Asus Motherboards / Linux Gaming

[zappa86]

Hello. I just decided to build a new computer for myself and I ordered a new mobo, ram, cpu, graphics card, etc. My motherboard was an Asus Crosshair II Formula with the Nvidia 780a chipset. (I posted previously in the chipset section because I had a Linux question regarding it, however, its now morphed into a motherboard questing as my board took a turn for the worst when a cap blew out)

I want to build my self a kickass computer. I like AMD (and thats not going to change), but for my last several builds, I've always had an asus motherboard, gskill or corsair ram, and an nvidia graphics card. I choose asus because I've never had a problem with any of their boards, and they have many features. I choose nvidia because I like to play games in Linux and ATI's drivers, well to put it simply, suck, and the radeonHD drivers are not in a 'gaming-approved' state. And, IMHO nVidia's binary driver works very well (although it would be nice if they opened specs as AMD/ATI did).

I read this article http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-gigabyte-motherboard,5348.html and it said how asus not only lied to customers about power consumption, it also used poor quality caps.

I have had several Asus boards and they have all worked fine, so I don't want to believe the article, but having a cap blow up in your face which scared the crap out of me has shaken up my confidence.

What do you all think about Asus Motherboards and Linux Gaming systems?

[Melcar]

I have an Asus M2R32-MVP and it works fine. The system is heavily overcloked as well. My only major complain about it is the bad BIOS support Asus has for this board; the latest one is in perpetual beta stage and the one before that has several limitations (like a dumbfounding HTT link lock), so I'm being limited to a much older BIOS revision, which works, but has a strange bug that renders the board useless with 2.6.24 and newer kernels (the guys at the kernel tracker produced a fix for me and promised to patch future kernels), meaning that I don't have support for newer quads.
Asus is alright and their MBs are top-notch, but I hear that my problems with BIOS revisions is not limited to my board model, and that being the case I'm very reluctant to pick Asus again for my next board. MSI and Gigabyte are really good manufactures also, so consider them as well besides Asus. I like DFI, but they seem to be flacking as of late.

[movieman]

My Linux box uses an ASUS motherboard (M2A-VM), and the only real problem so far is that it shipped with a six month old BIOS that didn't correctly set up the system with 4+GB of RAM; it told Linux that it had remapped the high memory, but apparently didn't actually do so. Fortunately upgrading the BIOS was relatively painless.

The CPU temperature readings don't work either, but I'm not sure whether that's a Linux problem or motherboard problem.

[deanjo]

My experience with Asus MB's has been relatively pain free as long as you stay away from the AMD chipset based boards (the SB600/700 truly sucks a** for dmraid and write performance is just plain horrible due to lack of proper NCQ support). My M3N-HT Deluxe MB worked flawlessly after a bios update.

[Max Spain]

I use two ASUS boards actively. I have an A8N32-SLI Deluxe running Ubuntu and a P5N-E SLI running Win XP. The A8N32 is ASUS's highest end board in its series and the P5N-E is their lowest end in its series. Like any other manufacturer, when you buy cheap components you get a cheap product.

As for that article on Tom's, that's just ASUS's marketing department lying and promoting energy efficiency that isn't completely genuine. The boards themselves still work fine. I still wouldn't buy a Gigabyte board myself though. I have also used DFI in the past and I have been very pleased with their boards. Their 790FX-M2R board looks top notch and I'm sure the ASUS M3A32 is great too.

Personally, I am going to wait for AMD's next generation of chipsets/processors/vid cards which should be released soon. It would appear that the chipsets/bioses of these current boards aren't being all they can be with Phenoms.

[tontan]

That's good to know.I'm planning to change my OS from Vista to Linux.
I know it would be better than to stick to my old one OS.