Some motherboard advice

D

danyune

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Aug 15, 2006
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Now I know there are probably threads about this, and I know I'm probably going to get railed for "not using search" but I wanted an up-to-date today answer.

I have a PC setup with a Gigabyte X58 UD3R and my friend is telling me I made a bad choice because "Asus > *".

Is he saying I made a bad choice on the board because it's not an asus, or because it is a gigabyte? It's still new so I don't want to make it used by using it so I wanted some professional input and opinions on which board is better, today's opinion that is.

Incase you ask, I don't really plan to overclock much. It's watercooled. Going to be an i7-930 in it. The most stressing thing I'll be doing is video compiling/editing aside from gaming.

Am I looking to see a problem with this GA board?
 
As a former salesman at Fry's, I'll tell you this, I saw a lot less Gigabyte motherboards returned in comparison to other brands, including ASUS.
 
Gigabyte has better BIOS support...

The ASUS board I have has some very blatent bugs in the BIOS related to memory compatibility as well as some timings being repoted wrong.. and even a couple spelling errors.

ASUS is fully aware of the issues, and has yet to release an updated BIOS to fix it. I ended up cross-flashing to the Premium BIOS because some of the bugs have been fixed in it. Timings being misreported as well as spelling errors are still in the Premium BIOS.

ASUS' software utilities are super buggy as well. They are aware of it and have not released updated versions that fix the bugs.
 
ty

i tried to argue back that in the past my asus products have been trouble, mainly because I hate their laptops design with reverse MXM making video cards very expensive to replace. A laptop died 1 year and 1 month after i got it (paid $2000) and their warranty was 1 year, so I was looking at spending probably $600 for a new video card due to their bad design of making the heatsink go from the CPU --> GPU --> outer vent.

Anyway I guess I'll hold onto the GA and use it. I honestly preferred the GA since I had an EP45-UD3P last and it was great. I just wanted some feedback without people knowing I preferred GA
 
danyune said:
ty

i tried to argue back that in the past my asus products have been trouble, mainly because I hate their laptops design with reverse MXM making video cards very expensive to replace. A laptop died 1 year and 1 month after i got it (paid $2000) and their warranty was 1 year, so I was looking at spending probably $600 for a new video card due to their bad design of making the heatsink go from the CPU --> GPU --> outer vent.

Anyway I guess I'll hold onto the GA and use it. I honestly preferred the GA since I had an EP45-UD3P last and it was great. I just wanted some feedback without people knowing I preferred GA
Click to expand...

I have an EP45-UD3P on my old q6600 setup. It is a very nice board. Took my q6600 to 3.84ghz :)
 
yea the ep45-ud3p treated my Q9650 very well, never ever had a problem

I only overclocked from 3.0-3.6, wasn't a big OC fan, just wanted to match my RAM speed
 
danyune said:
Now I know there are probably threads about this, and I know I'm probably going to get railed for "not using search" but I wanted an up-to-date today answer.

I have a PC setup with a Gigabyte X58 UD3R and my friend is telling me I made a bad choice because "Asus > *".

Is he saying I made a bad choice on the board because it's not an asus, or because it is a gigabyte? It's still new so I don't want to make it used by using it so I wanted some professional input and opinions on which board is better, today's opinion that is.

Incase you ask, I don't really plan to overclock much. It's watercooled. Going to be an i7-930 in it. The most stressing thing I'll be doing is video compiling/editing aside from gaming.

Am I looking to see a problem with this GA board?
Click to expand...

I think a few years ago you'd be seeing the Asus as > GA, but recently, especially with the P35 and P45 boards, Gigabyte has come into it's own. I think Asus has actually slipped a little from where they used to be IMHO and are not currently better than any other brand. Gigabyte is actually my preferred brand ATM when building. They're just make a solid product that can OC with the best of em from what I've experienced.
 
I love my Gigabyte board. The only other brand I have ever really used is DFI and did a lot of research when buying this last time since DFI was not an option. In the end it came down to Asus, MSI and Gigabyte. I have no regrets going with Gigabyte and would do so again.
 
Tell your friend to stop being a fanboi and Gigabyte is in the same class as Asus.

I still remember how horrible the ASUS M3 series were... that just last year too.
 
Gigabyte is good. The oldest mobo that I still have working is a Gigabyte 848-chipset board. Rock solid for the better part of a decade.

In general, don't listen to the fanboys who say that one brand is better than another across the board. Some might have better customer support, or better RMA policy, or something like that. Some might be better with rebates. Some might have better BIOS support and drivers/utilities.

There may also be single instances, i.e. a specific model or series of boards has a design flaw that hasn't been corrected and causes issues.

But rarely, if ever, is one manufacturer putting out a product lineup where every single product is inferior to competitors at the same price point, especially when they are all using the same chipset. Anyone who claims that is just a fanboy.
 
everytime i have to go to Asus website for a fix or something, i want to stab myself in the face :mad: next time around i'll consider other options ;)
 
You did very well friend. Don't worry about your "buddy", besides what kind of friend tells his brother his board sucks cause he didn't buy this or that board?

Gigabyte is one of the best and most innovative board makers there are period. You cannot really go wrong with them. The board you picked in particular is a very nice board.
 
you friend is just an asus fan.the gigabyte X58A-UD3R's are awesome OCing boards.
i have owned 3 UD3R's and now an X58A-UD5 and the UD3R is just as good as my UD5.
i also owned 10+ EP45-UD3P's and 4 EP45-UD3R's and thats when gigabyte really started
making very solid OCing MB's.with the release of the 1156 MB's gigabyte also has some
of the best OCing MB's out there.the super cheap H55M-UD2H is beating highend P55's
in high bclk OC's.so dont worry what he says just take the info you learn from everyone
here and point out his BS by pointing out gigabytes soon to be lengendary P45,P55,H55,X58
motherboards:D
 
Gigabyte is my preferred mobo maker.

i've used them all. great quality, solid feature sets and usually don't break the bank.
 
I had that Gigabyte board. Only upgraded because I wanted to go mATX in a small case. Solid performance.

Make sure you flash to the latest BIOS, but otherwise good.
 
Dizon248 said:
As a former salesman at Fry's, I'll tell you this, I saw a lot less Gigabyte motherboards returned in comparison to other brands, including ASUS.
Click to expand...
How did ECS and Biostar do in comparison?

How often were returned mobos found to be OK, and how thorough were returns tested? I took back a PC Chips Socket A because it suddenly quit working after a few hours of burn-in testing (the ECS version failed in less than 2 years, for a reason I still don't understand), and I returned an already-returned Tyan Socket 370 because one of its fan headers had no power at all.
 
I have had a few gigabyte boards and they all perform as intended and I have used several Asus boards in my main rigs and have very rarely experienced problems, they do have a clunky website but I find that Asus Bios' are solid. But I don't think I would ever swear off a board just because its Gigabyte, maybe your friend works for Asus :D
 
lol he doesn't work at asus I know that for a fact :p

I've been using the gigabyte board, very stable
 
I switched to Gigabyte after Abit packed it in.................Abit was my preferred board for years and never had a duff one.........I started with the KR7A (non RAID) board and never looked back, and my last one was the Fatal1ty AN8 Ultra which still works just fine as does my NF7-S v2 board.
I had one GIgabyte board during that time..........since early 2000's but can't remember what.
Sorry.....going down memory lane.........but I don't think you can go wrong with Gigabyte, but never had to test out their RMA service....and hope not since my board and 4870X2's are Gigabyte too.
Never liked Asus much though........had one once....an A8V and quickly sold it and bought the Abit AV8 with neat USB clock thingy.
 
I've have never really had an issue with any Gigabyte board I've owned. Of course I've never been an Asus fan anyway. I usually buy Abit.
 
ASUS QC and overall service blows. This is coming from experience, after having 1 OK ASUS board, and several pretty crappy ones over the years, horrible vdroop being one of the major issues among just about all of the boards.

Gigabyte is a lot better than most of the crap out there, and I can't say that I really prefer any particular manufacturer over Gigabyte. I'm going with Foxconn for my next board, but it was a decent price and from what I gather, a very good performer. Otherwise I would have went Gigabyte. I used to like Abit as well before they pulled out of the business.
 
I have had more than 10 years of experience tell your friend there is no such thing as a good brand. research each product individually and don't worry about it. I am using the same board as you and I selected it because it is a reasonable price and good performer with very little problems. And it overclocks well. You see when companies get a good name they tend to cheap out because people buy based on name alone. And every so often no matter how good the company they make a lemon. And most of the time lesser known companies are working harder than the big guys to get to the top. At the end of the day its all made in very similar places with very similar parts.
 
i really liked abit but they are no longer int he biz...they always seemed to be very overclocker friendly too. the only boards i've had problems with were both asus boards i've owned
 
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