What's wrong with Gigabyte?
I see Gigabyte is often put down as a sub-par board by many on this forum when talking about motherboards.
Why? Does this come from personal experience with more than 1 motherboard, and/or more than 1 particular model? Or is this just an irrational hatred for a brand that doesn't cotton to the overclocking/extremist community?
Of the Gigabyte boards I've had or people in my family have had I know of no times the boards did not operate like they should. Some sytems are years old and going strong w/ sub-GHz Athlons and SDR RAM.
CRAP. Transformer just blew. I better turn the computer off before UPS goes out. I'll resume this later
Why? Does this come from personal experience with more than 1 motherboard, and/or more than 1 particular model? Or is this just an irrational hatred for a brand that doesn't cotton to the overclocking/extremist community?
Of the Gigabyte boards I've had or people in my family have had I know of no times the boards did not operate like they should. Some sytems are years old and going strong w/ sub-GHz Athlons and SDR RAM.
CRAP. Transformer just blew. I better turn the computer off before UPS goes out. I'll resume this later
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Comments
Nuff said.
NS
They are *usually* NOT set up with good enthusiast features, such as their (normally) very limited voltage options (just one example). Reading around many enthusiast site forums, they have lots of problems across multiple chipsets with stability and compatability with common hardware.
This is not a flame, AJ, just an answer, albeit not totally comprehensive. They just aren't an ENTHUSIAST solution in most cases, for everyday stock usage many of their products are fine.
I've never seen more blown caps, melted ATX12v sockets, and fried voltage regulators than what I saw from Gigabyte.
The motherboards from Gigabyte had problems that motherboards several other manufacturers using the same chipset did not have.
This disservice Gigabyte presents to the computing community knows no boundaries for platform. Athlons and Pentium 4s equally seemed to receive the discourtesy of the Gigabyte boards.
To further expand on the problems of Gigabyte boards, they seemed to exhibit the following;
-Poor IDE speeds
-General slowness
-Trouble interfacing with common slot-based peripherals
-BIOS settings not holding properly
-Overvolting
-Bad temperature sensing never going repaired
Amongst others.
NOT FUNNAH!!! >.<
That motherboard nearly destoryed my 2 Enermax PSUs (had to tear the ATX connectors out the socket) and cost me lots of time and some money.
NS
Case and point is the system I sold a customer a few days ago. They wanted something to do home expenses, connect to the internet for e-mail, do word processing, listen to music and burn DVD's. Game playing was important, but if it cost too much, it would no longer be a consideration.
True... they may be better serviced by an ABIT NF7 or Asus A7N8X for the NForce 2 platform, however their cost prices to me are over $100.00 CDN.
Gigabyte's GA-7N400-L motherboard, with Dual-Channel DDR, NForce 2 Ultra 400, AGP8x, 6-Channel RealTek ALU650 AC-97 codec, RealTek 8100C 10/100 LAN, USB 2.0, Hardware Monitoring, Dual-BIOS safety and Norton Internet Security makes for a powerful home computer motherboard combination.
The better part of this deal is that they are only $76.00 CDN cost price. Comparing the cost price of the NF7 at $103.00 CDN and the A7N8X at $101.00 CDN, you quickly start to see how the cost price of each component plays into your businesses' bottom line.
Pair it with a Barton 2500+, Single Channel Crucial 512 MB DDR400, a Seagate 120 GB SATA-150 Drive, Sapphire Atlantis 9200 Pro, Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM & an Goldstar GSA4040B DVD+/-RW drive and they were set. They already had speakers, a monitor, keyboard and mouse from their previous computer.
By choosing components that perform fine for the task they are asked to do, you can decrease your cost price and make more on a sale. It's business. Gigabyte motherboards perform adequate for their sold intention: stock running with average performance. There are better choices for users who want to venture into overclocking, but the users who overclock generally do not have systems built for them.
keto: Gigabyte definitely isn't an "enthusiast-class" motherboard maker, but I don't hold that against them.
Thrax: This too is exactly what I was looking for. A definitive WHY and not just some cop-out answer of "they aren't overclocker-friendly therefore they suck" or something along those lines.
Sim: My experience with Gigabyte has been very positive. I agree that for a regular PC user Gigabyte is fine. I personally don't buy them anymore (though we still have some Gigabytes in working systems) because I like to O/C my personal computers.
Mudd: Yeah, the Gigabyte's I had contact were are fine. No problems at all. Just rock solid from day 1.
Thanks to all those that replied with insight.
Too bad for the school as these systems were about 6 months out of warranty so they had to pay for the repairs.
ECS
MSI
ASRock
NOT GIGABYTE!
SIS chipsets are sometimes used with economy motherboards, and the boards with those tend to be built with UNDERSPECED power (IE, specs are low for actual board needs) on bords. PCChips and the cheaper Gigabyte boards can use these.
OTOH, the better boards use Via, AMD, or Intel chipsets and not SIS. The high end Gigabytes have better QC and better track records, but they are more expensiove than nForce boards for which I would not use Gigabyte boards from friend's experiences.
Price here is an object, I hope, and the nForce boards that are stable are kickass better bang for buck than SIS or most AMD for a gamer or media type. Gigabyte's nForce offerings do not offer the more recent media bridge-- and you want that if you are at all an audiophile or a video\movie\games\3D\2D desktop publisher type or an artist and do not have lots of funds for a VERY modern high end video card. The latest nForce media bridge can control a decent MX GF4 chip, which is an MX but not by any means a terrible chip to start out with (it is embedded, chip off the south\media bridge). that board is cheaper than a decent Gigabyte by $30.00 to $40.00 if you pay anywhere near retail (the Ultra's have pumped power circuitry overall, and are more rigorously QC'd than the lesser Gigabytes). Board is an Abit NF7-M, SPP and MCP2-T in latest version (look at NewEgg's listing,second listed from a search of NF7) . note that embedded chips rely on system memory, and video cards use their own. thus they are slower, and about the speed of downward emulations of faster chips due to using and relying on main RAM and sharing the load with the CPU for some RAM I\O functions.
Fixed to comply with narrow-word-use technicalities broght up by our resident argumentative nitpicker (IMHO, and I am entiteled to one) who does NOT understand system interaction vocabulary uses. Emulation can have two complete senses of meaning, and embedded video is equiv to emulatio of a card in my book as it uses main RAM and drivers which address main RAM instead of letting the GPU handle onboard RAM I\O mostly from ore raw data. IMHO, electronic devices that rely on software handling compared to true more fully hardware devices that handle things themselves EMULATE to full hardware device-- the chip used is available on a full Video card also, and uses a core similar in grade to a 4200 core, thus I said EMULATES it. I would say a PCTel embedded modem chip EMULATES an external modem also, and is slower becasue the drivers have to handle a lot fo things that a missing protocol control chip would have to do, and embedded graphics are slower because of main RAM bus traffic overhead that is not there 80%-90% of the time due to the card not needing that portion of I\O as it has RAM embedded. this is the traditional second understanding of emulation in terms of USAGE IMPACT effects among engineers adn power users-- chip alone imitates full real thing that exists as a seperate card or device which works seperately better as it does more directly in hardware integral to the device itself when it is a full-fledged integral unit.
* Going ELSEWHERE where there are fewer literalists who think definition number one is the ONLY definition possible.
John.
There is no "Updated media bridge."
<b>nForce2 Northbridge:</b>
1. Can be the nVidia SPP. No onboard video.
2. Can be the nVidia IGP. Onboard video. Interfaces with an additional <b>GeForce4 MX</b> chip. It is not emulation, and it is not a ti4200.
<b>nForce2 Southbridge:</b>
1. THIS is the "Media bridge."
2. It has the MCP or MCP-T.
3. MCP-T has an onboard APU. This is the SoundStorm. It supports 2, 4, or 6 speakers, supports HW Dolby Digital decoding, has enhanced software and utility support, and SPDIF.
4. MCP has no onboard APU, and features none of the capabilities in #3.
5. nForce2 MCP/MCP-T also has the integrated NIC.
The SPP, IGP, MCP, MCP-T were all released to the public at the exact same time.
Now, you COULD be talking about the revision of the Northbridge (A3, A2, A1/C1), but manufacturers largely have not illustrated which version of the bridge their boards carry. But even then, the Northbridge is <b>not</b> the media bridge.
Clear?
Would I use it:
GigaByte - Maybe
ECS - Maybe
MSI - Yes
ASRock - What the heck is that?
The one GigaByte board that I've ever owned has performed fine at completely stock settings over the years. Then again, so have all the PCChips boards I've owned. Chances are, if you don't ask it to do more than it's supposed to, it'll work fine. The notable exception to this is a board that is built to inferior spec and does something like NS's board there... the only one I've had do this to me is my old Abit KX7.
//edit: Thrax: Jihad?
Sorry, I couldn't resist. So if Asus puts out this budget brand, why did they ever put SiS chips on some of their boards? Sounds like a business mistake to me.
As i said 4 board through out my life! gone poof crash and burn!
Asus / Abit boards?? NONE never blew one or one crap out on me
Conclusion??
Asus/ Abit = Good
Giga-Byte = Bad
GIGABYTE BAD
BADD
BADDD
BAADDD
I rather use a Pcchips board!
Oh and while we are on crappy boards
Pfftt @ FIC too!
Subsequently people discovered that they were plagued with a two-fold problem:
1. It was an EPoX board; They fail regularly it seems. Epox, as anyone will notice, has largely disappeared again.
2. The first nForce2 northbridge revisions really sucked.
Cant say much for epox never used them but if thrax says its crap its crap then so........
Pffft @ epox!
Go jump off a bridge.
/me watches as Geeky, Ageek, Intel, Compaq, and Profdlp follow Thrax around, clutching burning torches and pitchforks in their hands.
If there was a fanclub, I would join it solely on reading that first statement.