Asus "condemns" Gigabyte: Round 3

If you thought that Gigabyte and Asus had finally solved their differences in their ongoing spat – and perhaps grown up in the process – think again.

The story so far revolves around accusations from Gigabyte who claims Asus's new Energy Processing Unit technology is a sham and massively outperformed by Gigabyte's own Dynamic Energy Saver system. Asus denied these claims, and vaguely threatened a lawsuit over the comments – which, to be fair, did go so far as to directly accuse Asus of telling lies, faking results, and generally screwing the consumer over.

Gigabyte just couldn't let things lie, however: in a response to Asus, the motherboard manufacturer claimed it had done nothing wrong and would defend its claims, which allegedly came of a battery of tests on the Asus EPU technology. With the bluff of legal action called, it seemed that the playground name calling might finally be over.

Sadly, Asus has jumped right back into the fray with a press release which "condemns the defamatory and false accusations raised by Gigabyte."

Claiming that their rival made "false accusations against Asus motherboards' EPU features and the quality of [their] motherboard components," the company has actually gone ahead and put its money where its lawyers are: the motherboard manufacturer has made an official complaint against Gigabyte to the Fair Trade Commission of Taiwan, and filed a defamation lawsuit to silence its competitor and to seek punitive damages.

Interestingly, the case against Gigabyte doesn't actually hinge on the EPU technology at all: rather, the accusation of defamation comes from a photograph used in an anti-Asus propaganda slideshow which claimed to show an Asus product in which the capacitors had failed explosively – a failure mode not entirely uncommon a few years ago, due to a faulty electrolytic being used by the vast majority of the computer industry.

Asus claims that it has done some research into this particular picture, and concludes that the damaged components actually form part of a third-party VGA card and are nothing whatsoever to do with any Asus product. In the suit, Asus claims this action of "misrepresenting a third party product to be an Asus product is truly defamatory and clearly outside the realm of decent competition."

While taking a photo of a damaged graphics card and putting it on a presentation about how crappy your competitor's motherboards are is a trifle misleading at best, fans of Gigabyte will be quick to notice that the claims of defamation do not make mention of the efficacy or otherwise of the Asus Energy Processing Unit. Aside from a brief puff piece at the end of this latest press release – which claims the technology forms part of the "world's first intelligent energy-saving motherboard" with an EPU which "dynamically regulates a wide variety of system parameters (such as CPU voltage, loadline, and frequencies) in response to real-time system loading" in order to "achieve the best user experience in terms of both performance and energy savings," – the claims centre around misrepresented images and general name-calling, not around Gigabyte's claims regarding the technology itself.

Regardless, fans of both companies will be hoping for this issue to be resolved as soon as possible – if only so they can both get out of the playground and back into the R&D lab.

Anyone here hoping Asus sticks it to Gigabyte with the lawsuit, or do you think the company is just sore because Gigabyte thinks its technology is better? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

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