Motherboard Brand experiences

[Indiana]

I don't do much Photoshop'ing here, so I can't compare this.
I also don't do mpeg2/SVCD conversions as the quality/file-size ratio is IMO quite a bit inferior to DivX and since I own a Notebook with great TVOut I don't care about compatibility with standalone DVD players.

What I do a lot in the desktop video area is DivX'ing, both from DVD and from HuffYUV captures - and to my big surprise the P4-2GHz with DDR RAM was slower in that field than my AthlonXP@1800+ speed (with the great EPoX 8K3A and DDR-RAM).
Most other time consuming things "feel" faster on the AthlonXP (without having exact benches).

I really expected the P4 to be faster at least in the video-compression area, but was disappointed.

[KvHagedorn]

I've had both Supermicro and Tyan Boards, mainly because of their reputation for stability and the fact that they had scsi onboard. Both companies are very good, except that Super sticks their nose in the air at AMD.

I'm still using a Tyan 1837 Thunderbolt in my main system (3 year warranty.. not quite up yet ) and I have used Tyan boards in two other computers I built for friends and family. I used them mainly because I'm lazy and don't ever want to hear about problems, and I haven't (so far).

[az]

My Asus p55t2p4 is still very stable in my father's PC

My 2 ECS K7S5A's run fine, and a friend got a newer revision with a newer BIOS, and his really doesn't look low-cost anymore.. my older revisions do feel low-cost, but when they run, they run great

AZ

[cal]

hi..... i'm late

Greebe:
Mtech mustang r581a Socket 7 (not super) AGP1x only... worked a peach and is still going (the only S7 that I know of with an AGP slot)

what bios are you running on that board , have just retired my r581a and k63 and i'm shure i'm running 2x agp with mystique g200

new system:
iwill xp333r v2.1 , xp1700 locked @144fsb
128 meg ram, 20 gig maxtor, g200 waiting for P

bought one xp333r new local, one from ebay for my nephew,
i would buy another.

[Greebe]

Whatever the last one was that Mtech released prior to selling out to Epox (?)

(sorry I don't need/nor want to reboot that machine but maybe once every month or two, and can't remember offhand)

Anywho I do know that the SiS 5595 northbridge can't do AGP 2x DiME transfers because of the bus noise.

[RoGuE]

I've used a great quantity of motherboards (unfortunately).

Abit: I've used or owned a BE6, BF6, BP6, VP6, KA7-100 , KT7A-RAID, and an IT7-Max. Only the BE6, VP6, and KT7 survive. In fact I've had to send back 3 IT7 because of a cold boot problem. Abit = poorly made sh*te. I'll never touch them again.

Asus: P3B-F, P3V4X, K7M, K7V, A7M266, P4B533-E. All class. The only disappointing thing was I accidently burned the P3B-F out
Asus are always my first choice now.

Gigabyte: Used a GA-6VXD7 dual P3 board which works ok, and GA-8IRXP, great board, rock solid stable, but despite all it's overclocking options it's crap at it.

MSI: The first two Athlon boards they made died on me, plus a 694D-Pro. The brown coloured 694's burn out regularly, but the later green ones seem ok.

Epox: In the same bracket as Abit. Overclocking at the expense of everything else. OK if you don't mind sending them back regularly. Never again.

AOpen: Only used the Ax34-Pro-II P3 board. Still going strong.

Tyan: Currently running a TigerMP system, which has been reliable so far.

[Pace]

Excellent. My Abit SA6R just broke. But then I was rather hard on the poor little motherboard - I switched the power on

Although I'm not 100% sure that it's the motherboard yet, I've narrowed it down to CPU/board or hard drive. Going to test the hard drive in a minute, then stick the CPU in my server to test that.

P.

[God_Devil_Morta]

Damn, thank God I didn't get the IT-7

[Pace]

Yup, it has been narrowed down to the board now. Just hope my SE6 holds up better

It's annoying to think I paid extra to get an Abit, for less quality than stuff like Chaintech and the like. Plus the i815 chipset is annoying too, but that isn't Abit's fault

/me runs off to buy some caps and a supermicro board. Anyone want a used SA6R?

P.

[rubank]

Since nobody else has mentioned SOLTEK, I will.

I have an SL75DRV2 (Via K266A) and it has been flawless from start. No problems upgrading win 98se to XP Pro.

Extremely fast, very tweakable, low price. Nothing funny at all.
S-t-a-b-l-e.

It doesn´t have RAID, but if I wanted that I wouldn´t go for a built in solution anyway.

It seems every bit as good as all the Asus and Abit boards I´ve had (Intel chipsets), and at a price advantage.

I haven´t seen any unfavorable reviews on the net, quite the contrary, of either Via or Intel flavours.

I won´t even mention the Aopen and MSI boards I´ve tried (BX)

rubank

[RoGuE]

Originally posted by God_Devil_Morta
Damn, thank God I didn't get the IT-7

Indeed. Avoid it. At best there's a bad batch floating about, at worst its a poorly made piece of crap.

[/rant]

[KvHagedorn]

There hasn't been much mention of SuperMicro. Similar to Tyan I suppose, their main market is the server arena.

That's not a bad measure to use, really.. unless you are hell bent upon overclocking. Anything which is made for use in servers had better be top quality if they want to sell any.

I just don't understand why the same person who appreciates the quality of a Matrox card would buy a cheap motherboard.

[isochar]

Another vote for Supermicro. All other previous motherboards I've owned/used can't compare. (Asus, Abit, MSI)