Epox 8KTA3 (rev1.1) or MSI KT3 ULTRA (non ARU)?

[Icaro]

Hi guys, I need a little help here, is the Epox worth the extra 15 bucks? (~91 for the Epox and ~76 for the MSI)
Thanks!

 

[Icaro]

Aww, I feel ignored.

 

[Heinrich]

For me, it was, because most of the reviews put the Epox at the top. A few put the MSI at the top, several put the MSI at the very bottom. One of the first things that I did notice when I installed the Epox is that I had run out of LAN cards and had to buy another for $20 (-$10 rebate.) I had overlooked that this board has no onboard LAN. No big deal, what I buy for is performance.

It's all a confusing mess tell you the truth. Depending on who you can read on what day and what version and BIOS and video driver you will get different results. But, the Epox consistently sits at the top or very near it in all the reviews that I read, so I grabbed one.

Everything went together quite easily and booted on the very first try. While I had swapped out RAM and drives before, I had never installed a mobo into a case and then a processor with arctic silver and an Alpha 8045. I had never done all that and really wasn't expecting it to post when I hit the switch. But everything's been working with no problems except when I tried to slave my old computer's drive to the RAID configuration and blew it all out, I had to reinstall Windows (but I had nothing on the drives except for Windows at that point it was no big deal.)

 

[Icaro]

Thanks a lot, I'll buy the Epox then, I've been using Epox MB for quite some time, my last 4 upgrades where made on Epox motherboards, I never had a problem, but the MSI looked nice too, and cheaper.