" largely on a basis of how much junk is built into the mobo? I'd have gone the other way -- I don't want anything hardwired into the mobo (and therefore not upgradeable) that doesn't need to be!!

      As to the issue of "colour" -- there is something to be said for this, to wit: In my experience, boards (any type, not just mobos) using light green or yellow base tend to be cheaply made all around, and much more prone to fail. Boards using dark green base tend to be much better made and more reliable. This has been highly consistent for many years. I've concluded that the dark green base probably costs more, therefore the lighter colours indicate general cost-cutting measures at the expense of quality.

      Have only seen one red mobo so far but it was a top of the line MSI, so maybe that's a good sign :)


      • It ignores some major mobo mfgrs entirely

        He explains that some mobo manufacturers are not included because they don't provide review models.

        and much of what's said goes wildly against what I've personally seen in the market.

        His article is useful, because he tells us what he has seen in the market. If your experiences are different, please tell us about them, so we can take them into account

        And to rate "value" largely on a basis of how much junk is built into the mobo?

        Granted, but he's aware that different people care about different things, that's why he rates each mobo vendor on a large number of criteria. Ignore the averages, look at the critera that you care about.
    • Most hardware sites don't seem to concentrate on the facts, its true. But what you don't seem to realize, from model to model, each company makes boards very similar to eachother. And most of them have been pretty consistant over the years, so basing a company on their historical record isn't that bad, but its only a small porition of the mark. For example, in research for the article (some brands I can't say I knew too well to start with), Asus always have made fast, stable board with a good o/c power to it, always.
      ECS and chaintech have been unstable ever since I can remember, and brands like abit, were always a good board, solid, with great o/cing. You'll find it very very hard to find that this trend does not follow for each model they bring out. Supermicro is always the same, Soyo isn't, they can't seem to decide what they hell they are doing.

      I made a few small references to pcb colour in the article, but it was the smallest factor in everything I wrote, I don't consider it to be part of the motherboard.

      but I have to agree with you, I get very pissed when I see most reviews. Maybe I'm old school hardware, when the actual hardware used to matter, and not just everyone and their grandma builds their own computer. My article was written because I wanted to help people, and show them that not all motherboards are the same, you can't get all the answers you want off on anandtech or Tom's roundup which completely ignores most features. This is the best way I could think of without having to test the boards, and for the most part, I believe its accurate.

  • Issues (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BrickM ( 178032 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @08:27AM (#3259803)
    It's important to choose a good motherboard for obvious reasons. Another piece to the puzzle some people forget is RAM - regardless of how great your MOBO/CPU happen to be, you'll find your system hanging for no apparent reason if you buy cheap RAM. Avoid those Best Buy/Comp USA sales, and stick to reputable companies. I highly recommend crucial.com for all your RAM needs.
    • Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, Samsung and Infineon are all good stuff.

      I'm using Crucial in all the machines here (with the exception of one Mushkin module that was a cherry picked review sample :) and I have zero problems with it.

      people who buy McGeneric ram are just begging for problems.
    • Over the last month I've purchased about 10 crutial 256M DDR. Of the ten, 2 of them were bad. It took me a long time to track those buggers down since I was expecting much higher quality.
      • The thing with crucial is, their support IS excellent, a while back (Jan 2001) I had a problem with a pair of 128MB Pc133 dimms not working together, they'd work alone, they'd work alongside a Mushkin Rev2 module, but put them in a machine together and you were screwed.

        I rang crucial, said "hey, could you swap this pair for a single 256MB dimm?"
        and not only did they swap the ram, they also refunded me the difference between the original price I paid for the 128's (£95 each) and the current (at the time) price of the 256 (£138)
        I hadn't asked for that, I wasn't expecting that, but I was very satisfied with the quality of customer service :)
    • Avoid those Best Buy/Comp USA sales, and stick to reputable companies

      Granted this was a couple months back, but last I saw Best Buy was selling Crucial RAM (One of the best), albeit at highly inflated prices.

  • I bought the k7s5a ECS board they mention in the reviews, and low and behold, the board is crap. Constant crashes, and sometimes no booting at all... Then I go buy a new Asus Board, and I am amazed! My AthlonXP 1800+ is running at 1.62 GHZ, which I believe is at 2000+ And the moral of the story is : Dont try to save a buck on your motherboard!
    • well, I don't think so. I built 20+ systems with this board by ecs and I never had a problem. The board was one of the most stable boards I ever used - even when all PCI slots were full (firewire, tv tuner, sb live, second nic, isdn)

      The main problem is, that with this board people tend to use cheap RAMs and cheap PSUs (because the motherboard was so much inexpencive) and that is what this motherboard just doesn't like.

      With a decent PSU and quality RAM (and the latest bios version of course) you won't have any problem with k7s5a. For the price for this motherboard is about a half of an asus one, you'll save you more than enough money to afford these and the system is overall better.

      I'll recommend you apacer/nanya memory and sinotech or enermax PSUs.
      • I second this, I've got a K7S5A with a 1700+ / 512MB of Crucial PC133 (I shall be selling off an excess gigabyte of PC133 I got when the prices were rock bottom and putting the proceeds towards some DDR) / AOpen 300w PSU (rebadged Sparkle I think?) and after I replaced the absolutely useless Coolermaster HSF (60c load temps with random hangs.. GG Coolermaster) It's been absolutely solid.

        More solid than the Abit SH6/P3-933 rig it replaced certainly :)
      • >I built 20+ systems with this board by ecs and I never had a problem.

        I've built 50+ systems by ECS and I can guarantee you anything PCChips is shit. All ECS stuff included.

        Don't believe me? Throw in a 1.4 Ghz processor in their K7S5A and tell me its quality.

        >The main problem is, that with this board people tend to use cheap RAMs and cheap PSUs (because the motherboard was so much inexpencive) and that is what this motherboard just doesn't like.

        The people are using PCChips PSUs made by the motherboard's manufacturer. Yes, it is partly related to the power supply being crap. But what can you do? One would expect parts from the same company to work together properly!
        • "Don't believe me? Throw in a 1.4 Ghz processor in their K7S5A and tell me its quality."

          I have a 1.47Ghz processor on my K7S5A...
          • >I have a 1.47Ghz processor on my K7S5A...

            You're lucky then.

            These [google.com] people [google.com] haven't [google.com] been [google.com] so [geek.com] lucky. [computing.net]

            This [google.com] person seemed to think installing a hacked BIOS would solve the problem. It did. A perusal of ECS' site [ecsusa.com] shows they've improved upon PCChips service (they provide BIOS updates for the K7S5A, so I'm assuming they didn't pirate this BIOS, or they've learned to hack it properly), but as of December/January ECS motherboards with the incompatible BIOS were still streaming into the store I worked at. The K7S5A BIOS support [ecsusa.com] page doesn't list a specific 1.4 ghz fix, but it looks like they fixed it just in time for this year (BIOS V.01/11/09). I guess 3 months waiting time isn't too bad.

            Perhaps with the BIOS fix this board isn't junk, but long-term reliability is definately not a trait associated with PCChips products, IMHO.

            A lack of testing advertised features (and XP support was advertised on these motherboards) is sure proof the company doesn't care for its customers. This occasionally happens to name brand companies (Abit comes to mind) but is, in my opinion, the status quo for PCChips and their cronies. Maybe ECS will eventually escape the bad name of their suppliers -- they are providing far more support for their products than I expected to see.

            As with all things, only time will tell. Perhaps in a year or two I might be able to forgive ECS prdocts for being PCChips knockoffs. We'll just have to see! :-)

            Anyways,

            Whip out [geocities.com] that soldering iron and fix it yourself the manual way if you choose.

            The FAQ [ezboard.com] will probably help explain this problem better than myself.
      • Well...

        I had a 450 Sparkle PSU, a 512 stick of Crucial PC133 SDRAM, PNY GeForce3 ti200, SBLIVE!Value, and a NetGear Ethernet card with that ECS board. I wish it would have worked, because the board itself was black, and it looks really cool in my LianLi case with a case window, but it didn't do the job. Locking up half way through 3DMark2001se and only being able to play Dark Ages of Camelot for about 30 seconds before a lock up really sucks too. I spent a week trying different drivers, bioses, and everything I could think of before I scrapped the motherboard and got my Asus board A7A266.

        Boy was it fun goin in the back yard with a can of WD40 and a lighter, and taking care of that ECS board once and for all...

        Mwahahahahaaa! BURN BABY! BUUUUUUUUUURN!!!
    • I have one, I like it.
      Works fine, very stable. Integrated network card works.

      If you are going to buy any product with a reputation for DOA, buy it from a good local dealer who will take trade ins.
      • I've got a K7S5A too, unfortunately.

        and what CPU are you using on it ? I have one too. I tried using a 1400 MHz T-Bird Athlon on it, the BIOS refused to use 133 MHz FSB and sticked to 100 MHz FSB. Despite the volcano over it, the chip went to 120 degrees Celsius after 15 minutes of operation and died. Now I'm using a 1100 MHz Athlon (and for the extra cost of the new CPU I could have bought a better MoBo like an ASUS A7N266 in the first place) and am scared like hell.

        Not to mention that the BIOS PCI IRQ assignment is amazingly stupid. It works like this: video card on IRQ 5, everything else on IRQ 11 (onboard LAN, onboard sound, USRobotics internal modem, USB controller).

        • I've got a K7S5A too, fortunately. i'm using a 1333mhz TB Athlon on it, and the bios agreed to use 133mhz FSB just fine...i'm not sure what is the problem with yours but you could try flashing the bios....the older bios releases were notorious for having some bugs and being unstable. the volcano heatsink is not known to perform that well and if you go to the AMD website, if i'm not wrong its not recommended for use on 1.4ghz TB athlons. but even so, when i used to use a volcano heatsink, the temperature never went over 60 degrees celsius. your cpu overheating is either caused by a bad heatsink installation or a poor or non-existant thermal interface material between your cpu core and the heatsink, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the type of motherboard you are using. you could buy the most expensive asus motherboard and still fry your cpu if you don't use a heatsink or don't install it properly. as for the BIOS PCI IRQ assignment, again if i'm not wrong, you can adjust it manually in the bios or through software, but yea....the auto settings are dumb i guess.
        • You obviously haven't taken the time to upgrade the BIOS on the board, I've got a 1.4GHz system running linux/windows with this motherboard, the onboard LAN works great, the onboard sounds works great, the whole system works great.

          I've got the following in the system:
          Compaq NC3131 Quad Ethernet 100mbit PCI
          SB Live!
          Voodoo3 3000 AGP
          Hauppauge WinTV Card
          Adaptec AIC-788x UW SCSI controller
          D-Link DWL-500
          3 60 Gig IBM Deskstar hard drives
          1 12X DVD-ROM Drive
          1 12x4x32 CD-RW SCSI Drive

          It's stable, yes, it puts a lot of things on the same IRQ:

          5: 15 XT-PIC eth0
          8: 1 XT-PIC rtc
          10: 13008 XT-PIC Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475, prism2_cs, bttv, EMU10K1
          11: 176023 XT-PIC aic7xxx
          12: 35035 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
          14: 66203 XT-PIC ide0
          15: 16239 XT-PIC ide1

          But guess what, THATS WHAT IRQ SHARING IS FOR.
    • It transforms those ECS Athlon boards from shit to the bargin of the century, well almost.

  • go to see someone doing a full out review.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by pennsol ( 317791 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @08:38AM (#3259841) Homepage
    As a Retail level tech i spend most of my days answering questions, Some good, and as you would expect some i just roll my eyes at and walk away. It's good to see someone out there has done a pretty comprehesive review of ALL mobo makers. I personally use Asus and MSI. I've had the best experience with both, not to say i've never RMAed a board by either (1 to each company) but as i see it in the years i've been doing this i've installed well over 5,000 mobos. As with any product the makers of mobos do run into issues, like certian runs of a problem board, i've seen at least 1 bad board by every one if theose companys listed, some i've sent them all back (see:Soyo), so it's good judgment to do a little asking around before you buy. Don't jsut listen to one opinion you'll hate that friend, co-worker, relative later for giving you bad advice. I do agree with most of the findings in this article I'd personally rate MSI a bit higher, and shuttle a bit lower but then again that's just my opinion/experience..another word to the wise.. Where you get your board will have a great effect on your buying experience. Stick with well known companys with good return policies. You will one day get a bad board, trust me when i say this, what happens after you figure out the board is flawed and needs RMAed means alot. Some companys will tell you that your SOL and need to send it back to the maker for replacment which is all fine and dandy but can take some time. (around 6-8 weeks)where as the supplier can get you a ned board in a week. Someone now needs to do a comprehesive write up about the suppliers and we'll be all set.
    • Why do people constantly call them "mobo's"? I find that so annoying.

    • Re:go to see someone doing a full out review.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 0xA ( 71424 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @09:17AM (#3259990)
      You will one day get a bad board, trust me when i say this, what happens after you figure out the board is flawed and needs RMAed means alot. Some companys will tell you that your SOL and need to send it back to the maker for replacment which is all fine and dandy but can take some time. (around 6-8 weeks)where as the supplier can get you a ned board in a week. Someone now needs to do a comprehesive write up about the suppliers and we'll be all set.

      This is really a key issue that people miss most of the time. My Dell system is now 2 years old and I want to replace it. I've been happy with the system and all I really need is a new MB, CPU and RAM so I was just going to put it all in the Dell case and call it a day. I've walked out of 2 retail stores in the past couple days because thier RMA policies pissed me off. If I have a MB fail I need it fixed asap not replaced as soon as it can be delivered from Tiwan via sailboat and bike courier. All the places I've been to only offer a 60 or 90 day quick replacement after that you have to deal with the manufacturer directly.

      The only other option I can think of is to go buy a whole new system, even barebones that'll be twice what I would need to spend otherwise.

      Mna this sucks. I've become really used to that next day courier replacement parts service Dell has.

  • History
    VIA has no real history, as they are less then a year old.

    ??? or maybe this review is old?

    Also, on an unrelated topic, has anyone had problems with via, amd, and the aureal sound chipset under linux? I was hoping they would mention something about it.

  • Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by delay ( 134063 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @09:22AM (#3260013)
    This review is just plain shit. They don't test any boards and just tell you what they personally prefer. You can see this on the review of intel motherboards. That's just prejudice. I can't believe the cheap crap Epox produces gets top scores and the quality boards of MSI are just at position 8. I have used several MSI boards: They are stable as a rock and are supported for years. On their homepage I find recent bioses for boards that are 5 years old. The guy who does the tech-support in Germany (just one guy I think, but he's very competent and quickly replies to email) has compiled a high quality faq, with everything you ever wanted to know about MSI boards.


    I have very bad experience with Epox boards: a friend of mine bought one, and even the parts that were on board had interupt-conflicts with each other. Really horrible design.


    But come on, let's be honest: Something that works for me (with my hardware) doesn't have to work for you and vice versa. This review is purely useless!

    • Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Toraz Chryx ( 467835 ) <jamesboswell@btopenworld.com> on Sunday March 31, 2002 @09:31AM (#3260035) Homepage
      some Epox boards are nice, others less so (the 8K7A is quite a nice board)

      It saddens me to see Abit get such high placement though.

      at a guess, they just guesstimated a running order based on speed > tweaking features > stability/reliability.

      which is highly screwed up, reliability should be top of the list, it doesn't matter how high it can overclock a processor if it's not 100% stable at any clockspeed :/

  • ECS Boards (Score:3, Insightful)

    by forty_two ( 147348 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @09:30AM (#3260030)

    I dunno who told these jokers that ECS make underperforming boards, but it's a lie. It is true that they don't have some of the more popular overclocking features, but for stability and performance their boards are up there with the "big boys" at often less than half the price. I wouldn't use anything else in the machines I build for clients OR myself.



    Did these guys just make the shit up? I mean, just do a quick google search for 'ECS motherboard' and read the reviews. Look at the benchmarks. Better yet, drop fifty or sixty bucks on one and try it yourself. I am an Asus convert, and I'm never going back. I've got a Windows box that has been up for almost six weeks. WINDOWS! SIX WEEKS! THANK YOU ECS!



    And no, I do not work for ECS, but I have had this debate a dozen times IRL and the performance/stability argument is quite simply a load of crap.

    • Re:ECS Boards (Score:4, Informative)

      by chamenos ( 541447 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @10:19AM (#3260208)
      hey i totally agree! i'm using a ECS K7S5A board as well, and the current record is that i've had it up and running perfectly stable for 23 days, with WindowsXP, encoding mp3s, games, etc.

      to be honest, when i first got the board, it was slightly unstable and would hang up occasionally for no reason and my display would sometimes get a bit corrupted...it turned out it was caused by the crappy power supply i was using that had come with my casing. it was some no-brand 250w and as soon as i bought a decent 300w AMD-approved power supply, all the stability and display problems dissappeared, period.

      i'm now perfectly happy with this board as it has given me absolutely -no- problems whatsoever and the onboard sound works fine and give no problems as well.

      this is unlike two other shuttle ak31 v3.1 boards that i used to build systems for two other friends. both had problems with the onboard sound, sounding all crapped up and distorted, and one of them had power retention problems so you couldn't power it on right after you had turned it off.

      most often, the problem with people who experience "problems" with ECS boards is that they use cheap parts for the whole system, which aren't both cheap and reliable like ECS boards. most probable causes for an unstable ECS based system is a crappy power supply, ram, or sometimes heatsink (especially for AMD processors).

      granted, the ECS production lines, like any of the other companines, does churn out a lemon every once in a while but that shouldn't be taken as representative of the overall quality of stuff that ECS produces.

      as for crappy email support, i once had trouble flashing the bios because i was using the wrong flash utility, and within a day of writing in to the tech support, i received a full page reply from the tech support which was definitely not a "canned" reply given the nature of my questions and the replies. unfortunately, i don't have it anymore now, but you can take my word for it.

      and lastly, i can say that at least for the ECS K7S5A board, they have been regularly releasing new bios updates, on average monthly, which have been dealing with any stability issues and bugs and after the second bios release, the board was no longer unstable, as it was with the first bios release.

      and no, i don't work for ECS.
      that's all i guess
    • They dropped the ball on the FIC review too. The only thing they got right was the stability - you simply can't hurt these things. The performance is great, it's probably the best board for overclocking if you know what you're doing (you need to set jumpers) but if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be overclocking your system anyways. Their support is superior - in addition to all of the infromation on their site they have a message board. And for the price ($60 for the AD11, which supports AthlonXP + DDR) you can't really beat it.

    • Re:ECS Boards (Score:3, Interesting)

      by isdnip ( 49656 )
      It seems to me that Elitegroup Computer Systems bought PC Chips a while back. PC Chips (aka Eurone, but they had other aliases too) was the undisputed master of really crappy ultra-cheap mobos, with names like "TXPro". PC Chips would take random chipsets, notably ALi's, and relabel them to sound more like Intel's. The board quality was awful -- performance wasn't bad when it worked, but they had no quality control. El cheapo white box dealers moved a lot of them.

      ECS, in those days, made a higher quality, if boring, board. Some respectable oems used them. I suspect that some of the ECS boards today are pretty stable, coming out of "old ECS", while others are warmed-over PC Chips (and probably better than the old PC Chips).

      It looks like the reviewer was tainting all of ECS with the record of PC Chips.
    • I agree completely. I've built 4 systems for myself and friends based on the K7S5A. I did my homework, found reviews, etc., all of which said that this board was fast, stable and worth twice its retail price. I have found the exact same thing in my personal experience. The one thing I wouldn't use this board for is overclocking, because of the poor options in the BIOS. However, any other application is great for this board.

      I can only conclude that the reviewer:
      A) is basing the scores on previous ECS boards (which I have no experience with)
      B) is basing the scores on problems w/ the PCChips brand (which is a terrible brand)
      C) used low quality parts (esp. memory, HSF and PSU) on his board.

      Disclaimers: I don't work for ECS, YMMV, etc.
    • OK, so I built a machine for my fiancee's parents (gigahertz-class duron, 256 ram, geforce 2 derivative, etc. quite a jump from the p200mmx they had). I went with the ECS board, becuase of all the good things I heard about it. The first motherboard suffered a catastrophic error, some widget on the underside of the board sort of exploded and the motherboard basically soldered itself to the case, shorting it. It's the first time I'd ever seen computer hardware _literally smoke_, and I don't mean just a little puff. (There's still a great big scorch mark on their case.) This also nuked pretty much everything plugged into the board except the cdrom and floppy. Thankfully, the shop we bought everything from (axtiontech [axiontech.com], here in houston tx) really bent over backwards, giving us no problems about returning components. The next ecs board we got has been running flawlessly for a couple of months now. I guess we just got that one in a million lemon.

  • BIOS Updates (Score:2, Informative)

    by BrickM ( 178032 )
    Someone else already mentioned how important Bios flashing can be. FYI, I've found that ASUS has a great BIOS updating utility. This is a feature you should definitly consider if you are buying a mobo for the long haul.

  • ASUS P2B aging problems (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zzg ( 14390 )
    Does anyone else experience problems with the P2B series over time? We have about 30 asus p2b based computers in our department, and they start needing replacement at an alarming rate.

    The problems show up as solid lock-ups, at first maybe once a month, and then escalating to several lockups a day. The problems can be reproduced with the memtest.exe produced by alegr software (free download) as a lockup on pass 4 (always pass 4). Already tried exchanging all other parts except the motherboard so Im pretty sure Ive narrowed it down.

    My theory is that the capacitors dry out over time and thus fails to meet their spec.

    Out of thirty wewe so far had five go bad, and the problem is difficult enough to reproduce for the vendors to blame it on software problem.

    I used to think of asus as good products, now Im not so sure anymore.

  • abit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cr@ckwhore ( 165454 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @10:24AM (#3260231) Homepage
    Good to hear Abit is on the top! I built a killer system based on the Abit KT7A, and its an awesome board! It has more options than I need, and they didn't make the BIOS friendly, which is good for us geek types that like to tweak. I plan on purchasing another ABIT board when I build my next system.

    For those looking at a KT7A, it is an older board. However, the specs on Abit's site are outdated. As of rev 1.3, the board theoretically could go into the 2ghz neighborhood. I'm currently running a 1.4 t-bird.

    Strong points (my own, not from the article):

    1. BIOS tweaking, BIOS tweaking, BIOS tweaking. This board has the most in depth BIOS setup I've ever seen, with the ability to overclock your system in 1 mHz increments.

    2. Stability, even at OC speeds.

    3. Board features, such as 4 USB headers, chipset cooler, temperature sensors galore, plenty of fan headers.

    4. Nice thick manual.

    5. No problems running linux on this board.

    My conclusion: Abit good.

  • Why I won't buy another Intel motherboard (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @10:58AM (#3260337) Homepage

    One simple basic thing works fine on all the Asus, Epox, Gigabyte, and Tyan motherboards I've ever worked with, and failed on all the Intel motherboards I've worked with. That thing is the PS/2 keyboard port when either not connected at boot/reset time, or connected to an electronic KVM switchbox which has not selected that machine at boot/reset time.

    If the keyboard is not plugged in at all, and then you plug it in later, it doesn't work. Linux sees a keyboard device, but no keypresses ever get through until you reboot (and Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work).

    If the keyboard is plugged in to the electronic KVM switch, and the switch has not selected that machine at the time, then it gets even worse. Something (BIOS or chipset) just hangs. Video sync comes up but the screen is blank except for a cursor. When the KVM is switched over to that machine, still nothing. If you move the mouse, sometimes it will start up and BIOS will initialize and boot the system. However, the keyboard and mouse ports are now transposed electically or logically in the chipset. Mouse movements go in as garbled keypresses, and real keypresses occaisionally tickle mouse logic.

    It's not a fundamental chipset flaw that I can see, as I have some cases of the same chipset on both Intel and ASUS boards, and the ASUS boards work fine. It might be how the chipsets are configured by the engineers, though I personally suspect the BIOS is the major culprit.

    As a desktop, this is OK. As a server, this sucks. Even the rack mount Intel ISP-1100 (TX440 motherboard, BX chipset) has this problem, and that machine is clearly intended for the server market. I have contacted Intel support and after the issue was bounced around several engineers, it finally came back as "Not supported with a KVM switch" and they just dropped the issue.

  • Funny... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:04AM (#3260366)
    these guys obviously did a lot of research. from the article (on Gigabyte):

    Stability

    Their boards are being focused on reliability and stability. The dual bios option is just one sign. From personal experience, I've noted their boards to have a high degree of stability. They aren't extremely stable, but they are far above average. Their stability during their performance market days was questionable.

    Rating: 7.5/10

    funny. a review from Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] pissed all over the dual bios saying it caused more problems than it fixed, making stability a very touchy issue.

    Seems to me this article was written by a couple of DIY'ers who've heard the term "overclock," but never "benchmark." Oh, and as for history???? I sure as shit hope they don't tell everyone to run out and buy a 3Dfx board "because they were the original high-end 3D graphics board maker" ;-)
  • My review wasn't meant to be completely analytical. If you really wanted a board to board comparision, you would go check a review, since every model does differ.
    The whole point is that each company makes board pretty much in the same way, even after 5 or 6 years. Some have changed direction, which is why you might see their overall score lower then you'd like, but you can always look at the specfics and judge for yourself.

    Do some people really expect me to benchmark a dozen boards from each company? ya right, get real and stop bitching.

    Some people mention bios problems, like gigabytes dual bios. It doesn't make their boards unstable, it just doesn't always work, especially if you screw up the bios in a weird way. Board makers always can't forsee what will happen, which is the point of bios updates, so as long as companies don't have excessive updates fixing simple things, they don't lose points there either.

    Just a reminder, these aren't my personal opinions, its how things are. I had to grit my teeth when giving some companies good ratings because of how much I dislike them.
    • Actually, I think you'll find that it's your personal opinions ON how things are.
      • not really. There are stats showing performance, cost, o/cing, stability is somewhat mine, since stats are hard to find on it. A lot of stability marks come from what I've tested personally. History is history, but the scoring is kind of up to me. Support isn't random either, either the company does it or not, some info is taken off hearsay. Features, that is a function of the company. And products worth mentioning, is basically like what I think of the company, yes, there is the biased part.
        • you might get flamed a lot out here -- but for me personally the review was VERY helpful and confirmed my opinion of Asus.
          thanks. nicely done.
  • I sell and configure custom computers almost everyday, and one thing I will take issue with is the articles opinion of Abit and support.

    Abit performs well, they are reliable, and they come with nice features... As I heard a tech at my company told a customer once, "if you get a bad one, forget about getting your problem fixed."

    We as a company refuse to stock them any longer. Having a pile of 4 dozen motherboards with issues that we can't RMA'd or get credit for made that decision easy. Even the istributers we buy from dropped them. I haven't confirmed this, but I've been told this last week by two customer's that Fry's won't carry them any longer for the same reason.

    I tell customers this everytime they want to special order a Abit motherboard, "I can order it in, but it is purchased 'as is.' We wlll not accept it in return, refund, or exchange. All warranty issues must be dealt with by you directly with Abit. Payment is needed at time of order." It's the only way to protect the company and most people ask why we have that policy, I explain, they buy Asus or go elsewhere.

    Basically, Abit rocks, except when you get that 1 out of 200 bad board. My opinion, buy Asus, their RMA and support is the best I've ever seen, and they perform realiably.
  • Why can't somone, with support from IBM and Motorola, persuade the motherboard manufacturers to make motherboards for PowerPCs? Why should only the Mac people have all the fun? Since Linux is becoming very popular, don't you think it would be a good idea? Maybe they have to take some loss initially, but don't you think it will take off (they can probably cover the loss if IBM and Motorola's support)? I love my linux desktop,and KDE and GNOME is getting better each day! Love to hear your comments. Hem Ramachandran

    • Re:Why is nobody making PowerPC based Motherboards (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Commodity PowerPC mobos were available back in the mid-1990s.

      Nobody bought them, which is the main reason you can't buy one now -- that and the fact that nobody wants to pay to maintain the Windows PPC port (which is a majority of the desktop market and a good chunk of the server market).

      Both IBM and Moto expected great things in the desktop market, didn't find them after spending an assload of money, and retreated to safer markets.

  • Have a complaint? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Niscenus ( 267969 )
    Have a comment? Have something worth mentioning?

    You're free to come and talk kietch with the author of the article at either #queenofgeeks or #aselabs at the chat.planetz.net server on port 7000

    __________
  • I'm afraid my expectations to this review was set too high. They sure do look at a large ammount of boards, but they only compare features which i could do myself with a little help from a web browser.

    But the reason im really posting is that i disagree with their rating of Asus' support. Especially regarding Bios updates, or should i say the lack of Bios updates. I have been using a beta bios for almost 2 years now to get a 40 Gig harddrive to work on a P5A. There havent been a single bios upgrade since i bought my board... I have had similar experiences in the past.

    I can't say if they have improved over the last few years but i somehow doubt it and i dont care, the P5A is my last Asus board and it is the next one in line to be replaced.
    • Having a K7VE board in my computer, I had a bios on it that was NEWER than the one on the asus web site for many many months (> 6)...E-mail to the company was black-holed. Their site was (as of perhaps 6 months ago) barely usable and downloads were often unavailable.

      Recent months, however, have seen improvements both in their website design, download performance, and up-to-date information...'course, this is only from personal experience. The whole experience with Asus has left me sour.

      It also left me sour on the whole "hardware weenie" reviews (I purchased this MoBo based on Sharkyextreme.com's recommendation) 'cause they very much focus on overclocking and other hacker-heavy features whereas I just want a stable system (no overclocking/RAID/etc for me) with a good price. Anyone have any recommendations for websites that do their reviews more in tune with the "common man"? (I mean I'm still quite happy with my non-overclock, non-DDR, non-RAID 700Mhz Duron! I'm just considering upgrading my 366 Celeron Linux box at some point.)
  • I followed the links from a reply that purported to be from the author (at the moment the AnandTech forum appears to be /.ed.) The author's home machine has 256MB of RAM, a ATI Radeon 8500 retail, and Windows XP Pro. I refuse to trust anything said about computers from a person who has this setup. There's nothing wrong about the individual pieces, it's the tradeoff in the aggregation that bothers me. How can someone who claims to have advanced knowledge of motherboards decide to go with only 256MB of RAM while blowing money on the latest generation of video card? Never, ever scrimp on RAM. The opinion of someone who doesn't know this as a first principle should not be trusted.
  • I wouldn't trust this list further than I could kick it. It is simply too subjective of an issue. There are certainly brands that tend to have problems or poor manufacturing, but I'm cracking up at the score they gave SuperMicro. It scored a perfect 10.0 for reliability, but since it is poor for overclocking and built-in motherboard features it ended up getting the lowest score of the bunch. My best overall home machine is a dual P3-500 SuperMicro machine that runs 24/7/365 and has never given me problems. The box is simply rock solid. On the other hand, my Shuttle based machine is down constantly. It's obvious the testers were much more concerned with maximum performance (speed, overclocking, built-in features) vs. maximum stability/useability. Besides, what do I care about some piece of crap video and audio subsystem layered on my motherboard. I'd simply turn it off in BIOS anyway and add my own cards.

  • Should be called 'Mass Market Motherboards' (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @05:46PM (#3261873)
    I was a little dissapointed that the article didn't mention some of the higher end motherbard manufacturers like SuperMicro. If you want to build a really stable and reliable system most of these Tiawanese specials are a little lacking.

  • Epox Technical support rules! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vandan ( 151516 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @07:11PM (#3262250) Homepage
    I was trying to get the onboard via8233 sound chip to work, and not getting anywhere.
    I emailed Epox tech support, and someone emailed back in about 4 hours with ALSA drivers attached and instructions on how to compile and configure. Crank ON!
    Admittedly, the sound chip appears to suck anyway (mp3s are fine, but sound in Tribes 2 is horrible - on my Athlon 1600XP). But you have to congratulate their tech support for jumping in with the ALSA drivers. I was expecting to be told to use the kernel drivers (which don't work) and seek support in newsgroups...

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