Saturday, May 24th 2008
ASUS Sues GIGABYTE for ''Defamatory and False Accusations''
ASUS is taking the legal battle against GIGABYTE's false statements to the next step, informing today that it has officially filed a lawsuit against GIGABYTE for defamatory acts. Yesterday (May 22nd 2008), ASUS has also reported GIGABYTE to the Fair Trade Commission of Taiwan.
Source:
ASUS
Gigabyte, without a full understanding of ASUS' engineering design and methods, has made false accusations against ASUS motherboards' EPU features and the quality of ASUS' motherboards' components.
Also, in a press briefing presentation, Gigabyte used a photograph with blown-up (exploded) capacitors and led the audience to believe it was an ASUS product, to support its false allegations that ASUS uses questionable quality components. However, the image was found to be taken from a photograph of a VGA card manufactured by another vendor. The action of misrepresenting a third party product to be an ASUS product is truly defamatory and clearly outside the realm of decent competition.
ASUS takes pride in its innovations, which are measured against the highest standards in the industry at all stages of operation - from project development, engineering, manufacturing to service. Through a combination of the best quality-controlled components and processes, ASUS delivers state-of-the art technology breakthroughs to meet customers' needs. Every breakthrough is the result of huge R&D engineering efforts.
Hence, while it is common to have competition among companies, the use of the above mentioned methods are defamatory and condemnable. ASUS deeply resents Gigabyte's action. Yesterday (May 22nd 2008), ASUS has reported such acts to the Fair Trade Commission of Taiwan. Today (May 23rd 2008), ASUS has officially filed a lawsuit against Gigabyte for those defamatory acts.
The EPU features represent an integral part of the world's first intelligent energy-saving motherboard which ASUS launched in September 2007. This technology incorporates a hardware EPU controller and the ASUS AI Gear user interface to provide the maximum system efficiency. The EPU controller dynamically regulates a wide variety of system parameters (such as CPU voltage, loadline, and frequencies) in response to real-time system loading. Furthermore, ASUS utilizes a unique clock controller, loadline monitor and CPU sensor to automatically determine the optimal system operating mode to achieve the best user experience in terms of both performance and energy saving.
We at ASUS reiterate our primary mission of continually creating new products and innovations with the highest standards and absolute integrity. ASUS will be posting the engineering data regarding the EPU features on the official websites for ASUS motherboard users' information (event.asus.com/epu/).
87 Comments on ASUS Sues GIGABYTE for ''Defamatory and False Accusations''
Now, three episodes later, the Chinese drama intensifies, daggers drawn.
everybody's kung fu fighting!
"EPU? ee peee you!"
BLAM!
I always thought that Asus and gigabyte had some sort of strange partnership. Didnt Asus manufacture gigabytes mobos for a while or something like that??.
In a world wide poll, when asked about the continuing drama of tech companies suing each other, 99.8% responded with,
"Just shut up and make decent stuff, we're tired of your stupid bickering and don't care."
Though when you get past the name calling and actually read the information Gigabyte provide, you realise it is mostly BS. For example: They claim ASUS's EPU is not hardware, but all software. Then right under that they claim the different levels of EPU involve FSB changes and VCore changes, both are hardware controlled, the FSB is controlled by the clock generator on the board(a piece of hardware) and the VCore is controlled by the voltage regulators(also a piece of hardware). Gigabyte's claims basically stem from the fact that ASUS uses a piece of software to control the hardware(isn't that how it all is?). That is like saying that because I burn CDs with Nero burning CDs is done entirely via software. And Gigabyte's claim that because the Caps used on the board aren't made in Japan theyare some how worse is just BS too. You can get quality caps from many places outside of Japan.
It's funny but even online sites sell everything from gainward,evga,gigabyte...etc. but they always get stuck with some asus videocards wich no one wants to buy because they are both more expensive and have a very bad reputation for being faulty or getting faulty but this is not the case here because we talk about motherboards still very strange at least in my country.
The most frequented forums in my country (romania) talk very badly about Asus products and are avoided like plague i'm suprised there are happy people here but it must depend on country maybe we get the bad stuff from asus i don't know.
I have 1 gigabyte motherboard and 1 video card from them and had a lot of them in the past and had no problems but for my gaming machine i use DFI motherboard wich uses quality components for long before gigabyte and asus raised the bar.
In my opinion Asus is a scam with the marketing hype and always been and gigabyte has a good claim here except for the most expensive motherboards asus has the rest are questionable in terms of quality from my experience and what i've read on forums.
They wil loose the lawsuit and gigabyte will rubb it in they'r face even more unless asus can bankrupt them but i don't think they can.
Both companies put out quality boards, but I refuse to do any business with Gigabyte because they are just not a reputable company. They have a great product, but the company itself is shit. This situation is a perfect example. There is the mature way to provide the information and the immature way. Gigabyte, as usually, chose the immature way.
The presentation in question was shown to media during an event in Taiwan at Gigabyte's HQ. There's no wonder that Asus' EPU has been questioned, as what many of you might not remember is that initially, Asus claimed a power saving of 58.6% but this was later upgraded to 80.23% without any hardware, software or BIOS upgrades being performed. Some of the more recent stuff from Asus claims 96%+ power saving (event.asus.com/mb/6engine/index.htm) which if you have any kind of clue what you're talking about, sounds like pure science fiction, that is unless Asus has quietly invented room temperature super conductors.
The other key point is that Asus' EPU only has a two step change, from 8 to 4 PWM's. This raised the question on how they do the "gear" change on 4-phase motherboards. Now, this is where things get tricky, as Gigabyte claims they don't have any "gear" changes on these boards and Asus has yet to prove otherwise. The problem is that you need quite sophisticated equipment to tell if there are any PWM phase changes happening or not, in other words, you need a special lab set up for it all, which isn't stuff your average review site can test.
The Asus motherboard used was the P5K SE EPU and it was up against the P35-DS3L as Gigabyte see these as the best selling products due to their low price. The part that is questionable is the one about capacitors, but it looks like the ones Gigabyte is pointing out are located near the CD audio connector on the motherboard. Gigabyte claims that these are "questionable quality components". At no stage did the picture with the blown capacitors look like an Asus motherboard and it's quite clear that it's off a graphics card as you can see the heatsink on the GPU. It was more of a question statement asking if you wanted to see that in your computer, but if you don't look properly it could've been interpreted in a different way. The whole reason for this argument is because Gigabyte couldn't locate the manufacturer of the capacitors used, but as long as Asus can prove who the manufacturer is, this might be an issue for Gigabyte in court. But even if the capacitors on the picture in question aren't solid capacitors, I doubt it makes a huge difference if they're related to the audio part of the motherboard, since it does't tend to get all that hot in that area of the motherboard and as such the life time of the capacitors shouldn't be adversly affected.
Despite all this, it feels like this is childish bickering between two of the largest motherboard manufacturers in the world, but it's no so different to the Intel/Nvidia stuff that's going on. I just wish these companies would spend more time improving the overall quality of their products rather than trying to find flaws in eachothers products. But ho hum...
Make what you want of this and I haven't heard Asus' side of the story, but I just thought I'd at least clear a few missunderstandings up here and add some more facts to the whole story.
And one more thing, Taiwan isn't the US, as the company with the most cash won't win in court, it's the company that has the law on its side that'll win, whoever that is.
I work at a PC service in Romania and I can tell you for a fact that Asus boards are the last ones that crap out on my clients. In fact if I where to make a statistic most ppl go for Asus.
Most ppl's pc's crap out because of cheap and/or inadequate PSU's. they think that "expensive ones" are an unjustified extravangance no matter how much I try to persuade them about efficiency, stabillity and PFC..:ohwell:
Also low end motherboards tend to be less stable and durable regardless of brand.
On topic, this ought to be interesting to watch unfold (or unwad). Either way it gets both of their names "out there" which is beneficial to all concerned. Even bad press is better than no press at all.
Off topic, it's still in my head, make it stop! :eek:
This immature thing or don't go to that level is translated by smart and succsefull people into being stupid for not having the courage so trashing asus name this way is a good thing for gigabyte more customers for them.
Asus could be considered an immature company too for people who thinks like that, they copy marketing hype from other companys like gigabyte with the eficency ....crap and double the claims with no real improvement if what gigabyte says is true so it's like a kidd i can do that too and even better and when gigabyte sees that and other companys they get angry because they really worked hard to putt a feature like that and some company like asus blows them away putting a sticker on they'r box they can do better but in fact they cannot.
What if a car company put's out a car that has 20 hp and a rival puts a car with 40 hp and the first company decide to advertise the 20 hp car as a 80 hp wouldn't the 40 hp company get angry and sue them for lying ? that in world where testing the cars would be hard or of no interest to some like this energy thing for motherboards.
This is the situation here if one Mobo company says they'r motherboard can have 90% more energy efficience and in reality they can do that Asus can come and just putt a sticker saying they can have 180% energy efficience but not change anything in they'r hardware or software or real testing proof.
This renders the competition research and the plus features that diferentiate them from others 0 and that's why gigabyte taked action.
Bussines people sees what asus does with false claims as smart and some people as very immature and same thing with gigabyte.
woa!so much tv drama action from these companies??dunno when gigabyte representatives will say"the chairman of asus is from bangladesh,therefore they create such crap products"..lol.frankly i dont see anything wrong in any of their products,gigabyte vid cards nd mobos work exceptionally well,and aside from the fact that asus products area tad more expensive then the rest,its also quite good..dunno yd gigabyte hav to go up on asus like that.
For me computergames forum and xtremepc forums are the biggest ones and both hate asus and evne more admins from both forums avoid asus and advice people who come there for guidance to not buy Asus.
People buy asus more because they are everywhere they have good publicity (energy eficience better than everyone :) ) and because they are in stock more often than other brands :).
But who has more hardware experience and doesn't get fooled by box stickers doesn't buy Asus they read a bunch of reviews and gets the ideea.
By the way a test of energy saving would be good to see if asus saves more than gigabyte and that would settle for us the discuttion and whos better and who lies don't you peole think that ?
And judging by the nr of posts gathered on this topic in the last 30 min I say it's somewhat working. :)