Intel v. Gigabyte Motherboards

[outrun]

I am getting ready to start sequentially purchasing components for my first build-your-own desktop. I have narrowed down the motherboard brands to Intel and Gigabyte. Asus was ruled out due to many reviews discussing driver issues. I know Intel is solid and offers aggressive pricing incentives to edge out the competitors. Gigabyte both on the site and boxing advertise using highest quality japanese capacitors,more copper use, motherboard construction and even redundant bios chips.

Is there a quality differential here? Or just advertising games?

The CPU will be the Intel Quad Core i7 ... prolly the "lower" end 2.66 Ghz. The other i7 options range up to 1,000 which I would be fool to spend on now. I recieved a nice offer for an Intel P45 based motherboard and the 2.53 Ghz chip for 249$ which I am considering.

Application would be for internet, high performance gaming, HDTV/cable, and Bluray movies.

Thanks-

Gigabyte

 

[Bill in Utah]

Had excellent success with Gigabyte boards for years.

My latest build is on a Foxconn board which is great. (actually my last 4 computers have been bought (3 laptops and 1 desktop)

I am NOT a gamer so I don't do high end video cards or bleeding edge CPU.

The internet, HDTV and bluray seem to work fine on my 2.4mhz Dualcore Intel. I've got the HDTV hooked up via a HDMI cable and it works great.

Of all your apps listed, the Internet is the lower demand on the CPU/system IMO. I've got a 15mbit line and my wife's Celeron does great with anything she does.. (Dell laptop)

Take care, bill

 

[UberxG]

Go with Gigabyte, ive built 3 systems using Gigabyte. No problems from customers and Solid from day 1. Apart from BIOS updates from time to time.

Reason i like them as you said, it was for the solid capacitors they use in there motherboards and very a tweakable bios

 

[tropic]

I think Intel's mainboards are consistently of higher build quality than Gigabyte's offerings. Of course, trying to tweak Intel boards can be frustrating to impossible.

 

[StevieC]

I would use Gigabyte. I have used both and both are good, but I'm slightly more biased towards the Gigabytes because I have personally used them when I used to sell computers a few years back.

 

[brianl703]

The one Linux server that consistently gave me problems was running a Gigabyte board. All the rest were running Asus, with no problems at all. Now, granted, this was about 10 years ago..but I find it difficult to forget the brand of motherboard that gave me so much trouble. I must have spent hours tracking down that problem.

 

[PandaBear]

If you don't care about overclocking both would be fine. Intel being more standardized and have more conservative setting and components.

Gigabyte has good quality where it counts, like the voltage and power regulation circuits and the overclocking features.

If you like to tinker, stay with Gigabyte; if you are the "if it ain't broken don't fix it" type, stay with Intel.

 

[StevieC]

Originally Posted By: brianl703
The one Linux server that consistently gave me problems was running a Gigabyte board. All the rest were running Asus, with no problems at all. Now, granted, this was about 10 years ago..but I find it difficult to forget the brand of motherboard that gave me so much trouble. I must have spent hours tracking down that problem.


I have had problems with Asus boards catching fire (10 of them). TX-97. Every company has it's issues now/again and can't be judged by a few boards...

I have an Asus in my current desktop and it works great...

 

[OVERKILL]

FWIW, the Intel boards are made by FOXCONN.