I was one of the few who jumped on the first generation of AMD Thunderbird boards: the FIC AZ11.
Since I have first used this board, it has been nothing but trouble. Via chipsets have lost my personal "nod"; the issue with the SB Live/southbridge, frequent system lockups, BIOS posting drive devices in garbled characters (and failing to work upon post) have been a nightmare.
Once in a blue moon, my DVD-ROM drive will fail to recognize under the secondary channel. At which point, the drive has to be moved to the orimary channel on slave setting, degrading the speed of the hard disk (ATA/33 vs. ATA/66). Granted, the hard disk never really would exceed 33 MB/sec except on bursts, it still felt like a cumbersome task. After a few months time, the HDD and DVD-ROM drive will not get along, and spit up garbled letters upon boot-up again. It's a vicious cycle.
Multiple BIOS flashes have been made, and the newest 4-in-1 driver updates will hang WinME (w/a black screen).
Since getting this board, FIC boards have really lost my loyalty. I heard a few people recommending this in the past, but they really aren't all that perfect. Case in point, if you want a decent MB, go with Asus or MSI.