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'm not trying to "smear" you. I read the context.
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.
My argument is essentially that your opinions aren't based on anything empirical. That's absolutely fine but when you post opinions on a forum like this, people will disagree with you.
It's not meant as a personal attack.
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.
Well, you can apply knowledge of how the boards were constructed and what features they had. No, its not the same as practical experience but practical experience can also be influenced by pure dumb luck. Most reviewers thought the MSI X570-A was absolute dogshit. If you want to get technical, its VRM's were anemic and it mattered only when using 12 and 16 core CPU's and pushing those CPU's hard. Even then, my practical experience with the motherboard was fine.
It's issues were largely theoretical. That being said, while my experiences were overwhelmingly positive I can't ignore the fact that the design is lacking for 12 and 16 core CPUs and from an enthusiast standpoint, really isn't a good buy. It's cheap and works, but it wouldn't likely stand the test of time being abused with 16 core CPU's under heavy load a moderate amount of time over the course of two, three or more years.
You can have opinions on things you have no personal experience with, as long as you are clear that your experiences are limited. I know a lot about a lot of boards I've never touched. If I give an opinion on one, I'll add the caveat that I haven't had one on the test bench myself. That doesn't mean I'm not aware of the board's failings, design constraints or the general consensus on that board is.
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?
Well...this leads me back to the point about you not pushing that board very hard. The nForce 600 series chipsets had inadequate VRM's for overclocking quad-core CPU's. This isn't theoretical or a matter of luck, but rather its a fact. The overclocks you can achieve on those boards with CPU's like the Q6600 are minimal at best compared to Intel chipset based motherboards at the time.
Boards with the nForce 600 series chipsets being overclocked with quad-core CPU's have very short life spans. I'd be extremely shocked to find anyone having run such a setup for very long without failure. I had several such boards die on me doing this very thing. That being said, people running two core CPU's like the E6400 etc. often liked those motherboards as they worked very well for that, even when overclocking.
Beyond that, I know a lot about option ROM issues and other failings with those chipsets and their designs. I owned 13 680i SLI chipset based motherboards and all of them died young or were DOA to begin with or had some sort of issue. Those chipsets were plagued with QC issues to say nothing about the ****ty reference design from NVIDIA. Insufficient OROM space, NVIDIA disabling PCIe spread spectrum to improve overclocking with quad-core CPU's effectively made the boards incompatible with SAS controllers and other devices.
So, you were either the luckiest bastard alive if you overclocked a quad core on one of these for any length of time and had no issues with it. These ****ing things used to fry DIMMs, the PCH would delaminate, they were plagued with USB problems and so on. They also ran incredibly hot due to the overly aggressive automatic voltage settings they used. Of course, you can undervolt the chipsets but then they wouldn't work.
The P2L97 was one of my most expensive MBs esp. for the time, so it isn't going to impress me by just working.
I can see where you are coming from on this. That being said, there are boards that are exceptional even if they work as intended. My experiences with the GIGABYTE X399 Designare EX were beyond anything I could have expected. The board was expensive, yes. But it also never exhibited any quirks or issues that I had experienced with similar models or other X399 motherboards. It went beyond my expectations. It also reviewed well. The only thing that sucks about it is the price.
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 get that. My comments about the charts inaccuracies are not mean to be a personal slight against you. It wasn't intended that way. What I mean is that in the grand scheme of what's out there, I wouldn't rank any of those motherboards the way you did. Simply because my experiences with those boards were either quite different, or unremarkable. I also keep in mind what else was on the market at the time.
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".
Again, I reviewed ECS motherboards here and there over the years. All of the boards I've ever seen from that company either had no overclocking options or were severely limited due to cheaper voltage controllers which didn't allow for the same range of adjustments that were common to every other enthusiast board on the market at the time. Therefore, I stand by my statement that you were either unaware that these limitations existed, or weren't running into them because you weren't pushing the hardware.
That said, ECS does get more **** than it often deserved. My experiences with their motherboards, though not great from an enthusiast standpoint did always work well. I never experienced any significant issues with them while on the test bench. I also knew a few people who didn't make much money and used their boards in their personal machines with few if any issues. There is something to be said for that.
I don't have the experience a reviewer has, but in the greater scheme of things I think I have far above average experience.
What you typically encounter on sites like this one are enthusiasts. Based on that and the chart, I was led to the conclusion that in the grand scheme of things, you didn't have as much experience as many people on the forums here. I could have worded that better, I'm sure. Again, no offense was intended.
DUH!, what else would it be comprised of? I'm not going to presume to rank boards I have no experience with.
I understand that. I'd generally leave boards off a list I didn't have experience with either. But I wouldn't call anything the GOAT knowing that other options were out there that were likely better even if I hadn't personally worked with them.
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.
Fair enough, but value is highly subjective and extremely debatable in this context.
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?
Not at all. But at the same time, I'd expect some controversy and differences of opinion from people who have more experience.
And BTW I do overclock, that is the exact reason why some of the boards are ranked on the goat tier.
This is probably why I reacted the way I did as this is precisely what I have a problem with. Again, those ECS boards are limited in their capabilities because they are missing the same levels of adjustments that other boards have. We aren't talking about the dozens of settings most people never touch either. They are lacking the basic vCore adjustment capabilities commonly found on other motherboards on the market. You'd have to have never read any reviews at the time or tried to push those CPU's very far to not realize this.
Those boards do not overclock well because they are limited. Even on air cooling you can achieve more with other boards using the same CPU. A board that doesn't match its peers is not the GOAT. It might have worked great for you, but its not the GOAT. Period. Its your personal GOAT, I get that but if you share sentiments like that with such a limited viewpoint, expect criticism.
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 get that. To be fair, I don't recall the specific limitations of that board, and I don't think I worked with it specifically.
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.
Fair enough, though I think its fair to acknowledge the BX6 rev2.0 could do the same thing and was a better board in other respects. Layout, fan headers, etc.
And the Asrock X79 Extreme 4 got my I7-3820 to 4625, which was ****ing impressive to me from an entry level x79 board.
That is impressive. What isn't impressive is the fact that ASRock X79 boards would not run at default settings. That's a POS in my book. Their default CPU input voltage was below Intel's recommended specs, even before Intel officially increased the base voltage suggested to motherboard manufacturers. The CPU Input voltage is literally so low that these boards do not work properly without tuning.
That's crap.
I've actually written multiple "best of" and "worst of" motherboard and CPU articles that were largely based on only my experiences with what I've owned and reviewed. I fully expected controversy and disagreements in the forums in response to those articles. Hell I think someone even wrote an article on one of the other sites about how much they disagreed with me. Specifically, I **** on some of the DFI LanParty boards with were largely trash.
I didn't get upset about people getting mad at me or disagreeing with me. You can't post opinions like that on a public forum or site and expect everyone to agree with you.
