Gigabyte SINXP1394 (SiS 655): More Dual Channel DDR for P4

Gigabyte SINXP1394: Tech Support and RMA

For your reference, we will repost our tech support evaluation procedure here:

The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We then give the manufacturer up to 72 hours to respond over business days and will report not only whether they even responded within the time allotted but also if they were successful in fixing our problems. If we do eventually receive a response after the review is published, we will go back and amend the review with the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.

The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria to base your motherboard purchasing decisions upon; with motherboards looking more and more alike every day, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews so please do email us with your comments.

Gigabyte's RMA policy is easy to follow and fairly good for a tier one motherboard maker like Gigabyte:

Gigabyte still hasn’t changed their RMA policy. Like ASUS, Gigabyte would like you to deal with the vendor you purchased your motherboard from rather than directly with them. This is understandable, as the cost of RMAs, facilities, employees, etc. can be prohibitive. Still, we would love it if the tier one guys would adopt similar RMA policies akin to Epox, Albatron or AOpen's.

Unfortunately we did not receive a response from Gigabyte's tech support within 72 hours this time around. Smaller motherboard manufacturers would almost certainly have responded within 72 hours, as evidenced by previous attempts in several other motherboard reviews. Bigger motherboard makers like ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI don’t usually have to worry as much about RMA and tech support as the smaller guys do; hopefully that will change in the future, albeit unlikely.

Though Gigabyte's RMA policy is just adequate, their tech support performance at the time of publishing wasn’t as good as it has been in the past. Hopefully this is just a slipup, and Gigabyte will get back on track with their otherwise excellent tech support response time.