After having exclusively used Asus boards for the last thirteen years, I bought a Gigabyte EP35-DS4 this year and I'm loving it, even though I'm not tweaking it much.

Gigabyte certainly seems to be gunning for the enthusiast crowd in a major way.

Very bad news for me. I've been nothing but happy with my Abit boards. AT8 32X and my IP35. I've been firmly in the Abit camp for 3 years now. Prior to that i was with Asus but i had two A7N8X boards die on me so when the A7N8X finally died on me for the third time i switched to Abit.

Ahh well, i guess this is only good news for Gigabyte seeing as i would have bought Gigabyte if the Abit wasn't around.

Abit has been declining for years. They did incredible, jaw-dropping things with the BF6, BH6, BP6, VP6. They did a very good job with the KT7, KT7A, NF7, NF7-S. Their recent stuff has been unremarkable.

I can't say I'll miss them. My bro had the beloved NF7-S, which of course died when the chipset fan failed.

But recently, what have they done that hasn't been outdone by Gigabyte and Asus?

Is it just me or does it break down like this: Gigabyte now the enthusiast darling, Asus well known and well regarded and the choice for those less interested in the bleeding edge and the non-enthusiast, ECS the choice for the penny-wise pound-foolish, Biostar the choice for the budget enthusiast, and DFI for people with too much spare time?

I'd not be surprised to hear DFI going away. They've not been to hot since socket 939. They pretty much define their niche with their color scheme and by provide 100 additional memory tweaks that result in 5-10% performance gain in just a few select tasks.

Where are the fanboys screaming for everyone to buy Abit-boards to support them?

The first system I ever built was a BE6-II and have purchased one other board from them (NF7-S) and have always been happy with the performance. I, for one, would hate to see them leave the market. They seemed to have enticed the over-clocking segment in the enthusiast market with the soft menu and led the way in that direction before anyone else.

dont know about other people, but i have an ni8sli and it works fine. the only gripe is that it doesn't support the core 2

Sorry for some guys that I have no regret for Abit
because I never purchased one.
Actually I was interested in IP35 Pro XE, IX38 QuadGT and even Fatal1ty F-I90HD then this news came up.

Well, judging from Abit web support and BIOS release frequency,
its support is still far behind from other brands.

If they make a p45 motherboard as good as the IP35 Pro they should do pretty well. The IP35 Pro is an excellent OC motherboard.

I was a die hard Abit fan from the days of the BE-6 onwards but as I migrated to building machines for people Abit boards stung me more and more as the platforms evolved. Take these words with a pinch of salt though as I'm talking about less than 50 machines of which only six have used Abit boards.

I still buy the odd Abit board these days, just out of loyal curiousity, but I'm never happy with them. Perhaps I've been unlucky with iffy bioses, pickiness over RAM sticks that work fine in ASUS/MSI boards and a penchant for instability regardless of the quality of the other components used. I thought I'd give them another chance when they were bought out by USI - but I'm still getting bitten :(

The pink bios is just the nail in the coffin for my opinion of Abit. I don't know how many boards ship like that but both my P965 boards are hideous in the BIOS. Bring back white on black please - BIOSes are NOT GUI's so they should stop trying to be!

I hope they get pwned and fried. I still remember that wonderful VIA Apollo KT133a mobo I had from them that wouldn't work well with my videocard and they refused to do a damn thing about it.

I know i will be sad to see them go (if they do leave the mobo market). I am still using an Abit IC7-G motherboard, and i must say it has been one of the best boards i have ever seen... even to date. And one of my friends is using an AB9-Pro, which as far i know has also been a very stable and very good board for him (not to mentions its plethora of storage options).

Man, and I just purchased a IP35 Pro in January. I just hope that if they stop making motherboards that they release a final BIOS for the IP35 Pro that will read the temp correctly on my wolfdale chip and also fix the issue with UGuru crashing (I cannot even run the application)

#5,
DFI's bread and butter is industrial boards, not enthusiasts boards :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DFI#DFI-ACP

I'm gonna miss Abit's fan speed control options :(

I am running an Abit right now, an AB9 pro, and I'm very happy with it. Well, except for the pink BIOS, seriously, who's idea of a joke was that?

I purchased the the IP35 Pro becasue it was the recommended Sweet Spot mobo for the TR System Build 3 times in a row. iirc

No regrets.

Please Delete my test post

They never really did recover fully after the exploding capacitor fiasco years ago.

I recall the IP35 Pro being mad popular at one point, around the time P35 was first coming out. Everyone was recommending it. Though I think some bugs started turning up later and some of its hardware was outdated on release (it still used a PCI based Ethernet port and it had PCI-E 1.0 rather than 1.1, I think this caused some problems with GeForce cards?)

If they use via chips for firewire and gigabit lan on PCI, they are history.

It's always sad to see a player go. Abit is actually notable and worthwhile, unlike, say, ECS who I doubt anyone would be crying over.

On a somewhat similar note to like three different discussions in comments - replacing chipset fans with passive ones is always a good idea.

Sorry to see it in a way, but the reality is that the glory days of the BH6 now lay about a decade in the past. I don't recall seeing as much of a buzz about Abit since then.

Had five ABIT boards just quit on me for no reason. Switched power supplies, switched.... well, just about everything, even processors. No matter what, the board would just fry itself.

Can't say its a big loss for me if this company goes under, cost me quite a lot for a complete failure of a board (shipping it back and forth).

Abit has historically been fairly consumer enthusiast oriented. I enjoyed my BH6 and later BX-133. I have a USB issue with my current IP35-E, but it seems to harken back to those 440BX boards as far as bang-for-the-buck and lack of stupid frills. They also paid on their rebate for the board. So, kudos to Abit.

Oops, repeat.

Bow down to the awesome power otherwise known as NF2-S, the mofo of the mobo.