Asus A8V or MSI Neo2 Plat

[rocketman14]

Is one chipset better then the other? does the passive cooling on the northbridge for the asus need to be replaced before overclocking? which board is more user friendly? I'm a first time builder so i'd prefer a board with good documentation. I also saw that asus came out with a new revision and i guess they fixed a lot of the issues. Did msi come out with a new one too? Thanks for the info.

 

[Icepick]

Originally posted by: rocketman14
Is one chipset better then the other?

The nforce3 chipset used on the MSI board has been shown to be faster than the VIA chipset used in the A8V in reviews on this site. Check out this link for a complete comparison of these two boards.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128

does the passive cooling on the northbridge for the asus need to be replaced before overclocking?

People have been overclocking with the stock northbridge cooling on the Asus A8V so to answer your question, no, it does not need to be replaced before overclocking.

which board is more user friendly? I'm a first time builder so i'd prefer a board with good documentation.

As far as which is more user friendly, they both have their share of quirks. I'm a first time builder too and I had no difficulty getting the MSI board working.

I also saw that asus came out with a new revision and i guess they fixed a lot of the issues. Did msi come out with a new one too? Thanks for the info.

Asus did come out with a new revision. The biggest change with the new revision is that the PCI/AGP lock was fixed. It didn't work on revision 1. This is essential for overclocking. I don't know what else was changed with the new revision. MSI has not come out with a new revision of this motherboard. They have released several BIOS updates. The latest official update available on the MSI website is version 1.3. Most of the MSI boards shipping today have either BIOS version 1.2 or 1.3.

Good Luck!