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Mass Motherboard Review
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.
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
"It's technical in a psychometric kind a way" -- C. Parish
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!
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!
-- Goto Blasto.Net for GOOD, FREE E-Mail, with many names to choose! Really! GO!
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.
Just Limin' Mon
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.
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
I've been following a few candidate mobos for the system I'm building and the best place to hang out seems to be here. There are quite a number of people experiencing problems (which is what you're likely to need help with, not how great it is) so it's a good place to gather insite on the boards you are considering.
Of course, keep a critical eye on what you read, as some people's problems aren't related to the hardware, but inexperience or what they're trying to do which may be beyond recommendation by mfrs.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.