At least when Abit stopped making good boards, they did us the curtousy of killing off the ATX line, and sticking to super-econo-boards for sub-$400 OEM boxes. I wonder how long before Gigabyte and Evga go the way of Asus and Abit.
I would have thought that mainly had something to do with the fact they were going bankrupt, not because they had a downturn in quality...
Actualy it was because they got bought out by some company that thought it would be a good idea to compete with PCchips...they killed of the high-end line and all the ATX boards, and started buying used components...but doing that destroyed the quality. OEMs may want cheap components, but they don't want to have to pay techs to replace parts over and over...this is what finally put Abit out of business...when PCchips is making better boards, you deserve to go out of business.