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Abit To Close Its Doors Forever On Dec. 31, 2008
ki1obyte writes "Earlier this year the Taiwanese firm Abit, once a leading-edge maker of computer mainboards and other components, was slated to shut down motherboard production by the end of 2008 and focus on consumer electronics devices. Now X-bit labs reports that Abit will cease to exist entirely after midnight on the last day of 2008 because the owner of the brand, Universal Scientific Industrial, is in the process of restructuring and cutting their costs."
Sad to read this. Have had several Abit mobos in the past, always good quality reliable boards.
Their timings and voltages were always off a bit So I will miss them, but only a bit
Too bad. I even have Abit mobo on my desktop even now. I got atleast 1 year to find a replacement before this PC goes past it's time.
I've been reading of Abit's death for years and years. I won't believe it until I read its Abituary, and even then not fully.
I started out on Abit boards and loved them, but after a few years I started having more and more problems with them. I switched to Asus and the problems went away. I was surprised they were still around.
Sad; abit made some innovative - if admittedly fanciful - products. The hot tube based motherboard comes to mind immediatly, & it's a shame there's one less mobo maker to push the rather stale market.
Uh oh, good luck getting the latest drivers now
Abit specialized in high-end motherboards back in the day. I'm not too surprised that they're closing now; most people are going with laptops now, and the people who get desktops get sub-$1k machines, anyway. Hell, most desktops seem to be less than $500 now.
Oh well, at least Gigabyte's still around. *hugs his mobo*
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
As far as I can tell, there will be no closing of any door. We have this Universal Scientific Industrial (what a name!) that has a brand called Abit, and puts stickers with that name on some products. Now it finds the value of the brand diminished, and will put other stickers on the products, perhaps change the product line, etc. But for all we know, the total production of the company can be growing apace. In short, the only real material change to be reported by this story, is probably the value of some computer records. But well, this is Slashdot after all, and we are interested in that kind of thing, aren't we?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
"... the process of restructuring and cutting their costs."
Which means that while there may well be new stickers and boxes for any existing inventory, USI get to kill Abit completely and no longer support anything with that name on it.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that in 6 months time there's a big furore about Abit boards having leaking capacitors or some such - and the consumers will be out in the cold with no-one to sue.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
I have to say a name like Abit to go under. That was a bit of a shock.
I've personally probably built / owned / used a couple of hundred systems based on Abit MB's over the years. However I can't remember actually building or owning an Abit based system in the last 1.5 years.
True enough the last couple of years the company literally had nothing that competed on the MB front. ( Flame away ).
The cash burn must have been something beyond my comprehension.
I truly morn the loss. Less competition is bad. I really don't want to see the price of a main board hit $300. And still suck. If Lenova ends up making the best board on the market I'm going to retire and hide in the bush. ( Personally I don't much care for anything IBM or IBM tainted. )
So Abit going to compete with TWOBITS?
I loved their product line. If I am not mistaken they were one of the first to have a "jumperless" design/setup. I remember when I was running dual 1GHZ processors long before it was the norm.
Under Linux their dual processor motherboards were fast and problem free...under windows well that's another story...blue screen of death would make an appearance every now and then.
For the custom builder these were the best MBs by far. I tested them against gigabyte, asus, etc., but nobody offered the ports and options that ABIT had.
They were pricey, but you definitely got what you paid for. Markets change...Abit to me now is kind of like Austin Healey. Really cool for it's day, but time and economic conditions make it a thing of the past.
Abit will cease to exist entirely after midnight on the last day of 2008 because the owner of the brand, Universal Scientific Industrial, is in the process of restructuring and cutting their costs.
Ow, and i thought that was Massive Dynamic.. seems like even they need to cut costs these days. Do they still make those USB-attachable drug submersion brain interconnection tanks?
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
FATAL1TY
The Abit BP6 kicked butt for the time - 1999 or so. It was an SMP board that used Celerons on top of a 440BX Intel chipset and you could overclock them from here to next week. It was the first time I saw an overclocking menu built in to a BIOS. I'm sure I got a dual-500Mhz configuration after enough fiddling and pointing fans at the case.
Windows 98 only saw the one CPU of course but LFS saw both and was responsive in a way I haven't really experienced since.
Sad news.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
I hope you bit your tounge a bit after a croc statement like that! To this day, I think my favorite Abit board was their BP6... Ahh, remembering when I had dual celerys when it wasn't supposed to be possible. And 400Mhz O/C'd to 600Mhz at that! Of course I don't miss that tower that sounded like a 747 taxiing for takeoff...
Wow. I haven't actually wanted an ABit board since the BX/P/E-6 era (mostly because a lot of their newer boards didn't deliver in a format I liked, of if they did, they had reputations for being squirelly. Still, to see the brand just up and "go away" so suddenly, with no real indicators that there were problems, is still shocking.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
BIOS updates? I'd hate to have bought a board and then not be able to patch a bug in it.
-- http://ninthagenda.com/
true, true.
Why one year in particular? It seems to me that mother boards are not like milk which goes off when they past it's best before date. Surely it either breaks (in which case you need a replacement now) or it works. If it works, why do you need to replace it? Are you using Windows and they stop delivering drivers or something? I thought Microsoft policy was to include support for most popular hardware by default? If not, maybe you should just convert it to a Linux computer in which case support seems to continue indefinitely.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I got stung by the bad caps problem back in 2003. (Pic). I never trusted them after that, and I've used Asus boards since. They're good boards but a recent encounter with Asus UK support has changed that. It was just awful. Never again will I buy Asus.
So which brand to go for next time .. that's the question? Who to trust?
Sad News.
Proud owner of an Abit BH6 + Celeron 300 @450MHz.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I'm not surprised this is happening. If you look at a computer you buy at retail now, most of them are manufactured by ASUS, Intel, or the more viable manufacturers that use the latest Intel, nVidia or ATI chipsets and are highly integrated in function. My HP Pavilion a6400f uses the ASUS Benicia motherboard, which integrates everything I need (graphics, Ethernet, and REALtek sound control) all on the same motherboard.
It was inevitable since their support had become useless over the whole IN9-32X Max fiasco. I and hundreds of others had multiple boards fail on me. I was promised by their director of sales a replacement for the $330 motherboard after 4 of them failed on me in less than 5 months. Their then director of sales, Daniel, told me, "I wouldn't recommend [The IN9-32X Max] to anyone." He stopped taking my calls and emails when I came around to collect on his promise.
They're using their grammar skills there.
How can they expect to survive when their motherboards only works a bit. There was this model where there are known problems. Instead of fixing the problem when I go in, they gave me an old motherboard with different problems. After 3 times of getting motherboard with worse and worse quality, I gave up.
I'm reading this on our 2nd computer. A venerable BH6 1.01 (1.4GHz Celeron/slot T, GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, Ubuntu 8.04/Win 98). This is the very same MB that was my very first gaming rig (w/ Celeron 300A) over 10 years ago.
It's too bad. Back in the day, Abit were on the cutting edge of MB innovation. Today we take things like softmenu BIOS settings for granted.
Through three capacitor changes so far. It's a 2004 board.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I had 5 abit boards starting with the Bp6 (celeron 400@600 mhz) and ending with the IX38 Quad GT. Out of these only the last one gave me trouble and had to be replaced. I always find their boards ahead of their time a little, in term of bios settings, overclocking abilities, cooling, and they prices were always decent compared to Asus. Also they had great engineers back in the day from what I heard, that migrated later to other brands after they were hit by that huge scandal some years ago. Remember this was maybe the only brand that somehow encouraged overclocking in the late 90s.
Abit has been suffering because their most popular boards are from the late 90's. They had some very serious quality control issues a few years back with the NForce3/4 and Intel 8xx boards, I personally witnessed a 30% defect rate when most manufacturers were below 5%. As a result, many distributors stopped selling Abit products and they became very difficult to source.
Perhaps the reason why they are "known" as good overclockers is because of the kind of people buying them: cheapskates and suckers who believe online reviews. There was nothing spectacular about the performance, you could achieve the same results on an MSI or Asus board, and I've seen a zillion folks do pretty damned well on garbage boards like Asrock and GigaByte. Abit just made it a bit easier to overclock with gimmicky little things like "uGuru", which is little more than a rudimentary stress tester with clock control.
Abit tried to position their products as high-end while sticking the price somewhere in the upper-mid-range. As a dealer this made them hard to sell, as most people either want the cheapest board available, or a true top-end "Deluxe/Premium/Platinum" kit, and Abit was neither.
I really won't miss them. I haven't sold an Abit product in nearly 5 years, they are already dead to me.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Hopefully nobody ever bought their crap. I've always gone with ASUS or Gigabyte. Good motherboards.
Of those three brands I know that ABIT has the best fan speed controller. I got my PC making less noise than the Wii, and faaar less than the Xbox360, simply by adjusting the fan speeds in the BIOS.
With Asus you have to use "Speedfan", giving you another annoying tray icon, and if you're not running Windows... too bad.
Drats.
that when 'DFI LanParty' (I think that's their stupid name) started up, they took most of the Abit board designers. Hence last few years the Abit boards were very average, despite still being sold at a premium.
Before you can't get them again without using drivers-r-us.com (now with 50% more spyware!)
What's a "tounge"?
I don't remember the model number, but it had a 1.2Ghz Athlon T-bird on it and I had nothing but problems. Bought it to replace an intel PII mother board and nothing ever quite worked. The chipset on board hated my video card and the entire system ran hot. I had to run the machine with the side off. I think the machine lasted only two years and was the primary reason I said screw it, nothing works, and bought a mac.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
you all are forgetting the mother of motherboard brands... TYAN!
Seriously they make very high end, and reliable workstation, and server boards.
You would be amazed how many hours you waste in a year of using a flaky computer. Even more if you are a developer and flaky hardware could possibly be mistaken for a bug.
Dollars and time spent on researching parts then building a computer have a reasonably short payback. (I can only recommend one MB brand: Asus. Even there search Toms and Anantech prior to buying.)
I do wish there was a source of reliable and high performing ready made computers. I know of no such brand or local store. The brands are jokes and the local stores will all sell you out in a heartbeat if they think they can make a buck selling you junk ('DFI is top quality hardware! Why are you walking away?'). I had one store trained while I was running a corporate network. Long sense lapsed to their old habits. Only the owner remembers me (as a profitable pain in his ass).
You don't have to have money burning a hole in your pocket to buy top quality parts. You need money burning a hole in your pocket to buy the neon glow of 'Alienware' etal.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I remember that Abit gave people without much money to spend (me) the power to live the life of workstation users.
I will never forget the feeling of POSTing 450MHz on my overclocked Celeron 300A processor with an Abit BH6. I saved a ton of money versus buying a 450MHz P-III, yet had pretty much the same performance. (This setup, plus a 3dFX Voodoo card rocked my gaming world at the time.) My parents still use that overclocked machine, reliably, to this day.
Then the Abit BP6 came out, which allowed anyone to buy two cheap Celeron's and have a dual CPU machine. I had two Celeron 500's running at 550MHz, with BeOS as my operating system. It was computing nirvana that I haven't experienced since.
Sure, Abit did produce a few flaky motherboard models, just like every other mobo company. However, they released some very unique boards for enthusiasts that no other company had balls to produce.
Made with massively parallel wetware.
Rest In Peace, Good Buddy...
The site www.abit.com.cn has been hosting exploit code for the IE data binding vulnerability for over a week (injected iframe), and still hasn't been cleaned up. This may explain why they don't care.
Make sure you have downloaded all the latest firmwares/drivers/manuals for your mobos before they close the site. Those might be needed if you plan to upgrade your CPU etc.
I had an NF7-S for 5 years, and recently gave that PC to my parents. Still going strong, despite a northbridge fansink which never spun its entire life. Otherwise outstanding board.
I'm typing this on an Abit-run machine right now.
I'll be sad to see 'em go. Not as sad as to see Hellgate: London shut down (that broke my heart) but still... sad.
Ok, ok, I may have misspelled tongue... But at least I spelled taxiing correctly.
Abit is chiefly responsible for its own demise. Their modus operandi of shipping huge inventories to large retailers and essentially consigning them is what killed them. Large retailers historically only paid Abit for what was sold, as it was sold, and when the bills came due they would cut the check for the sold goods and ram the rest of the aged, consumer handled, distress packaged merchandise down Abits throat. Abit would then sell those units at a huge discount to secondary channel liquidators who would release the products to the public at a fraction of the retailers price, thus cannibalizing retail even more and overextending Abit. This went on for years and the company declined. In the end they tried to switch to a much more agressive payment structure and were dumped by majority of retail outfits. If they controlled their inventories and channels tighter they would still be around. Sad, but thats basic business.
Personally I have had a number of Abit motherboards, and they have all failed me rather spectacularly. First the USB ports go, one by one. Then the networking, then the sound...
Point I was attempting to make is that the heritage of nice mobos from Abit lives on with DFI. Abit the brand dying now makes no real difference.
I had a BP6, don't remember what happen to it, I miss that board.I have a VP6, I just installed Win2k8EntSrv on it and its working great.
No one here has mentioned Supermicro boards. Expensive, limited variety for desktop mobos but well engineered and rock solid. Nearly all of there product line is server class but the desktop mobos that they do produce are top notch.
Anyone else have Supermicro stories/experience or is it just me.
You should have bought a Dell.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
The RAM. Once you get over about DDR2-6400, you start to reach the normal limits of what can be done within the DDR2 1.8V standard specs. Anything rated higher is intended to live in a different world that's out of the DDR2 spec, usually 2.0V or even 2.1V/2.2V, and budget motherboards often have trouble giving them what they need.
That said, I'm running my IP35 Pro/E6750 @ 425MHz FSB, wayyy over the 333MHz stock. Gawd, I love what you can do with overclocking the Core2s and some quality components to back it up...
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
While I have built MANY a PC with Abit motherboards over the years here at the shop, for me my fav would have to be the SG80-SG81 boards. Rock solid,plenty of options in the BIOS, Dual IDE+2 SATA, just a good solid reliable board. It was truly a great budget board for just about any use. I have been using Foxconn lately to build the budget machines, but it looks like they are in trouble and are in talks to give up motherboards in return for Asustek's manufacturing business.
So does anybody know what other manufacturers make good budget boards? I have to do a lot of repair work on machines a couple of years old and Foxconn was the only one I found that still sold boards with DDR and AGP. Sadly Newegg just quit selling the board I was using so it looks like I'll end up having to chunk a bunch of machines that could otherwise have been easily fixed. And as for Abit /places hat over heart/ This old PC builder will miss you.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I bought a BF6, one of the best motherboards ever.
No, they were known as good overclockers because they were one of the first (if not the first) to allow 1MHz (and perhaps 0.5MHz too, I forget) FSB stepping. They also allowed different PCI/AGP/FSB ratios.
Twinstiq, game news
I know, but I think he had issues at 333/667 MHz to, but I'm not sure if he really have used it or if it has been 533/1066 the whole time, not my machine ..
The ram is speced at 2.1 volt, and gets 2.1 volt, the motherboard isn't that high end.
I don't remember, but maybe FSB in BIOS was set at 333 MHz and quadrubled on the FSB to the CPU (E8500) to 1333 MHz and rams would run at 333 MHz default to?
Stock multiple is 9.5 x 333 MHz = 3166 MHz but I guess what I wanted to do was to run RAM and FSB at 533 MHz with 6x multiplier for 3.2 GHz total but if I remember right you couldn't increase CPU FSB above 400/1600? Or one could up to 3200 but wasn't supposed to? =P
I think that may have been what I tried once, to set it at 533, or maybe 433, but then the motherboard probably said overclock failed and set it back and I hope that didn't fucked anything up. I've later on understood that increasing that FSB setting may also overclock other things such as chipset and maybe PCI and PCI-express and such to?
I think he has a P45 chipset, makes most sense for that motherboard, will the chipset run into issues above 400 MHz so that's the problem? Then atleast he should be able to run 400 MHz FSB, ram at 800 MHz, and cpu at say 8x multiplier for 3.2 GHz and be safe?
The problem is however if the machine still keeps on failing, what may be broken? Or do you only think the current issue is that it runs the ram at 533 MHz?
I hate this 6-epu shit or whatever it's called, some software messing around with clock and voltages to, it was supposed to save power but I never understood how until I googled at it earlier to see what the settings actually meant. Seems like high performance is closer to "do nothing" but I'd probably prefer some custom mode or just to turn it off.
Or maybe the chipset is only supposed to go to 333 and not 400 MHz? But I think the box for the motherboard mention 1600 so I guess 400 is safe.
Ok, this will be off-topic for this thread but whatever, maybe it can interest someone :D
His motherboard is an ASUS P5Q-E (1) running stock BIOS I guess, there is a newer one out (2) version 1703 which mentions "Enhance the compatibility with certain memory." so I guess that may help to, can be upgraded with ASUS update utility (3) from within Windows so he should be able to do it. The motherboard runs Intel P45 (4) chipset which spec page mentions 1333 MHz FSB although Asus webpage (1) says 1600 MHz, guess they have tested it.
I think he was supposed to get Corsair CL5 PC8500 TWIN2X4096-8500C5D (5) but since he has a fan I guess he got the TWIN2X4096-8500C5DHX or something such. Modules spec sheet mentions:
JEDEC standard 5-5-5-18 values at 800MHz.
EPP standard 5-5-5-15-2T, 2.1V values.
Processor is Intel E8500 (6) 1333 MHz bus speed, 9.5 ratio, 6 MB cache, 3.16 GHz clock.
Anyway, I checked the manual (available at (2)) and told him to do the following:
* Turn Ai Overclock Tuner from Auto to Manual.
* Change FSB Frequency to 400.
* Change CPU ratio setting to 08.0
* Change DRAM Frequency to DDR2-800 MHz.
* Let DRAM Timing Control remain at auto (assuming it reads correct values) and same on DRAM Voltage unless Corsair EPP doesn't change that to 2.1 as default.
Which would run his CPU at 3.2 GHz but with 1:1 CPU to RAM clock divider at atleast run the RAMs faster than 333 MHz.
If the RAM remains on 2.1 volt I guess one can go in and drop it down to 1.8, and eventually fill in the timings manually from the JEDEC part of the spec sheet.
If he runs into problem I'll tell him to:
* Change Ai Clock Twister from Auto to Light or Lighter which is supposed to raise compatibility.
* Update to latest motherboard BIOS since it's supposed to raise memory compatibility.
* And finally if nothing else helps change RAM speed to DDR2-667 MHz, FSB down to 333 MHz and CPU ratio to 9.5.
And if everything works as it should and he really want to overclock I assume he can start with:
* Either change his CPU multiplier back to 9.5, eventually increasing CPU voltage if needed.
* Or shoot for increasing his FSB beyond 400 MHz by increasing RAM voltage again and eventually NB voltage to.
* Or a combination of both.
Since I'd prefer as high FSB as possible without no errors I'd start there but then chipset and RAM is more likely to fail. The CPU probably got higher margins since they usually overclock so good so maybe that's a more fail-safe option =P, he do run stock cooling however.
Looks ok?
1) ASUS P5Q-E http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=2267&l1=3&l2=11&l3=709&l4=0
2) P5Q-E BIOS 1703 http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5Q-E
3) ASUS Update Utility http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments_content.aspx?no=714
4) Intel® P45 Express Chipset http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/chipsets/p45/p45-overview.htm
5) Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5D http://www.corsair.com/_datasheets/TWIN2X4096-8500C5D.pdf
6) Intel® Coreâ2 Duo Desktop Processor E8500 http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLAPK#
Sad to see them go. ABit had their share of mistakes as with all mobo manufacturers, but their overclocker boards were pure gold. I mean that, in the right hands they were an absolute overclocking weapon. I've had about 4 ABits over the years and was very satisfied.
Time to load up on the good ABit boards methinks.
I might have to go ASUS or Gigabyte now. (Gigabyte had a good capacitor plague also as with most mobo makers and we're not talking ancient history here, but their newer boards address that issue).
More spam:
Told him to set PCIE frequency to 100/101 MHz to.
And I found out about Ai Transaction Booster which one can set on manual and then change Common Performance Level to a higher level for better compatibility instead of performance. Probably not needed though.
CAS# Latency: 5
DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay: 5
DRAM RAS# Precharge: 5
DRAM RAS# Activate to Precharge: 18
I guess?
/ aliquis
lived and died with 440BX. I owned a BH6,BX6 and BE6 rev 1 and 2. I enjoyed all of those boards very much; though I had lots of issues personally with the HPT366 controller on the BE6 rev2 but meh I survived.
After that I just moved on to other companies. Mostly ASUS. Never really got into the ABIT scene again really. Ah memories.
2 Worst MoBos I ever owned: Abit and Abit
Even casual involvement excludes total freedom by it's inherent nature. John Valby
I had an Abit board back in like 2001 or so that went bad on me. I suspect one of the substrate layers had cracked. Regardless it was waaaay out of the period where the store would take it back, but still well within manufacturer warranty. So I call them up to see what we can do. Their solution? I ship the board to Taiwan, on my dollar, they'll ship me a replacement. Estimated turnaround was like 3 months. Ya ok, not doing that. I bought a new board from a different maker. The failure itself wasn't a big deal, the crap service was the problem.
The bp6 I ran with 333's oc'd to 500+ until the caps went bad (which there are kits to replace, as I did with an Asus a7m266-d board that I still run dual fx chips in), and now I still run a TH7-II Raid (ordered normal, they shipped me the raid version). For the longest time with a 1.6G P4, upgraded for a whole $20 to a newer northwood P4 now running around 3.1Ghz. Not bad for a mobo thats almost 8 years old.
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
the NF7-S. Great board, rock solid.
I'd update the BIOS first, that'll probably take care of at least some problems, and maybe try increasing the voltage to the northbridge by 0.05V or so. Oh, and try each questionable RAM stick individually, or in a known-good system. Bad sticks do happen, and just one bad stick will keep you from booting and complicate things a lot. One of the four sticks I purchased was just bad, and I wasted a couple hours trying to get it working by switching slots and changing voltages before I replaced it and was fine.
If it's still not working, it might be worth it to just spend $40 on some normal DDR2-800 RAM. Unless you're planning a serious overclock, lowering the RAM divider should let you run the CPU/FSB as fast as you want while keeping the RAM at 800 or below.
Faster RAM frequencies are nice and shiny, but the overall performance gain for overclocking the RAM is minimal under most circumstances.
Also, you'll usually want the CPU multiplier as high as it'll go, then adjust the FSB upward until you reach the CPU's stability limit. That'll get you the highest performance performance with your mobo/FSB/RAM not running at their bleeding edge, typically leading to higher stability.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I'd say barring any defect with his particular modules, it's the mobo / chipset.
I'm running 4GB of that same RAM (Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066) w/o issue on an X48 mobo (ASUS Rampage Formula).
Corsair specifies that it needs 2.0V on their website and it doesn't get configured correctly via SPD. Once you set everything up manually however you shouldn't be having issues.