P45 Board and needed drivers

[coolhund]

I've been looking for a board for my E8400. Right now I cant decide if I should take the MSI P45 Neo3 or the Asus P5Q.

I am planning to connect 2 SATA HDDs to it in RAID 0. Also a IDE HDD and of course a SATA DVD-Drive.

Which of those 2 would be best for such a configuration? I read the RAID Controller on the P5Q isnt the fastest?

And also I would like to know which drivers I should install (for Vista 64). On the Asus site I read that you need the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. On the MSI site it says I need the Intel Application Accelerator instead. But some people say that I need the Storage Manager for both of em.

Also I read that the network and ATA/RAID drivers are all crap and only the drivers from Vista should be used. Is that true?

 

[cmdrdredd]

It is my opinion that the ASUS is a more stable board if you plan to do any overclocking. MSI has always been hit or miss for me in past builds.

You can install the storage manager for both. I'd go to Intel's site and look around at what downloads are offered for the P45 chipset. I know they no longer offer the chipset drivers, but they may still have the RAID apps and whatnot.

Things have gotten more confusing these days since it's not as simple as going to Intel's site and downloading the chipset drivers and the RAID utility.