Abit wont be getting any more of my money!

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

A couple of days ago I emailed Abit tech support regarding my AW8 mobo's inability to do anything over 170MHz FSB with my P-D 805 CPU. 170MHz would boot fine at stock voltages, yet 171 would not POST no matter what voltages and timings I used. Someone here at XS had the opinion that it is a BIOS bug, so I emailed Abit to ask if they could confirm this. Below is the original email and the reply I just recieved.

Description: I have an Abit AW8 motherboard and an intel Pentium 805
CPU. The problem is that when overclocking this CPU it is impossible to
raise the FSB over 170MHz (170x20=3.4GHz stock volts boots fine yet
171x20 does not POST regardless of voltages and RAM timings, memory is
OCZ PC6400 Platinum XTC and is nowhere close to its 800MHz rated speed,
so it cannot be RAM which is holding me back). This occurs on all BIOS
versions I have tried, 10,11,12 and the latest version, 16. I have been
told that this is a BIOS limit for 133MHz FSB CPUs thus anything over
170MHz is impossible. Can you confirm this? Also are there any steps
being taken to remove this limit (eg BIOS update?)?

Dear XXXXXXXXXXXX
the CPU is only a 133mhz FSB what do you think?
please set the system back to default and run the clock the CPU is intended
to do.


What a bunch of retards, I'm pissed off. First I have a board thats a total load of :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: and them some gimp of a customer service muppet gives me a rude reply without answering my question. Personally I think its a shame that such a large company which used to produce great boards like the IC-7 series, has descended so low. Just shows what a few good key personnel (eg Oskar Wu) can do for a company. Now theyve having to tell customers to go shove it because their engineers cant be bothered to make something half sensible. Thats the lats time I buy any of their crap!

[NickS]

LOL. I must say that tech support guy owned you. Sorry for the board tho :(..

Nick

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

Owned me maybe, shot himself in the foot in the long term though. A bit of politeness might well have kept me a (fairly) happy Abit camper, looks like Ill go find another site to pitch my tent now though. That happens with too many people and thats it for Abit.

[zyfo]

It's a shame to see Abit like this... A few years ago they were nothing short of gods, but now...

[2fink]

if they dont want the people to overclock they should disable it, and dont give "stupid" answers.

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

Indeed. I emailed the UK tech support, maybe they can come up with something more constructive. Though its too late now, my boards being returned. Hopefully if enough people bug them something will happen.

[Durzel]

To be fair, overclockability isn't guaranteed in a board. If it works to specification, as it obviously does if the CPU runs at stock speed, then it is working to design.

You can't really moan that it doesn't go above an arbitrary FSB unless your CPU was designed to run at 171fsb (and therefore the board wouldn't support it).

Only playing Devils Advocate here. :)

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

Durzel, indeed overclockability isnt guarenteed but thats not what really gets me here (although it would be hard to deny that the board was clearly designed with overclockers in mind, hence all the uguru stuff, but let down by a crappy BIOS that it seems they dont want to fix). Its the fact that they couldnt be bothered to give me a polite reply, and definitely couldnt be bothered to find out what was going on with BIOS development for the board so that they could give me an informed answer. It paints a bad picture for the company, because it seems that they dont care, which isnt a good feeling for a customer to have.

[BusyBee]

Hello Atomicpineapple,

May i know which email address did you contact to ABIT regarding your questions?

I believe you can try contact ABIT HQ at http://www2.abit.com.tw/page/en/contact/feedback.php

Did you save all logs conversation between you and with ABIT Representative at that time?

My experience is ABIT HQ will not tolerate anykind bad attitude from their representative to users like that if thats really true happen.

Regards,

BusyBee

[safan80]

they stopped getting my money when all the caps on my slot a motherboard blew up.

[kevin_m]

lol,maybe the tech support is somewere in india....omfg....crap....

[-aDaM^]

ever since I used a abit fatality.... never again lol.

[uOpt]

They stopped getting my money when they put all the sensors on their toy uGuru chip for no good reason, then refused to document it so that Linux and FreeBSD could do rocket science stuff like temperature monitoring. That would have really destroyed their interlectual property, I'm sure.

They told me to go screw myself, so they get it in return.

[Xtasy]

another one who has the same opinion than i. i used a abit aw8 with a 950, and the system wasnt stable at all. i asked them why, the only thing they could say was that i have to use an older version of the bios.lol but that bios doesnt support presler cpus,well done. i said it to them, they only thing they send my back was how i should send them my bios chip so they flash the old bios on it for 30 euro!!!!

[=MePHistO=]

ever since I used a abit fatality.... never again lol.

I am happy with mine. Had it up to 2.9GHz (290x10) and is running at 2.8Ghz (255x11) right now.

[WeStSiDePLaYa]

looks like Ill go find another site to pitch my tent now though. .


maybe you should do that in the comfort of your bedroom.:p:

[jaguarking11]

To really chime in ABIT let me down this time around. The mobo I have started degrading in performance untill I can no longer get over 267fsb. Its like they designed it to piss people off. Not to mention it being very picky. Next time around it will either be an asus or an epox. Im sick and tired of this thing.

[Eclipsed]

I had the exact same problem, I emailed Abit and the tech told me that the board can go way over 170fsb(since it supports 800mhz chips) lol and that the problem was my processor could not handle it.

This pissed me off since in the original email I stated it worked on another brand of board.

That was my first and last Abit board. They market to overclockers, but that seems to be only on paper.

[Nanometer]

Abit was the bomb a couple years ago. Now, I agree they lost their overclocking platform, but I'm sorry to see the support go as well. I switched from Abit to ASUS for intel chips. But now I have been liking the new Gigabyte mobos too.

Basically, the guy who read your email saw one thing. Overclock.
I could imagine what went in his mind. He sees the word, and imediately thinks, "oh, an overclocking problem." Sadly most techs who read the emails don't really read through them very well.

Terrible grammar, haha.

And also, I agree with Sentential.

I am honestly sick of seeing all of this Fata1ty crap. Anyone who is willing to spend 50% more money to buy some flashy red lights is a complete fool. Abit didn't sign on John Wendel to show how a professional plays, they signed him on so they could steal more money without offering anything beneficial to the consumer. It was a gimmic. People were paying more for somthing that they could never get. You can't buy being a good gamer; you can honestly play on a pile of crap, and still shine as a gamer.

[Sentential]

Abit lost my support the second they signed on with that douchebag Fatality.

[EmoAddict15]

Yeah, I've been thinking of going to ASUS, I've been through 3 AS8's already (1 I messed up myself in a failed volt-mod, the other 2 just died for reasons unknown and they weren't clocked very high). I just had an AG8 that's out for RMA now, I'm on a P4 3.0 @ 3.8 right now because the TwinMOS RAM I have is really :banana::banana::banana::banana:ty and it's running at like 210mhz or something weird (whatever the worst ratio is you can set on the board). I went to sleep one night and woke up and the PC locked up so I tried restarting and it wouldn't work, tried holding in the power button and no dice. Switched it off in the back and it wouldn't turn back on. I'm on my AG8 now with the same stuff except the Video Card obviously and everythings fine, it's just another shoddy Abit board I keep getting. The last AS8 I had won't do dual channel with my TwinMOS but every other board I throw the ram in will, I've been hearing horror stories with that on occasion. Argh, it's time to switch to ASUS, Abit is just pissing me off lately.

[Bergo]

Abit has been lacking since Socket A (NF7-S rev. 2) and S478 (IC7-MAX 3). Although somewhat harshly worded, the company representative is technically correst in his "then don't overclock it" responce. I (unfortunatly) work in the computer retail/support industry and as much as it sucks, nobody will warranty their products agaisnt "not overclocking well enough" and most manufacturers would rather see users not push their products to the breaking point. (fraudulent RMa's etc.)

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

Bergo, its true overclockability isnt guarenteed, and as I said earlier thats not what really annoyed me (although its hard to deny that the board is aimed at overclockers, Uguru and all, and suffers from a pretty extreme design flaw if it cant run 133 FSB CPUs over 170) its the fact that they really dont seem care and cant be bothered to give me a decent reply. However contacting Abit UK gave me this:


I am afraid this is the hardware limitation , when you use 133MHz CPU the maximum CPU clock is 170.

A decent reply that actually gave me useful information and answered my question. A useful customer service employee who could be bothered to find out the answer to my question, unlike that :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: from the USA tech support.

[varzmaster]

Have you tried to raise the PCIe bus frequency to... let's say 120 MHz? ;)

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

Pretty sure I tried that. As I had the board for less than 7 days I managed to return it for a complete refund though so I cant try anymore. Also, if as stated above the manufacturer is correct and theres a hardware limit I doubt raising PCI-E bus frequency would help.

[viper650]

fatality = gay blade. i would never own an abit branded board... ill take the asus.