The Epox has placed tops in many reviews (non-SLI) and is highly regarded. The one con of the board is the placement of the 24-pin PSU connector, which is in a really poor location on the board. Comes with firewire.
The ASUS board is good and solid, however, it has had BIOS and compatability issues. The most recent (posted on the Newegg reviews) is compatability with Sapphire X1xxx graphic cards. Read such forums to get an idea of what may or may not be an issue. ASUS is pretty good with BIOS updates, and the board layout is excellent. No firewire.
The Abit board can be either great or terrible, and quite a few boards got RMA'd back. Issues include downloading BIOS updates, which I can attest to as being one of the worst to deal with. (My friend killed his BIOS because he got confused and downloaded the wrong BIOS -- He had a revision 2 board versus revision 1 -- and you have to have a magnifying glass handy to read that on the board) ASUS' flash system at least has a failsafe that warns you that the BIOS is incompatable. I also read someone else had issues trying to deal with Abit directly, so until Abit gets itself sorted out with their recent merger, I would shy away. If you do choose this board, just be sure to read the customer reviews. Also does not have firewire. Also note with this board that it has 3 1x PCIE slots and if you have a two-slot video card, you lose one of the more useful PCI slots.
Interesting video choice. All the GTO2 cards are Sapphire products. The Powercolor XGTO 16 is a GTO, not a GTO2:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814131424
If you are looking for a 16-pipe card, check out the Sapphire X850XT, which also has 16 pipes standard, has the beefy cooling system, can easily be overclocked past X850XT PE levels, has a stock core of 520MHz and 1080MHz memory (versus 400MHz core and 980MHz memory for the Powercolor), and is only $11 more than the Powercolor card after a rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102505
Facebook
Twitter