ASUS vs. EVGA vs. GIGABYTE

Quiz

Quiz

Gawd
Joined
Aug 25, 2010
Messages
658
How do "equivalent" motherboards from all three brands compare with each other? Is it simply preference as to which brand is better or is one brand truly better than the other two?
 
Add MSI.


All are fine, really. Neither are really "better" than the other, anymore. Some will have more features, some will have a wee bit less.

OC will be about the same, however, (extreme OC? I dunno).

Almost all will have dual BIOS (easy OC fail recovery).

Since the CPU is becomming ever more unified (IMC, NB, etc), the mobo is having an ever-less effect on OC.
 
What it usually comes down to is feature set and overclocking prowess. The features vary by model and price point quite a bit even between top offerings from each company. The second is partially luck of the draw. Boards from these companies are more or less equal most of the time. With that said, I think that MSI and Gigabyte boards tend to be quirkier than ASUS or EVGA boards in my experience.
 
asus seems to support there board with very frequent bios updates more so then some other tier 1 board manufacturers..evga best customer service and well designed boards..giga x58 boards tend to whine,had 2 and both high pitched whine..msi not as good a bios as asus or giga...
 
In my experience asus customer service has been poor and relatively unresponsive. I had a DOA board and I couldn't even get in touch with them really. They do put out a steady stream of updates for their products though. I recently tried a gigabyte board and I've had no problems with it so far (~6months). I'm buying another Gigabyte mATX soon because of it.

I've also heard good things about MSI. Usually what I do is research how often people have DOA boards or boards that die shortly after being installed. I assume some people damage their boards on their own so you have to take the reviews with a grain of salt, but it's a good place to start.
 
ww_Crimson said:
In my experience asus customer service has been poor and relatively unresponsive. I had a DOA board and I couldn't even get in touch with them really. They do put out a steady stream of updates for their products though. I recently tried a gigabyte board and I've had no problems with it so far (~6months). I'm buying another Gigabyte mATX soon because of it.

I've also heard good things about MSI. Usually what I do is research how often people have DOA boards or boards that die shortly after being installed. I assume some people damage their boards on their own so you have to take the reviews with a grain of salt, but it's a good place to start.
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not with ROG board, their service is the best, yes better than EVGA
 
I have had the same question and I've worked towards the answer by trying a few different boards.

I first knocked ASUS M3A78 because:

- It did not support my 125 W TDP processor very well. Turns out it has three chokes...where most mobos keep their voltage regulators. Must be 3+1 Phase power design...couldn't even support a 125 W TDP much less any over clocking.

-One day I wanted to put my SATA 2 hard drive in RAID mode so I could have Native Command Queuing and found out you had to have a 1.44 floppy disk drive to extract the drivers from a floppy disk image. Guess what else? The Catalyst Installer wouldn't install my south bridge drivers. I was running on Microsoft Drivers.

So on to the ASUS M4N82 - people would call it a fantastic motherboard. I agree that it is, even with the few problems I encountered. I once had a bad CMOS configuration going on that was hanging my computer. So I decided to flash the BIOS to 'fix' the problem. My machine hung in the middle of flashing. The mobo wouldn't boot anymore and ASUS's rescue program couldn't even read a SATA optical drive or a USB stick...I had to attach IDE hard drives and a 1.44 floppy to kick the rescue program into action. But it wouldn't use the BIOS image because my BIOS flash already had a later version. I found information on ASUS's website that supported this finding.

I say those two are still good boards. Do you know why? I found out MSI and Gigabyte also have some strange habits like RAID drivers being on 3 1/4" floppy diskette images and old drivers on their support site. I realize Gigabyte offers dual BIOS motherboards. But I can't imagine what MSI's BIOS recovery is like - I predict it's garbage because of the MSI K9A2 had crappy over clocking options - I could not even change the memory voltage on it!

But here again I say that K9A2 was still a good motherboard. Seems like they all have their quirks. MSI's K9A2 was trying: It had a lemon for a south bridge - the AMD SB600 and to fix it MSI designed a second disk controller into the motherboard by Promise Technologies. It was much better. My K9A2 had 4+1 phase power design. That's not good for over clocking but it supported my 125W TDP processor.

You get what you pay for. My M4N82 cost $120 and it has an 8 phase power design and you can over clock the south bridge and anything else.
 
You remember I said my M3A78 couldn't support a 125W TDP right? There were heat problems. In a minute I'll mention how ASUS customer support handled this issue. The stock CPU cooler with two heat pipes and diminutive blower fan can usually keep a 125W TDP CPU somewhere below 70 degrees centigrade. I know this from hind sight. I used that stock cooler and my 125W TDP processor on a motherboard with 4+1 phase power design and the stock cooler kept it within 10 degrees below 70 Celsius while using Burn In Test CPU Thermal Stress test.

On the M3A78 the processor encountered so much resistance that the AMD Stock CPU cooler couldn't cool the my processor enough. Thermal throttling would kick in and cut the processor clock in half to cool the processor down. Thermal throttling is a design that keeps a processor from automatically shutting the whole computer off when it gets too hot.

You know what ASUS customer support told someone else on the ASUS support forums? That is to say someone else whose processor clock was cut in half by thermal throttling. ASUS technical support told them that the CPU is supposed to do it to conserve energy when the computer is Idle. Can you believe that?

By the way - one more thing about the AMD stock cooler - The (2) heat pipes are made of copper plated die cast steel (yes some of the copper plate came off and I could see the die cast steel underneath - no lie)
 
my top priority on brand is always ASUS and Gigbayte, I have better experience with them in general.

MSI, not so much with X58, horrible experience with Eclipse and Pro-E.. the insane IOH temp drive me nuts.

EVGA, uh... they are my second priority if ASUS and Gigabyte fail..
 
The MSI Pro-E was actually a damned good board. I'd rank it above some of the recent Gigabyte boards I've used.
 
I have had 2 boards Ga-EP45-UD3R ans Ga-EP45-DS3R,both have had same problems continuously.First the DS3R,Computer,power off on off on and never post,sent board to them,didn't want to wait,ordered the UD3R while waiting on first to get repaired,figured i would use repaired board as a back up.UD3R failed after 3 months,installed the repaired board and after a day it's the same thing.Poweres off on off on and never posts/boots.
So i think i'm done with Giga,going back to Asus,never had an issue with their boards.
 
To be fair, I think you'll find somebody out there has had an issue with any of the three. All you can really do is go by your own personal experiences (if you have had any before), and if not read every possible review of the boards you are looking at.
 
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So far from my most recent system builds I've liked Gigabyte and Asus motherboards the most.
 
I switched out an EVGA x58 Classified SLI (760) for a Gigabyte x58a-UD7, and I'm glad I did. I had problems with the EVGA's rear-panel e-SATA causing stuttering on my system every time the drive was accessed, and overclocking errors usually required a CMOS reset by pushing a button on the rear I/O panel. It was also much more limited in terms of uncore multipliers.

The Gigabyte recovers from bad overclocks flawlessly, without requiring a CMOS reset, due to its dual-BIOS design. And their implementation of the same JMicron eSATA controller is also flawless, without the EVGA stuttering.
 
I never had the eSATA issues with the EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified. I've got the 759 version of it as well. Aside from that, it doesn't recover from a bad overclock at all unless you enable the option in BIOS. It works well enough when enabled. Though I'm told that it reduces your overclockability somewhat. Though I haven't verified that myself.
 
shansoft said:
my top priority on brand is always ASUS and Gigbayte, I have better experience with them in general.

MSI, not so much with X58, horrible experience with Eclipse and Pro-E.. the insane IOH temp drive me nuts.

EVGA, uh... they are my second priority if ASUS and Gigabyte fail..
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Funny fact, ASUS' and Gigabyte's corporate HQ in Taipei are roughtly across the street from each other :p
 
Why is it that if I search for "Gigabyte P55" on Amazon and Newegg, only a few motherboards show-up rather than the whole line?
 
jeremyshaw said:
Funny fact, ASUS' and Gigabyte's corporate HQ in Taipei are roughtly across the street from each other :p
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that I did not know lol.. sounds quite funny..

Dan_D said:
The MSI Pro-E was actually a damned good board. I'd rank it above some of the recent Gigabyte boards I've used.
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Uh, as for the price, its not bad.

but the issues are not resolve. lots of Pro-E owner having over heating issue with IOH temp.
Just google up Pro-E overheat, I bet you can find tons of users complaining about it.
Even after re-paste the thermal paste... its still overheating up to 100c+ in a good airflow case.
 
Does anyone here function on the high level that I demonstrated in my posts? Let's see I mentioned the concept of 8 + 1 power design...am I the only one who knows about that...how come you guys didn't talk about it? Do you not know what that is?
 
shansoft said:
that I did not know lol.. sounds quite funny..



Uh, as for the price, its not bad.

but the issues are not resolve. lots of Pro-E owner having over heating issue with IOH temp.
Just google up Pro-E overheat, I bet you can find tons of users complaining about it.
Even after re-paste the thermal paste... its still overheating up to 100c+ in a good airflow case.
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I never experienced anything like that with our review board. However I didn't run it inside a case and I only had it for a short while. In the week to two weeks we have a board, sometimes problems like that go unnoticed simply because such issues take time to develop. The EVGA 680i SLI boards are a prime example of that.

Dubious9 said:
Does anyone here function on the high level that I demonstrated in my posts? Let's see I mentioned the concept of 8 + 1 power design...am I the only one who knows about that...how come you guys didn't talk about it? Do you not know what that is?
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What's this condescending flame bait about? No one is talking about technical details of individual board models because this is a general topic about the three brands mentioned in the thread title and user experiences with those brands. I am not sure how a discussion about power phases helps further the topic in any way.

And since we are on the topic of power phases, 8+1 phases doesn't impress. Here is a look at ASUS' Hybrid 48-Phase power design. At any rate power phases are about quality and implementation, not the number of phases. One of the better overclockers I've ever seen had only a 4+1 phase power design. The EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified uses only an 8+1 phase power design, but with digital PWMs. At the time it was released it was the board to have for overclockers.
 
Well, one thing about EVGA. Awesome customer relations and service.
 
ww_Crimson said:
In my experience asus customer service has been poor and relatively unresponsive. I had a DOA board and I couldn't even get in touch with them really. They do put out a steady stream of updates for their products though. I recently tried a gigabyte board and I've had no problems with it so far (~6months). I'm buying another Gigabyte mATX soon because of it.

I've also heard good things about MSI. Usually what I do is research how often people have DOA boards or boards that die shortly after being installed. I assume some people damage their boards on their own so you have to take the reviews with a grain of salt, but it's a good place to start.
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+1

I generally like ASUS products, but just pray that I won't have a one-off/unique issue with my configuration because ASUS technical support (whatever there is of it) is horrible. They keep making you fill out reports one after another and won't do jack about your issues.
 
Dubious9 said:
Does anyone here function on the high level that I demonstrated in my posts? Let's see I mentioned the concept of 8 + 1 power design...am I the only one who knows about that...how come you guys didn't talk about it? Do you not know what that is?
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yes you are quite wise good job.

i prefer asus myself. right now i have a gigabyte since asus doesnt make a mini-ITX 1156 board. i have had a P5LD2, a P5Q-Pro, and a Maximus III Gene. all 3 boards were fantastic, along with my asus 5770s. i actually really like their support. here is their support phone numbers page. if youre trying to get support by email then give up. chat is ok, and phone is the best by a mile. scroll down to USA and they have a 24-hour number that i have called a few times. they arent always the most technologically knowledgeable, but they are helpful and can usually find someone to answer your question. they told me that it was ok to take off the heat sinks and put on new paste once, wasnt expecting that. and i think they also cover overclocking to some extent. also, their boards are fantastically layed out. when i went from a Maximus III Gene to the EVGA X58 Micro SLI, i was like "wtf is that doing there?" and "why did they think THAT was a good idea" all over it. a well thought out mobo shows they actually care what they make. anyway thats my pitch for asus, evga was ok but not as good as asus, and ive only had my gigabyte for a week. :)
 
Ualdayan said:
To be fair, I think you'll find somebody out there has had an issue with any of the three. All you can really do is go by your own personal experiences (if you have had any before), and if not read every possible review of the boards you are looking at.
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This pretty much. I usually go with asus but would not hesitate to consider gigabyte evga msi or asrock if the price/features were right.
 
When all else is about the same (chipset, features, on board cooling etc.) I download the manuals for the boards I have listed as "possibles" and read through the bios section for the bios that makes the most sense to me in layout and features and basic understandability.

Also the manual "features" section is usually a little more detailed and I always check the "installing memory" section for "gotcha's".

Before shelling out $200 I want to look under the hood as much as possible and the ads and even the manuf web site leave off/out stuff you find in the manual.

Oh and warrany peroid/terms and I go check the manuf web site and see how many clicks it takes to find the RMA page or if I can even find it. And what the tech support page looks like. Not a huge deal but worth looking at.
 
wesleys_dad said:
asus seems to support there board with very frequent bios updates more so then some other tier 1 board manufacturers..evga best customer service and well designed boards..giga x58 boards tend to whine,had 2 and both high pitched whine..msi not as good a bios as asus or giga...
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Never had a Gigabyte board whine on me, shrug.I've been running Giga boards for years with zero issues. As for MSI their stock BIOS are ok but they have an end user to end user forum that a couple of guys put out awesome modified BIOSes that rock so I would have to disagree with that statement. Anyway..

I can't stand Asus for their attitude towards customers after they have your money. I love EVGA's support, have not tried one of their boards yet. Although I exclusively run EVGA's video cards.

You really can't go wrong with any of the 4 vendors listed, Asus, Gigabyte, EVGA and MSI. They all make great boards.
 
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Dubious9 said:
Does anyone here function on the high level that I demonstrated in my posts? Let's see I mentioned the concept of 8 + 1 power design...am I the only one who knows about that...how come you guys didn't talk about it? Do you not know what that is?
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Get over yourself with your condescending attitude. Sounds to me like you're spouting vendors PR hype or work for someones marketing department .
 
Dubious9 said:
Does anyone here function on the high level that I demonstrated in my posts? Let's see I mentioned the concept of 8 + 1 power design...am I the only one who knows about that...how come you guys didn't talk about it? Do you not know what that is?
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Obviously there's no one here that can post to your superior standards. :rolleyes:

If I were you, I'd find another forum where the posters have enough intelligence to communicate with you on your level......and don't let the door hit ya in the ass. :D
 
Dubious9 said:
Does anyone here function on the high level that I demonstrated in my posts? Let's see I mentioned the concept of 8 + 1 power design...am I the only one who knows about that...how come you guys didn't talk about it? Do you not know what that is?
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:rolleyes:
 
I can attest to ASUS, MSI and EVGA motherboards. They are damned good boards but you gotta know how to set them up or you will fuck something up expensively bad. Gigabyte is also a good one too, but unlike the other 3 mentioned, they are almost "Greenhorn Proof". Gigabyte has the features of the ones above but they also have the beginner or "don't wanna mess with it" persons in mind with the auto settings. You can pretty much put your components on there fire it up and go on and not have to worry about too much, it just works. The other three can too but as I notice on my Maximus III the memory voltage automatically set it self to 1.8v. This will fry your memory if it is rated at 1.5v or 1.65v and on an i5/i7 setup is guaranteed to kill your processor. My EVGA FTW 657KR auto sets at 1.5 but if your memory is rated for 1.65v you will have some real random BSOD's and reboots so you got to set it manually. My EVGA FTW has 12+2 PWN and my ASUS Maximus III has the same. My old MSI GD-65 P55 had 4+2 but MSI said that the quality of their military grade mosfets didn't require the extra PWNs. I got a stable 4.45ghz out of it on an i7 860 and ran it 24/7 with a Tuniq II so I'd say that they are probably right. ;) As far as customer service, EVGA cares alot about their customers, ASUS if you can get someone from their China tech support on the horn they are very good and both on their RMA process are simple and have descent turnaround. MSI, get on their forums and READ! their tech support, meh... but there is quite a bit of excellent info and friendly people on there that will walk you thru your issues. Gigabyte, pretty well Install it and go on with your life. They either work or they don't.
 
BillParrish said:
When all else is about the same (chipset, features, on board cooling etc.) I download the manuals for the boards I have listed as "possibles" and read through the bios section for the bios that makes the most sense to me in layout and features and basic understandability.

Also the manual "features" section is usually a little more detailed and I always check the "installing memory" section for "gotcha's".

Before shelling out $200 I want to look under the hood as much as possible and the ads and even the manuf web site leave off/out stuff you find in the manual.

Oh and warrany peroid/terms and I go check the manuf web site and see how many clicks it takes to find the RMA page or if I can even find it. And what the tech support page looks like. Not a huge deal but worth looking at.
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That is the one post here you want to put in your pocket.
It doesn't matter who makes the board if you buy it cold.
I generally start by making a list of what I want.
Then I search out reliable on-line reviews.
Then I download the manuals, not all boards are built rhe same.....I look for compatability with coolers, fan headers, how the PCI-e slots are arranged.
I look at the BIOS.....complex or simple.....
I could give a shit about 8+1,24+1,12+1.....ask anybody what that means.....they won't know generally.

As far as brand strength.....Of course ASUS and GB make their own boards, somebody makes boards for EVGA but they do have their own design engineers.
EVGA service is stellar, their forums are excellent.
It's very hard to fuck up a GB board.
ASUS tends to be hit and miss, all solid at stock, rarely break, bu tsome are finicky for OCs,not so great service.

Have fun.
 
I just thought that power design was a large part of why my experience with one motherboard was better than others. I had not idea that I didn't adequately understand power design. For me it was like I tried two seemingly feature rich motherboards and they solved certain problems I had over one that was cheaply made...but I didn't have a full idea as to what made those boards better than the other except for the power design and where my processor's TDP fit in. I really need to start asking the right questions when read about the features of a motherboard. Like I said I found myself asking the same questions as the guy that started this post. My search was my narrow experiences with a few different boards...now its time to look into power design and signal to noise issues...like quality of the traces and other fabrication topics.
 
Dubious9 said:
I just thought that power design was a large part of why my experience with one motherboard was better than others. I had not idea that I didn't adequately understand power design. For me it was like I tried two seemingly feature rich motherboards and they solved certain problems I had over one that was cheaply made...but I didn't have a full idea as to what made those boards better than the other except for the power design and where my processor's TDP fit in. I really need to start asking the right questions when read about the features of a motherboard. Like I said I found myself asking the same questions as the guy that started this post. My search was my narrow experiences with a few different boards...now its time to look into power design and signal to noise issues...like quality of the traces and other fabrication topics.
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You'll find the higher end offerings from ASUS and Gigabyte to be largely equal. EVGA I'd call more or less equal, but different.
 
For pricing structures higher end I go ASUS, lower end I go Gigabyte.

I've had problems with EVGA in the x58 area with ram totals so I stopped doing builds with their boards last year.

Haven't touched an MSI yet, no customers have said they want to go that route so far.

My 2cents, built about 60 systems over the last two years. Had one Asus RMA, zero Gigabyte and 3 Evga in that time period (evga was all the same board with the same problem till the fourth board worked fine.
 
I love building PC's. But I have to ask you gentleman how is it that you wind up building so many rigs? I talked to a guy (Jeramy of 'Up and Running Computers', Tallahassee, Florida( that is second in command of a small computer store in my neighborhood who tells me that he hasn't built one in over a year...he says most of his work is soldering and other service related matters...I had told him how much I liked building and would like to get into the PC business. I got a similar response from the shop a block away. That guy says they haven't built one in awhile. Theirs a big sign in the window that says they will remove viruses and adware. They have a couple referbs: Pentium 4's (Yes they have hyper threading) and I swear they are the same Pentium 4's they have had on my occasional visits to that store over the last 4 years. :confused:
 
I imagine you'll get some really wild answers but for myself:

I do it as a hobby that has at some times turned into just as much work as my day job, which is totally unrelated. I get everything put at me from word of mouth, I don't advertise anything, and I really don't want to be doing 'out of the blue builds' for people that I don't know off the street without at least some connection

You'd be surprised how many kids there are these days with decent money to blow that don't want some Dell their parents would have bought. Since I have many family members that are still in the high school stage, I'd say a solid 80% of everything is from that user pool. On the other end, I have one brewing that is waiting on what ATI has up it's sleeve, that came via word of mouth because a friend of a co-worker I did a rig for found out I have a 30" monitor.

At any rate, I started doing it for a more selfish reason in that I could get much better pricing when I was hitting certain dollar spends with a retailer for my own gear, and it kind of blossomed from that. It certainly isn't a giant money maker, but it has basically paid for my last upgrade and the 30" monitor . If you averaged it out per hour, It's probably less then what some worker in Mexico gets paid to make Levi jeans.

As far as the Mom & Pop PC shops, I haven't visited one of those since the Pentium 75's were the new hotness, and I wager most people getting a system haven't either.
 
Had nothing but problems with Gigabyte boards. They're very feature-rich, very well priced, and great for the first year or two. Then suddenly everything starts to go wrong. Crap starts failing, won't boot up, etc. And this is in machines that are well-ventilated/maintained, and reformatted. I've had it happen on several different occasions with all kinds of environments.

I switched over to ASUS and it's been nothing but good times since (yes, even after two years). That said, I wouldn't rule out trying other board manufactures, or even giving Gigabyte another chance.
 
I've mainly been going with Gigabyte ever since Epox went away. :(

Asus has been hit or miss with me. I liked them in the past but I went through three of their S775 boards in as many months.

I'm trying my first EVGA mobo this week though. It was a good price, sexy, and EVGA's service is great so I figured I'd give them a shot.
 
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