Stay away from Gigabyte (Or hope you never have a problem)

[Andrew Wonser]

This is also going to be a Realtek rant as well, as they are the ones from which most of the problems stem.

Motherboard is the MA790XT-UD4P

Got all the parts I ordered from Newegg and put it together. Pretty quickly ran into problems that I've found out many others have had. The Realtek audio is a piece of garbage. It was pretty rare for me to be able to boot windows and run a game without needing to hard reset, on average, three times. The problems would either be a total lock w/wo an audio screech or a blue screen pointing back to the audio. While it was very annoying I put up with it, just because that is who I am and I figured worse comes to worse I can always grab an audio card and disable the on-board. But then the ethernet (Again Realtek) failed. It would switch between either not seeing the hardware at all to it working fine, to finally it dying. Oh did I forget to mention that the USB controllers thought that everything plugged in was 1.1 not 2.0.

Sent it to Gigabyte repair, as by that time my Newegg warranty was over, for the USB and ethernet to be fixed. Couple weeks later got it back. USB was fixed and so was the NIC, for about an hour then it dies again. You can't send a product back in for repair a second time until you talk to support, which I've started back on the 30th. The support is, well it's slow and stupid. I'm currently in a back and forth about the drivers for the ethernet. They are telling me to grab the ones for a PCI 10/100 while I'm reiterating that I have a PCI Express 10/100/1000. I've pointed out that the drivers I have installed specifically include the chipset I have while theirs' do not. Provided a link to support that fact, and they ignored it and again stated that the version they are referencing are universal across all sets. Which definitely contradicts Realteks site.

So here I am waiting yet again for another response that surely won't help at all. Though to be honest unless they offer to cover shipping or send me a motherboard without requiring me to return it yet again I'm going to bite the money I spent and grab an ASUS. Which conveniently doesn't have anything Realtek.

[Daehawk]

I dont think Ive had a mainboard problem with any name brand ive owned. Right now I own a Gigabyte board. a UD3R. I cant say Ive had a Realtek problem because I only turned it on long enough to confirm my opinion of onboard sound was the same as it was in 1995. It stinks compared to a sound card. So I disabled it. Sorry you had a major problem like that though.

[TheAtomicKid]

Sad that you're having problems with your board I've owned/used an ep45-ud3p for several months now, and it works like a dream. realtek audio, ethernet, and all).

Out of curiousity, which OS are you running? I'm looking up the board just now to figure out which realtek chipset it uses... ahh... 889a audio, and an 8111dl for the lan. You definitely shouldn't be having problems with either... my board uses an 8111c for the lan, but I think the difference on those is simply a minor revision, not a major hardware changeup... final opinion is 'not sure on the network'.

Back to the real problem though, is that Gigabyte isn't coming through for you on the support, which is sad I've never had to interact with them, so I can't say whether this is normal or not. However, I've heard many horror stories about Asus... but the real truth of the matter is that it's human nature to complain when they get a cruddy deal/situation... they're not so loud when things are going well... so you hear the bad, but don't always hear the good.

For the record, I'm using win7, and the drivers that come with, do a nice job with the audio. It sounds good, and I don't have lockup issues, etc, that you're describing. I'd suggest you've got a problem board, and not necessarily something wrong with the audio specifically. I was a little hesitant myself to use the onboard audio on this board, but I finally decided to simply try it out, compared to my m-audio revolution 7.1, which has a 'pretty good sound to it'. I am not displeased. For the record, I use a set of Klipsch pro-media 2.1's for playback, so if it were putting out crappy audio, I ought to be hearing it. It's not all that and a bag of chips, but it's a fair sight better than any other onboard solution I've tried to use.

Have you checked the gigabyte tech forums? They're actually not on the GB website.. they're here.. http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/ Don't ask me why, cause I dunno

Atomic

[DamageInc]

I've used Giga-byte boards for years and never had any issues.

Sorry to hear about your problem and I now that they don't have much US support, but I don't think it is indicative of their products.

[Jeff]

The support is, well it's slow and stupid

This is pretty much universal throughout the tech industry, at least for tier one support. Hardly limited to Gigabyte. Tier 1 support in the industry is likely to be a housewife who can barely manage to turn their own PC on and off, reading an on-screen troubleshooting flowchart. (And there are probably better flowcharts online).

Honestly, If I stayed away from every product that I was warned to stay away from due to shitty support, I'd own very few products.

Hard drives come to mind. Ever seen forum posts where a guy says "man, I love my Western Digital hard drive, it's fast!" to which someone will inevitably respond: "Western Digital?! ugh, man, can't believe you bought that garbage. I've had FIVE of their drives die on me in the last year, and their support is awful".  You can sub in any brand of hard drive you want for the same response.

Every tech manufacturer on the planet has a failure rate. about 90% of them have crappy support. It boils down to luck if you happen to be one of the 3 to 5% who get one of the bad pieces.

[Dante Rising]

I love Gigabyte products. Sorry to hear about your frustration, however.

[Andrew Wonser]

I've had a gigabyte product in the past as well and apart from some audio issues it ran very well. Hell the laptop I'm using has Realtek in it and it works just fine. And yes I would agree that it isn't hard to find someone with a negative issue concerning hardware. What is really important to me, and will keep me as a customer, is how a company handles the failures. At least with computers the simple fact that you are talking about pieces of hardware that you have installed yourself just might indicate that your tech knowledge is a bit higher than an ordinary user. Which should reflect in the support you receive.

Here's the latest gem from their support. Note that I'm 17 days and 5 questions/4 responses into this conversation.
"are you using the onboard LAN or you are using an separate PCI ethernet card?"

Really? Didn't we already cover this in the initial question?

Out of curiousity, which OS are you running?

Have you checked the gigabyte tech forums? They're actually not on the GB website.. they're here.. http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/ Don't ask me why, cause I dunno

Using XP. Checking the forums right now.

[TheAtomicKid]

Btw, word to the wise. Nothing wrong with asus, but be careful about which board you get. A lot of their stuff uses analog devices chipsets for audio... and AD is exiting the built-in audio market, so driver support will be spotty near-term. Why waste resources supporting a product you no longer make, right? :/

Atomic

[Thin_J]

EVGA is the only good customer service experience I've ever had with any of these companies. I'd registered the product with their website when it first showed up, and it ended up being DOA. They overnighted me a new one and the return shipping label for the dead one was in the box. Took the new one out, put the dead one in, slapped on the new label, and dropped it off at the shipping center on my way home from work the next day.

I may never order from another company as long as they keep that kind of service up.

[Daehawk]

I went with eVga on my vid card this time. But i did have a great experience with BFG last time.