Emaxx EMX-AMD690 Motherboard

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I recently bought this motherboard after reading excellent reviews about it. However, my experience with it hasn't been good. I bought it last saturday (oct 20). After installing the drivers, the sound wouldn't play (it has an HD audio and supposedly also a regular audio). I couldn't install the driver for the HD audio. I could install the regular audio (realtek AC97) but its not among the detected audio devices. I consulted the manual and according to it, the CD installer should show an option to install realtek audio (but it doesn't). The manual also shows a picture of the BIOS integrated peripheral screen where it shows an option for realtek AC97 audio (but again its not present). I had no luck the entire sunday to get the audio going so early monday morning, I returned the motherboard to the shop i bought it from to have it checked. Around afternoon, their tech support also had no luck and suggested the board be sent for warranty replacement. That would take too long (2weeks minimum) so I talked to the salespeople the next day (tuesday) and requested a replacement board after all its only been one working day since i purchased it. They agreed To make sure that it would work fine this time, I requested that their tech support be the one to install it and check if the audio was ok this time. Around 4pm, their tech people called saying that they were encountering the same problem and had to consult the distributor on what to do. And so I waited one more day. Today (wednesday), I called up early morning to check. They said something was really wrong with the board since they had tried three boards already (which makes a total of 4) and still the results were the same -- they couldn't install the audio. Frustrated and already losing a lot of time, I requested that they just replace it with another brand. After around 20minutes of talking to their boss, they agreed. I was relieved that it would finally be over. However, after picking up my CPU (with the new board installed), I noticed that the board they exchanged was of a lower chipset (Gigabyte NF6100) but priced the same as the Emaxx board (probably because of the brand). As I didn't want any more delays, I agreed to the replacement but I vowed I won't patronize Emaxx boards again no matter how good their reviews are.