GIGABYTE: ASUS Lied and Fooled Customers

[malware]

I will finish my day reporting a story published by Tom's Hardware that involves two big motherboard manufacturers - GIGABYTE and ASUS. According to GIGABYTE's technical team, ASUS is lying about its EPU (Energy Processing Unit) energy efficiency performance figures and is playing tricks with its users. ASUS claims that EPU outfitted motherboards can deliver up to 80.23% "power savings" from motherboards without EPU components. Yea, but that's not what GIGABYTE thinks. Test results from GIGABYTE's lab show that the claimed 80% energy efficiency is around 58.6% in reality, and ASUS is "playing numbers marketing" and "cheating end users." GIGABYTE engineers continued: "We found that [Asus’] EPU in 4 phase mode CAN NOT act PWM phase changing while Asus still claims EPU is a hardware based energy saving chip. Don’t get fooled. The EPU (AIGear3+) is pure software based, not hardware!" "How can you believe it? Everything [Asus] say are lies," they added. GIGABYTE even pointed out that ASUS motherboards use poor quality non-Japanese solid capacitors. Read the full story here.



Source: Tom's Hardware

[ShadowFold]

Gigabyte is just trying to get more customers... Like their power saving thing is any good anyway.

[calvary1980]

Gigabyte's evidence is too overwhelming to ignore.

- Christine

[niko084]

Doesn't matter if its a driver or software controlled piece of hardware....
Non of this gimick epu stuff really works very well, want power savings, down clock and drop voltage, let your hard drives spin down, leave speedstep enabled etc...

[HTC]

EPU does NOT work on overclocked CPUs. If this feature saves energy on stock, why the hell not do the same OCed? Unless it does so but messing with voltages or something similar ...

[PVTCaboose1337]

I will ignore, as I do not like propaganda.

[niko084]

Originally Posted by HTC

EPU does NOT work on overclocked CPUs. If this feature saves energy on stock, why the hell not do the same OCed? Unless it does so but messing with voltages or something similar ...

Thats the only way to save power, is to drop multiplier, fsb or voltage when the system if not being used. This is exactly why they don't work when overclocked.

[MrMilli]

Well i'm not surprised about the Asus quality.
I'm having all kinds of issues with Asus motherboards for the last 3-4 years that relate to quality.
I'm talking about +500 mb's where around 20 to 50 had some sort of problem related to quality. Not saying that Gigabyte mb's don't have issues but they are rearly quality related.
Asus is seriously cheaping out lately. Specially on the <100 euro mb's while Gigabyte is not.

[imperialreign]

<sigh>

sadly, I think GIGA fails to realize that this information has been floating around for a while - ASUS EPU design pales in comparison to GIGA's as far as efficiency goes, simply because of how ASUS' 8-phase power design works (they're either ON or they're OFF) - which is why you really only get about 50% energy savings . . .


and for those that OC, both GIGA's and ASUS' energy saving designs go out the door, as they don't work properly with OCing and lead to an extremelly unstable system.

and to the comment from GIGA about ASUS PCB component quality . . . never had an issue here, with any of my boards . . . besides, I'd rather my PCB components come from Japan than China or Taiwan . . . isn't that right, GIGA?

Although it does look like ASUS goofed in their marketing, GIGA is just screaming wolf at this point. Both companies need to go back to the drawing board and get their energy efficiency designs worked out - cause neither one is perfect. ASUS' is more stable, but can't pull the same efficiency that GIGA's can.

[niko084]

These two companies are neck and neck in the high end, of course they will call either one out on any little thing. Sure okay, maybe Asus goofed, whatever, not too many of us would ever be affected by this.

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by niko084

Thats the only way to save power, is to drop multiplier, fsb or voltage when the system if not being used. This is exactly why they don't work when overclocked.

sorry for the double post - but that's not how ASUS or GIGA's designs work . . . instead of cutting CPU multi or drop the BUS speed or component voltages - they cut phase on the CPU/BUS power supplies. GIGA can drop it down in increments, ASUS, because of their 8-phase power design, can only cut out one phase of 4 . . . which only leaves 4. GIGA can allow for stepping their power up based on system requirements, but with ASUS, once it get's passed a certain point, EPU turns all 8 back on and your back at 100%.



<<edit>>

If I'm thinking about this right - ASUS is probably pulling their 80% figure by also taking into account CPU energy saving options . . . if you enable E1ST, TM and C1E on an Intel CPU, plus running a DDR3 board on an X38 chipset . . . yeah, you might just be able to achieve 80% overall, but it'd still be a little tough. EPU alone won't do it.

And besides, both companies are goofing with any energy efficieny implimentations right now - because they're only offered on HIGH-END motherboards . . . the kind of motherboards that tend to draw rabbid OCers like fly's to a pile of crap, and OCers don't give a wh00t1! over energy efficiency for the most part either . . . plus, neither company has announced plans to impliment these features in their mid-range boards yet . . .

[Nitro-Max]

I actually favour gigabyte boards i loved my last board its just the preformance level tweaks on the asus can boost preformance.

[niko084]

Originally Posted by imperialreign

sorry for the double post - but that's not how ASUS or GIGA's designs work . . . instead of cutting CPU multi or drop the BUS speed or component voltages - they cut phase on the CPU/BUS power supplies. GIGA can drop it down in increments, ASUS, because of their 8-phase power design, can only cut out one phase of 4 . . . which only leaves 4. GIGA can allow for stepping their power up based on system requirements, but with ASUS, once it get's passed a certain point, EPU turns all 8 back on and your back at 100%.



<<edit>>

If I'm thinking about this right - ASUS is probably pulling their 80% figure by also taking into account CPU energy saving options . . . if you enable E1ST, TM and C1E on an Intel CPU, plus running a DDR3 board on an X38 chipset . . . yeah, you might just be able to achieve 80% overall, but it'd still be a little tough. EPU alone won't do it.

And besides, both companies are goofing with any energy efficieny implimentations right now - because they're only offered on HIGH-END motherboards . . . the kind of motherboards that tend to draw rabbid OCers like fly's to a pile of crap, and OCers don't give a wh00t1! over energy efficiency for the most part either . . . plus, neither company has announced plans to impliment these features in their mid-range boards yet . . .

Thanks for the insight, I didn't get into the whole actual workings of the boards, and have been too busy today to really read about them. But yes either way, this isn't a technology that is going to get used in the types of boards its being put into.... Hopefully they will fill down into some super efficent mainstream boards for your average bbuy machine.

[suraswami]

hmm I thought Gigabyte helps in QC for Asus boards. May be Asus didn't renew the contract and giga is whining

Asus has relatively better design boards but Gigabyte has better customer support and use better components and has more features for the same price.

[cdawall]

i have an issue with both of them but more Asus than GB simply because vdroop on Asus mobos is crap...

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

I hate Assus so bad. They send you back a broken board to replace a broken one .. i dont expect that when i (or in this case, my friend) spends 250+ dollars on a board.

[msgclb]

Didn't GIGABYTE and ASUS have some kind of an agreement to join forces? I guess there handshake has turned to a fist fight .

Both the GIGABYTE Dynamic Energy Saver and the ASUS EPU options sound like a gimmick. What we need is a review of these two competing options.

[niko084]

I don't understand this bad luck people have with Asus or Gigabyte... I have personally rma'd over 50 boards to each company, never an issue, and have always been very pleased with every board from both companies......

Heck I hit 4ghz on this p5k-e, and going to try for 4.4ghz sometime here on air...

[qwerty_lesh]

i heard about this last night, and believe its true, asus epu is a crock and not hw based.
altho i also think that gigabyte pointing out that asus dont use good caps is just gigabyte trying to make them selves look better. but hey, two years back asus had the crown for premium motherboards, and imo it looks like gigabyte is taking that crown away from them, asus has got to stop using poor quality components, and as i say that i also say that gigabyte have got to smarten up and release their high end boards with marvell chipsets and not the shithouse realtek ones, otherwise imo gigabyte are pretty much doing the same thing for quality and the only thing they really have over asus in that regard is that their energy efficiency des crap actually works hardware based /rant

[cdawall]

just as a common question i thought that solid caps were not supposed to blow?

[philbrown23]

gigabyte is just mad because asus sels more boards than them, maybe if their boards were not crap more would buy them.

[cdawall]

its not that GB boards are crap its that there BIOS are cryptic and retarded layouts not to mention the lowend mobos have no oc options and i mean nothing like OEM nothing

[spud107]

[QUOTE=cdawall;792333]just as a common question i thought that solid caps were not supposed to blow?

normal type electrolyte caps inside? not good without those vents in the top,
thats why they blow themselves off the board, , KA-BOOOM!!!!

[PVTCaboose1337]

I thought there was no way for solid caps to blow... i researched it, bought 2, and blew one. It took effort, but they are HARDER to break than normal ones. They don't blow in the old way you think of. They just don't work anymore.

[Scrizz]

Originally Posted by cdawall

its not that GB boards are crap its that there BIOS are cryptic and retarded layouts not to mention the lowend mobos have no oc options and i mean nothing like OEM nothing

I have a pretty nice oc on my lowly giga-byte board