MB tier list

[MadMummy76]

I know everyone was waiting for this so here goes: /s



Again, this is not necessarily a direct comparison but a judgement based on expectation and value provided by the boards. I feel a few lines of explanation is necessary for some of the choices might seem odd to some.

GIGABYTE X58: I purchased this when I first had the opportunity to build my PC without heavy compromises. It was as bad as it was expensive. I contemplated banishing it to the garbage tier, but I showed mercy. So why is it so bad? It was unstable at the mildest overclocks, I couldn't even get the expensive RAM I got to run anywhere near its rated speed with it. Huge disappointment. I vowed to never buy GIGABYTE again for my main rig after this.

ASROCK 775 Dual-VSTA: This did exactly what I wanted it to do. Be a bridge platform while I upgraded my GPU from AGP to PCIE, and my RAM from DDR to DDR2 bit by bit. It worked flawlessly with all combinations I had thrown at it. Without it I'd have needed to replace everything in my PC at once. Which would've meant some ungodly compromises.

ECS K7S5A: Everybody thinks of ECS as a garbage brand, probably rightly so. But this was the only board I ever owned from this brand, and it worked perfectly for me. I had a shoestring budget to build at this time, so I decided I'd rather spend it on the CPU. I did not experience any drawbacks. I was even able to OC with a modified BIOS, which was an added bonus I never expected.

Also anything older than the P2L97, I really have no opinion on, before the SLOT1 era all I knew about hardware is how to turn it on.

 

[Brian_B]

I'd say the Abit BP6 was the most fun build I ever did. It was utterly impractical, but still fun.

I've never been able to get myself to trust Asrock motherboards. A lot of people swear by them, but I'm always afraid I'm going to break them

 

[MadMummy76]

I'd say the Abit BP6 was the most fun build I ever did. It was utterly impractical, but still fun.

Was the BP6 the dual slot version? I liked the BH6 because with cheap ppga and fcpga adapters it could serve three generation of CPUs for me, while also being great at OC.

I've never been able to get myself to trust Asrock motherboards. A lot of people swear by them, but I'm always afraid I'm going to break them

I'd say for me ASROCK is up there with ASUS, those are my two goto brands. I doubt MSI and Gigabyte way more.

 

[Brian_B]

Was the BP6 the dual slot version

Dual Celeron, yes

 

[Niner51]

I've never been able to get myself to trust Asrock motherboards.

Only one I had was a prebuilt I bought several years ago when I got back into PC's. I put into a build for a coworker who was using it as a "every day" PC. The board was basic but stable with no issues. I don't usually look their way for my builds. Abit was my favorite for years back in the day going back to the good old AMD socket 462 days.

 

[Dan_D]

I know everyone was waiting for this so here goes: /s

View attachment 3045

Again, this is not necessarily a direct comparison but a judgement based on expectation and value provided by the boards. I feel a few lines of explanation is necessary for some of the choices might seem odd to some.

GIGABYTE X58: I purchased this when I first had the opportunity to build my PC without heavy compromises. It was as bad as it was expensive. I contemplated banishing it to the garbage tier, but I showed mercy. So why is it so bad? It was unstable at the mildest overclocks, I couldn't even get the expensive RAM I got to run anywhere near its rated speed with it. Huge disappointment. I vowed to never buy GIGABYTE again for my main rig after this.

ASROCK 775 Dual-VSTA: This did exactly what I wanted it to do. Be a bridge platform while I upgraded my GPU from AGP to PCIE, and my RAM from DDR to DDR2 bit by bit. It worked flawlessly with all combinations I had thrown at it. Without it I'd have needed to replace everything in my PC at once. Which would've meant some ungodly compromises.

ECS K7S5A: Everybody thinks of ECS as a garbage brand, probably rightly so. But this was the only board I ever owned from this brand, and it worked perfectly for me. I had a shoestring budget to build at this time, so I decided I'd rather spend it on the CPU. I did not experience any drawbacks. I was even able to OC with a modified BIOS, which was an added bonus I never expected.

Also anything older than the P2L97, I really have no opinion on, before the SLOT1 era all I knew about hardware is how to turn it on.

This list is so inaccurate, I hardly know where to begin. Firstly, ASRock has never made a board that should be on the GOAT list. Ever. The BX6 Rev 2.0 garnered far more praise than the BH6 and for good reason. It was better in just about every way. The BP6 was another stellar offering from them. GIGABYTE's X58A-UD9 was worse than the UD3R, no nForce 600 series board should be listed as anything other than the garbage tier.

I could produce a lengthy article on why that's the case alone. ASUS' CUSL2-C, again not really that impressive. ABIT NF7-S, again doesn't make the cut. ASUS P2L97 is better than you are giving it credit for.

I could go on and on.

 

[Brian_B]

I could go on and on.

Well, the dude is entitled to an opinion. And maybe availability and pricing from being in Europe changes how things get weighted.

I am trying to figure out why the rows are color coded, then the names are color coded according to a different scheme but using the same colors. Kinda throws me for a loop, but I think I get what he's trying to say.

 

[Dan_D]

Well, the dude is entitled to an opinion.

Of course he is. That being said, I strongly disagree with his opinion as someone who has owned or reviewed a great many of the motherboards on his list. That's all. Also, I forgot to mention this earlier but any chart listing an ECS anything as one of the greatest motherboards of all time can't be taken seriously.

The list shows me he doesn't have that much experience with hardware in the grand scheme of things. The list is comprised of whatever he has personally owned, and he didn't run into the limitations many of these lower end boards have. That tells me he wasn't overclocking them or really pushing these boards either.

It would be like a car guy saying he's owned a 4 cylinder Mustang Fox Body and a V6 Mustang II and declaring the Mustang II as the greatest Mustang of all time. Someone who says that doesn't race, probably never drives in more than a straight line and hasn't owned Mustangs from other eras which are all better in just about every way you can imagine. Certainly they liked their cars and that's fine but the list comes from a very narrow perspective.

 

[Grimlakin]

Of course he is. That being said, I strongly disagree with his opinion as someone who has owned or reviewed a great many of the motherboards on his list. That's all. Also, I forgot to mention this earlier but any chart listing an ECS anything as one of the greatest motherboards of all time can't be taken seriously.

The list shows me he doesn't have that much experience with hardware in the grand scheme of things. The list is comprised of whatever he has personally owned, and he didn't run into the limitations many of these lower end boards have. That tells me he wasn't overclocking them or really pushing these boards either.

It would be like a car guy saying he's owned a 4 cylinder Mustang Fox Body and a V6 Mustang II and declaring the Mustang II as the greatest Mustang of all time. Someone who says that doesn't race, probably never drives in more than a straight line and hasn't owned Mustangs from other eras which are all better in just about every way you can imagine. Certainly they liked their cars and that's fine but the list comes from a very narrow perspective.

I would say the list go's to show that if you're NOT overclocking or 'pushing' the hardware even cheap motherboards CAN be perfectly fine for a general user.

 

[MadMummy76]

This list is so inaccurate, I hardly know where to begin. Firstly, ASRock has never made a board that should be on the GOAT list. Ever. The BX6 Rev 2.0 garnered far more praise than the BH6 and for good reason. It was better in just about every way. The BP6 was another stellar offering from them. GIGABYTE's X58A-UD9 was worse than the UD3R, no nForce 600 series board should be listed as anything other than the garbage tier.

I could produce a lengthy article on why that's the case alone. ASUS' CUSL2-C, again not really that impressive. ABIT NF7-S, again doesn't make the cut. ASUS P2L97 is better than you are giving it credit for.

I could go on and on.

You just looked at the picture and ran with it without reading any of the context, haven't you? Or you just choose to ignore it and smear me anyway?

I clearly stated that this is not a direct comparison of performance and or quality, but on how the boards performed based on price and expectation.

How would I even compare boards that I never experienced, did that even occur to you? The BX6 2.0 was praised to hell and back, but I never used one personally so how would it make it on my list? I'm sorry, that my job wasn't reviewing MBs so I could've experienced all of them.

I'm also aware of the issues with nforce chipsets, but it worked out for me well enough, why is it so hard to believe?

The P2L97 was one of my most expensive MBs esp. for the time, so it isn't going to impress me by just working.

Well, the dude is entitled to an opinion. And maybe availability and pricing from being in Europe changes how things get weighted.

Well, you wouldn't need to guess if you only read the text. Why do I even bother writing if everyone just looks at the picture and makes up their own story?

The tiers are based on how much value each board provided to me, nothing more. And as such it specifically only contains boards that I owned,.

I am trying to figure out why the rows are color coded, then the names are color coded according to a different scheme but using the same colors. Kinda throws me for a loop, but I think I get what he's trying to say.

I didn't think this would be so hard to crack, the rows are color coded from best to worst blue being the best and red the worst. And the names are color coded by manufacturer with the typical color associated with them. You make it seem like I was creating the davinci code

 

[MadMummy76]

Of course he is. That being said, I strongly disagree with his opinion as someone who has owned or reviewed a great many of the motherboards on his list. That's all. Also, I forgot to mention this earlier but any chart listing an ECS anything as one of the greatest motherboards of all time can't be taken seriously.

I only owned the boards on my list, therefore I cannot compare them to anything else not on my list, can I? I wrote an entire paragraph why the ECS is ranked so high, you could've at least try to understand it, instead of running with "you're stupid".

The list shows me he doesn't have that much experience with hardware in the grand scheme of things.

I don't have the experience a reviewer has, but in the greater scheme of things I think I have far above average experience.

The list is comprised of whatever he has personally owned,

DUH!, what else would it be comprised of? I'm not going to presume to rank boards I have no experience with.

and he didn't run into the limitations many of these lower end boards have. That tells me he wasn't overclocking them or really pushing these boards either.

I think I clearly explained why those low end boards ranked high, read it. You don't need to guess. This list was not meant as a direct comparison of features and quality. But of value for price, which I explained in the first line after the picture, to no avail it seems.

It would be like a car guy saying he's owned a 4 cylinder Mustang Fox Body and a V6 Mustang II and declaring the Mustang II as the greatest Mustang of all time.
Someone who says that doesn't race, probably never drives in more than a straight line and hasn't owned Mustangs from other eras which are all better in just about every way you can imagine. Certainly they liked their cars and that's fine but the list comes from a very narrow perspective.

Oh so only the opinion of those matters who has unlimited funds to buy the best of the best boards and push them to their limits with liquid nitrogen?

And BTW I do overclock, that is the exact reason why some of the boards are ranked on the goat tier.

I was able to coerce the ECS K7S5A to a mild overclock of the palomino, against all odds and expectations and it blew me away.
I was able to overclock my Celeron 366 to 566 in the BH6, and then the Celeron 600 to 1136, using the very same board.
And the Asrock X79 Extreme 4 got my I7-3820 to 4625, which was ****ing impressive to me from an entry level x79 board.

 

[Brian_B]

Well, you wouldn't need to guess if you only read the text. Why do I even bother writing if everyone just looks at the picture and makes up their own story?

Geez, here I was defending you and I get slammed for even that.

 

[MadMummy76]

Geez, here I was defending you and I get slammed for even that.

Well if your defense of me is ignoring what I clearly stated while acting in a condescending way, then I respectfully decline.

 

[David_Schroth]

The ECS K7S5A was a very practical and economical board - that's what puts it in the running. It could run either DDR or SD memory and all the flavors of Athlon chipperies you could throw at it. The perfect upgrade or replacement board for someone that didn't want to re-purchase memory at that time and could spend the dollars on more processor instead (or, allowed them to take an old busted SDRAM based system and put it into a new board). I sold it all day long for $60 and it cost the shop about $42 or so. These sold well and didn't come back with problems.

 

[Brian_B]

Well if your defense of me is ignoring what I clearly stated while acting in a condescending way, then I respectfully decline.

I'm sorry you took it that way. It honestly wasn't intended to be condescending.