It's hard to argue against data like this. Even though one may dig deeper to analyze the reasons for 5 versus 1 star reviews, it is probably fair to assume that the percentage of unjustified reviews is the same for all brands. And your explanations about the specific kind of faults is informative as well.

You've made your point. 😀

I had the exact same problem and this is why I have never bought any ASUS mainboard ever again. Oh snap, I actually did, on i820 chipset and it's sitting somewhere in one of my storage boxes.

i had one of these boards when they were brand new.. (2004?) and i have to say.. mine died suddenly.. and with no explanation.. i reluctantly replaced it with a P4S800-DX model but i still preferred the P4P800 i think.. i remember being annoyed for some reason at some differences between the boards .. probably because i preferred the intel chipset.. i think it was something to do with RAID support too.. completely made me switch up how i was doing things.. i think the p4p800 supported RAID in the bios ?

chrisNova777 wrote:

p4p800 supported RAID in the bios ?

Not know about the original P4P800 but P4P800 SE have RAID support for 2 SATA ports.
Unfortunately WinXp only. I not found a Win9x driver for the ICH5R RAID...

Here's what I found out from the manuals:

P4P800 and P4P800 Deluxe support RAID0 on the ICH5 SATA.
P4P800 SE and P4P800-E Deluxe (the revised boards) support RAID0 and RAID1 on the ICH5 SATA.
The lower-end P4P800-VM and P4P800-X do not support RAID on the ICH5 SATA.

In addition to that, the P4P800 Deluxe has a VIA controller with 4xATA ports which support RAID0, RAID1 and RAID0+1. The P4P800-E deluxe has a Promise controller with 2xATA and 2xSATA, which also support RAID0, RAID1 and RAID0+1. But these, naturally, cannot be used together with the Intel ports.

dr_st wrote:

It's hard to argue against data like this.

Up until 2002-ish I was an Asus fan-boy myself. I didn't change my mind for no reason.
It's hard to pinpoint a time but I would say Asus 'lost it' during the transition from PC133 to DDR.

dr_st wrote:

Even though one may dig deeper to analyze the reasons for 5 versus 1 star reviews, it is probably fair to assume that the percentage of unjustified reviews is the same for all brands.

That Happy Factor method only shows how satisfied buyers were. Does not relate directly to failures.
I tried creating a QF (Quality Factor) which compared # of DOAs and/or the # that died in 6 months to the total reviews, but that required reading all the reviews in detail and it became too time consuming very quickly.

The "unjustified reviews" part. Yes, I assume the percentage will be similar for all brands. There is always some of that. It is one of the reasons for a minimum sample size. Usually the unhappy people show up first to gripe so looking at reviews with a low number of responses can be problematic.

One of the funniest "unjustified reviews" I recall was actually a 5-star. IIRC it was a video card. Went something like this:
- This is a great card. It has 'this and this'. It does 'this and this'. [Basically a paragraph right out of the ad.]
[Then the clincher.]
- I can't wait until it gets here so I can use it!
.

Very interesting discussion, seems I'll have to reevaluate my opinion of Asus products. My main rig mobos has been Asus ones since a P2B board 17 years ago.

PCBONEZ: Would you happen to know if ASUS more budget-friendly boards are any better? I have two old budget ASUS boards with budget VIA chipsets - a Socket 754 K8V-X SE and an LGA 775 P5VD2-VM - and neither has given me much trouble. In fact, that cheapo 775 board is less finicky with memory sticks than a high end-looking ASUS board (P45 chipset if I'm not mistaken) I had to use at the University: the exact same set of 2GB DDR sticks that booted and worked just fine on my board would not even POST with the shinier motherboard.

Of course, the caps on my cheap boards are crap. I need to recap the LGA775 board ASAP as it has a bulging cap but it is still running (only because my younger brother doesn't have a PC himself, needed one and this was the best one I had as a spare).

alexanrs wrote:

PCBONEZ: Would you happen to know if ASUS more budget-friendly boards are any better? I have two old budget ASUS boards with budget VIA chipsets - a Socket 754 K8V-X SE and an LGA 775 P5VD2-VM - and neither has given me much trouble. In fact, that cheapo 775 board is less finicky with memory sticks than a high end-looking ASUS board (P45 chipset if I'm not mistaken) I had to use at the University: the exact same set of 2GB DDR sticks that booted and worked just fine on my board would not even POST with the shinier motherboard.

Of course, the caps on my cheap boards are crap. I need to recap the LGA775 board ASAP as it has a bulging cap but it is still running (only because my younger brother doesn't have a PC himself, needed one and this was the best one I had as a spare).

I don't know if I've seen those specific boards. The only difference *I've noticed* between their high and low end boards is that the premium boards are a little less likely to have crap caps.

Their boards that have a V after the dash xxxxx-VM are usually their branded version of some OEM board.
I can't find a system builder that used that model so maybe some contract fell though and they produced it for retail anyway.
For OEM boards it's possible they just do or are contractually obligated to ensure compatibility with a wider range of RAM.
They obviously don't care much anymore about the problems of individual customers but they might for a system builder.
For instance HP would not be happy if they or their customers had problems with RAM compatibility.
- Just speculation though.
.

Thanks. I also believe it is something like that... I mean, why would my bare looking P5VD2-VM run a stick it should'nt be able to once I set the speed manually (one of the sticks I tried was a DDR2-800 stick with missing SPD information for anything but the highest speed, and the board tops at DDR2-667) and a high-end looking board filled with stylish heatsinks, coloured slots and an Intel chipset fail miserably?

These cheap boards served me so well that I bought ASUS boards for my next two main computers - A Z77-A and a Z97-A - before hearing anything about ASUS' bad reputation post-S370 era. I guess I should consider myself lucky as neither has given me trouble yet.

Some times you get lucky with OEM boards.
I had a FIC-eMachines board that was great. I used it in a 24/7 office machine for 5 or 6 years with no problems at all.
I did flash it back to the FIC BIOS which mucked up the eMachines splash screen rather than removing it but it added Prescott support so I didn't mind much.
.

alexanrs wrote:

PCBONEZ: Would you happen to know if ASUS more budget-friendly boards are any better? I have two old budget ASUS boards with budget VIA chipsets - a Socket 754 K8V-X SE and an LGA 775 P5VD2-VM - and neither has given me much trouble. In fact, that cheapo 775 board is less finicky with memory sticks than a high end-looking ASUS board (P45 chipset if I'm not mistaken) I had to use at the University: the exact same set of 2GB DDR sticks that booted and worked just fine on my board would not even POST with the shinier motherboard.

Of course, the caps on my cheap boards are crap. I need to recap the LGA775 board ASAP as it has a bulging cap but it is still running (only because my younger brother doesn't have a PC himself, needed one and this was the best one I had as a spare).

Low end ASUS boards are usually mediocre or complete crap. There are of course some exceptions, but my general experience with anything low end and asus has been poor. In 2006-2009 me and my cousin had a small shop where we sold and repaired computers. Quite a few customers requested low-end asus boards because of asus's strong marketing campaign, and we complied. DOA rate was decent (3-4 out of 50 boards), but an unexpectedly large percentage of low end and ultra high end Asus boards we sold failed after a few months. Of course we had to return the boards to the suppliers personally, witch coupled with the disassembling and reassembling of the client's system meant wasted time and money. After some poking around a good friend who was into PC wholesale business (they sold hundreds of computers to schools and public institutions trough auction) recommended I try Biostar or Foxconn for cheap quality boards and Asrock or MSI for more common more expensive boards. At the time we just landed a contract with a driving school who ordered 84 computers (don't know what for) - so I went with my friend's advice - since Foxconn wa not available in my country in retail, Asrock boards were quite a bit more expensive and MSI boards were never available in decent quantities we went for Biostar - and frankly... out of hundreds of office PC's sold during those years only a ffew came back into the shop and usually for PSU related issues. Biostar's DOA rate was really small to - usually 1 dead board out of 50 - one time we got a batch of 120 boards (G31-M7) and none were DOA. To this day all biostar boards I've owned have been trouble free. The oldest biostar board I own is a socket 3 MB8433UUD I got banged up and covered in mud from a recycling center - and guess what - it works 😁 - the A780L3 AM3 board that used to be in my sister's (then new) PC - then used as a file server until a few months ago still works - and that little board has seen some abuse 😀

For my personal daily-driver I prefer MSI boards. They used to suck in the socket 478-early lga 775 era but now they make pretty nice stuff. Of course, if I had the posibility to buy high end Biostar or ECS boards I'd go for those, but for some reason nobody will even list those in my country let alone stock them - and they're usually quite a bit cheaper.

I remeber getting a Biostar TPower X79 for a measly 198 euro for a friend's LGA 2011 rig and then being forced to spend 270 euro on a GA-X79-UD3 for myself since I couldn't find the TPower in stock anyware when I could afford to get my own LGA 2011 rig... these two were the only LGA2011 boards I found that had properly spaced PCI-E 16x slots as to not suffocate the second GPU plus a legacy PCI slot I could have used for my creative x-fi.

I had an MSI socket A board. I was very pleased with it, but had the misfortune of accidentally cooking the BIOS. It's waiting for me to try resurrecting.

gdjacobs wrote:

I had an MSI socket A board. I was very pleased with it, but had the misfortune of accidentally cooking the BIOS. It's waiting for me to try resurrecting.

Baked, Fried or BBQ?

PCBONEZ wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

I had an MSI socket A board. I was very pleased with it, but had the misfortune of accidentally cooking the BIOS. It's waiting for me to try resurrecting.

Baked, Fried or BBQ?

Or smoked 😁
Or just having forgotten the board was jumpered for CLEAR CMOS and then powering it up 😜

Tetrium wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

I had an MSI socket A board. I was very pleased with it, but had the misfortune of accidentally cooking the BIOS. It's waiting for me to try resurrecting.

Baked, Fried or BBQ?

Or smoked 😁
Or just having forgotten the board was jumpered for CLEAR CMOS and then powering it up 😜

Scrambled. it's PLCC and I messed up using it for a hot swap flash.