Intel vs. AMD

sam,
I hear what your saying.
I would find it hard to buy another Benq burner for that very reason.(At the moment anyway).Iv'e had a good experience with my old ECS board so that makes it easier for me to give this board a go if I were upgrading right now.I'm also keen to see a bios update for this board in the future and see some more test results!!!

 

marsey99,
your pictures aren't pictures!!

 

??wtf?? they work for me with fire fox

http://images.tomshardware.com/2007/02/22/680i-motherboard-comparison/ecs_pn2_sli2_top.jpg
http://images.tomshardware.com/2006/12/21/680i-motherboard-comparison/pic6.jpg
try those

 

marsey99,
Their working now!!LOL!!!
Thought I must have missed something!!

Hang on..now there not showing,and when I click on the links I see this message:

 

Tomshardware is fairly reputable when it comes to doing reviews. I'll listen to Tom's over the likes of The Enquirer. For the nVidia 680i boards the author doesn't seem to think too highly of ECS. ECS hasn't been the patsy the past years, they were the bum. Maybe they're on the road to being a reliable board, but they're going to have to prove it first. Proving it is hard to do when most people are going with the proven boards such as ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte. Take a look at the Conclusion and Author's Note on the 680i review.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/02/22/680i_motherboard_comparison_part_2/page13.html#conclusion

 

PacMan777,
Hopefully we will see some more reviews of the players when new bios revisions are available.
I must admit though, ECS will have to prove themselves, but judging by what I have seen,theyr'e off to a good start!!

 

Are you going by what you've read on the new boards or do you have some personal experience? The reviews I've been reading haven't been that flattering. I've not had the good experiences with ECS that you have. So for me (and probably a lot of others), it's wait and see. I won't be investing any money to find out.

 

PacMan777,

I haven't had any personal experience with this particular board(neither has anyone here that I know of) but from what Iv'e been reading ECS have done their homework on this one and it's certainly showing some promise...Time will tell I guess.

The reviews Iv'e seen so far have all been quite positive I thought.

 

Sammorris,

It should be 5-5-5-15!

Crowy,

I for one will have to take a wait and see attitude when it comes to ECS as every experience I've had with them in the last 4 years has been bad. This incldes both Intel and AMD platforms. They seem to have a knack of lasting about 2 months past the warranty or not working at all. On my last one, it was supposed to support the Prescot, but it didn't. What made me angry was that ECS knew it and never mentioned it when I called thier Tech Service. I wound up paying an outrageous sum for it because of the double shipping. It was not a cheapo model either, but a higher end one. For now, I'll pass!

Happy Computering,
theone

 

theone,
I understand your lack of faith in ECS.
I have the same lack of faith with Benq!!!
As you know,this board has only been available for a short time so the longevity of it will only come to light after....Time!!!!
I remember you mentioning troubles with an Asus board you have some time ago.Even the best can fail!!
Once a few of these boards are sold and we see some customer feedback who knows what the outcome will be???

 

Crowy,

Very true, but I did abuse the hell out of that MB and Asus did replace it! The ECS's were junk from the start. I'm glad to see them doing something about it! I wish them well but like you said, we will have to wait and see what time brings.

Happy Computering,
theone

 

Now this is awkward, I have the same attitude with Benq too, and that DOES come from personal experience. People can swear by them as nuch as they like nowadays, I'm not taking the risk any more. Three different DVD burners, a Matshita SW-9581 OEM, an LG GSA-4163 and an NEC ND-4570 have all managed to last significantly longer than the 3 weeks both of my acer/benq drives did. I'm always wary of when one company trades with two different names. But enough about them. While the performance, and indeed reliability of that ECS board may be good, it is probably only because it's not a board ECS have designed themselves. A lot of previous ECS boards have had questionable design features, and this is what gives them their "bum" reputation for quality. I remember not too long ago a board that used two 7 or 8000rpm fans to cool the chipset and voltage regs, supposedly noisy as hell. We're not all quietPC enthusiasts, but there's just no reason for that.

Oh, but before I gloat, I now have to RMA an Asus board. So there, things happen. It refuses to recognise any network adapter i plug in (I've tried 4 different Gigabit PCI cards, and a 100Mbps PCI card) and not only that, it no longer recognises the onboard networking either. The company I bought it from are less than eager to help me, but I'd rather go with them than suffer any of the issues Theone had, and I don't fancy paying to ship a motherboard to the USA either.

 

Sam,

Thats a valid point.

 

Crowy

And the ones I've been reading, such as the review from Tomshardware, have been less than flattering. Anandtech has been doing reviews on big name 680i boards, but I've seen nothing from them yet on the ECS. With comments to the effect that it doesn't have any serious problems looks better for ECS. Like we've been saying... wait and see. Looking at the relatively small difference in cost compared to what one gets, I think the GigaByte and ASUS would be better choices. I'm not just mimicing what the Tomshardware author is saying. I've mentioned my preference for those manufacturers' boards in the past.

 

PacMan777,
Iv'e always liked giving any underdog a chance to wrestle the crown from the big boys.It creates competition and that can only be good for the consumer.As we said.... only time will tell!!

 

I read about that as well. Seems theonejrs helped that board along by jacking the voltage settings higher than they should have been while those around him were warning of the impending damage. Those old boards weren't intended for power like he was using. Anything can be broke if the user tries hard enough. It seems ASUS still came through and rebuilt the board. From what theonejrs said, ASUS even beefed up the power handling of the board for him.

 

PacMan777,
Asus have always had a good rep when it comes to warranties.

 

I agree, competition is good for the consumer. I often cheer for the underdog, but not a company being a dog. ECS' past record has been an affront to the consumer. The underdog should have a good product to compete with the bigboys, i.e. AMD's hypertransport and dual cores in comparision to Intel's pre-C2D processors. If the current ECS offerings turn out to be okay, it will be following a long term of shoddy merchandise. ECS didn't get the name by accident, they earned it. Now they have to earn a good name, if they can. They've made a small start.

 

And for making good boards.

 

Sammorriss

LOL There's goes the PC and optical media businesses.