Motherboard manufacturers are divided into groups, which we call "tiers". Some people feel that the tiers represent quality, price, or reputation, but typically the "tier" of a manufacturer represents its sales volume in the industry.
Tier 1 Manufacturers
Tier 1 is the top tier of manufacturers and is dominated by Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI(Microstar). These manufacturers each sell over 1million motherboards a MONTH! Actually this tier was only occupied by 3 manufacturers for a while, and so we sometimes referred to the tier 1 manufacturers as the "Big 3".
Tier 2 & 3
After tier 1 things get a little less easy to remember. Epox and Soyo are tier 2 manufacturers while a company like FIC and Soltek are tier 3 manufacturers. Again this has little to do with quality as it does with sales volume and perhaps name brand recognition.
If you pay close enough attention, the Tier 1 manufacturers tend to have the largest R&D teams and large OEM sales and marketing teams, and so their products come with more bells and whistles (in the form of bundled software and utilities) and with fancier boxes and manuals. However, even the tier 2 and tier 3 manufacturers today are striving to improve their packaging and their documentation and bundles, so don't make assumptions about product quality/bundle purely based on tier.
Essentially, the "tier" of a motherboard manufacturer is more something to easily classify the size of that manufacturer and for bragging rights.
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