http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1917/1/
I think we know of this already.But i posted as a new topic to highlight the issue.Mods can merge this with the IB review thread if necessary.

Good thing i have a z77 Gigabyte MB and an ASRock z68 MB
- not the other way 'round

yeah pretty much

I've never liked Giagabyte much. Gigash!te is more like it.

i really like Gigabyte as bang for buck for myself. i have picked two GB MBs in a row now. My Z77 MB is cheap yet fully functional and it is easy to overclock and stable. Every company makes mistakes and Gigabyte acknowledged their error very quickly. It is unfortunate and it does not appear that it is fixable with a future BIOS update.

i am going to benchmark my Gigabyte z77 MB against ECS' top z77 MB vs my ASRock z68 MB. i am only keeping one of them.

They skimp in places they should not (especially considering the prices they charge), like the PCI-e voltage regulator trouble you had. And like the article said, they had a million and one models of any given chipset, which is great fun years later for tech support guys trying to update BIOSes and what not (I may be a bit biased there from "the old days", when websites were not so good, motherboard markings were poor and keeping a board up to date was a pain in the but, but, Gigabyte excelled at making it a bigger pain in the butt than anyone other than PC-Chips and co.)

i think you are biased from the old days. Gigabyte is good bang for buck for the past 3 years. When is the last one you had?

And the issues with my X58 Gigabyte MB are not related to its design.

Me, personally, never owned one. Dealt with plenty over the years though. I don't particularly care about bang for buck with a motherboard, I care about reliability and never having to do more than update the BIOS on it (and then only rarely).

ASUS, ABIT (when they were still around) and now ASRock are about the only motherboard brands you'll get me to touch with a 50 foot barge pole, particularly if they are going into a customers system.

i give high marks to ASRock also. Good bang for buck compared with ASUS imo

i like bang for buck. And it includes reliability. Gigabyte RMA was painless and they also have advanced RMA as an option. They also put a lot of thought into their features and overclocking in the BIOS is painless. i am also interested to see what ECS's new flagship MB brings.

If you sell computers you don't want ANY RMA's, ever, if it can be avoided. Only makes your business look bad even if it isn't your fault. Customers remember bad experiences. I wouldn't go near ECS with a 10,000 foot barge pole, let alone a 50 foot barge pole.