Asus was once a company that would make very good product. But, for some time now, the product they now have are not up to their past reputation. Some years ago, you could find a bad one among good one, but now, you are most likely to hear about one gret product among a batch of flawed design.
I know, from experience, that their nforce3 and 4 based motherboard are not among the best produced. While they are "adequate" for certain, they have too many flaw to be called outstanding product. It looks like that, from now, Asus should be the budget line of Asrock, as the Asrock motherboar, while not being the perfect one, are robust product. The 939 DUAL SATA2 motherboard is one of the best I've used/tested. And oveclock way better that even the top of line premium serie.. while costing 3 times less..
A good exemple about how flawed a motherboard can be is by looking at the BIOS update.. Asus seem to release BIOSes every week.. A good motherboard with a solid design as a basement wouldnt need to be patched every week or month for its entire life. While BIOSes to support new CPU are something that has to be done, seeing an update that fix one thing but screw another one.. that would be fixed by a new BIOS.. that would bring its lot of incompatibility.. to me, it is not normal. I know someone that tried to upgrade his BIOS on the A8N-E motherboard to enable newer feature only to find out that is messed up the something with the PCI slot causing some of his car to stop functionning.. He then tried older BIOS.. down to the original BIOS he first had..
I one time or two had to set up a system based on VIA chipset with an Asus motherboard.. this went well and the thing is still running good. But it was a budget board with integrated video... for socket 754.
And the problem is not only part of AMD motherboard serie .. no.. Intel motherboard does suffer from bad engineering too. The P4S800(or the 533, I don't remember well..) has so many flaws that give the SIS chipset a bad reputation... Just like back in time, VIA gives AMD a bad reputation ... Even board based on Intel chipset from Asus has voltage regulator problem. While the A8R-MVP is a good board overall, and probably the only Asus I would get so far, I still read about voltage spikes from time to time.. just like the brand new P5WD2 with Intel 975x chipset, as shown by
this article from Anandtech.
This article from techfear show how an Asus board with nforce chipset for Intel did perform.. Draw your own conclusion..
What's good by not being a fanboy of any brand is that you can look at different product with rather objective eyes.. Instead of trolling forums to prove your point about your beloved company not having flawed product, you look at the offering and pickup the best, according to your preference and utility.
Today, I'm using Asrock and AMD. Tomorrow, I don't know.. I'm souting the forum and web site looking for the rare gem... And when I'll find it, I use it t'il I find something else. But right now.. no Asus for me.