The KA7-100 is a great board..and even if you don't use RAID the extra RAID controller ports will let you use drives normally in a non-RAID mode. The Asus and the KA7's regular ports are only ATA66, so if you want ATA100, you either need the KA7-100 or a Promise ATA100 card. I have used both the Asus boards and the Abit boards, and I didn't find either of them to be any less reliable than the other. The KA7 has 1 AGP4X port, 6 PCI slots, and 1 ISA slot for maximum upgradeability, while the Asus only has 5 PCI slots, a useless CNR/AMR slot and no ISA. Also, the KA7/KA7-100 don't come with any of that integrated video or audio crap, but the Asus does come with crappy AC97 software sound. The Asus board can be had without the onboard sound though, so it's not much of an issue.