I just bought a DFI mainboard. I was a loyal Abit fan since Slot 1 first came out...the only other board I bought untill this DFI was an Asus (before Abit started making Slot A boards). But I cannot buy Abit anymore. They do not have one board with AM2+ & 2 PCI-E x16 slots, NOT ONE!!! So my old Abit board (discontinued, but with more features than anything they still make) will go into my multimedia center, and the next time my gaming rig needs a better mainboard (and the multimedia center gets my new DFI board)...That will be when I officialy stop using Abit products. R.I.P. ABIT, you served me well for years, but now even MSI has better boards. It is like they just gave up...
They may be manufactured under a new name these days. http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboards/display/20060710234838.html but there have been some recent rumbles that they may be quitting. http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboards/display/20060710234838.html
Ya, I know they got bought out a while ago...but they kept making good boards up untill recently. I read that article you Varnull posted & found this... "without being known in the communication/network markets, Abit will just become one of the many suppliers of appropriate equipment, thus, the value of the brand will decline." To me this says that rather than make a few great products, they would rather make lots of "Good Enough" or "Appropriate" equipment, preferably network adapters, switches, and hubs. This is insane. I live 3COM network parts, but I will not buy a mainboard from them. I love seagate hard disks, but I am not about to buy a seagate video card. I loved Abit (whe they made good boards) but I am not going to buy a router from them (& BTW...the network devices were usualy the only complaint I had with abit products...that's right, they want to move into the sector that they were always terrible at!) DFI is not a great mainboard, but Abit has given up the high end (and asus never got it right to begin with), so I will stick with my DFI untill some other company adopts the strategy that made Abit famous.
I agree.. Most motherboards these days seem poor quality "built down to a price" hardware. I can't imagine using a MSI board for instance 10 or 15 years from now unlike some of the abit and packard-bell 8088 and 286 boards I have. I discovered an Abit K6 board in a case I was stripping to use for something else earlier.. It's still in fine working order and supports the full multiplier without any problem. Got it up to 440MHz before it refused to boot. Not bad for nearly 10 years old. (and the K6/2 isn't known for it's overclocking potential) They will be missed by those of us who like quality and reliability, but it seems that pc hardware like everything else these days is not built to last. The unsustainable throw away society and gross profit margins are beginning to crumble. We will be glad we held on to our old hardware in years to come, even if others think we are crazy.
I would not even mind if the parts were only designed to last for only 2 years, I usualy only use them for half that (sometimes more for hard discs, raid cards, & TV tuners). I just wish they would make parts that work good & have hardware-based features...even if they do burn out after 2 years. For Example: I was reading through some AMD tech documents...did you know that the 790FX chipset supports twin AM2+ sockets (!!!EIGHT CORES TOTAL!!!)? But I have not yet seen one mainboard with twin AM2+ sockets. ...And consumer mainboard companies seem to be in love with PCI, and affraid of PCI-X. Can't figure that one out...
