http://www.qbitpc.com/itemdesc.asp?cartID=76-ACCWARE-66420EAUOB807&ic=MSTMS6380E020R&s=VC&tpc= anyone heard anything about this board? this is the one im considering, i was looking at the one soyo dragon that compares to this, and the msi board does everything, it too supports overclocking in bios and voltage settings from inside there too.. also has a nifty led bracket for troubleshooting.. peace -scoob8000
MSI and Soyo and Epox are all relatively new companies. Better to buy a board from a more established, experienced manufacturer, such as Abit, Asus or Gigabyte. For KT333 boards, the Asus A7V333 is popular, the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP has done very well in reviews, offers lots of features and stability at a great price, and the abit KX7-333 picks up from the legendary KR7A. Abit also offer the AT7, which does away with PS/2, serial and parallel in favour of LOTS of USB, IEEE1394, and an immense number of on-board features (NIC, 6-chan sound, 4-chan RAID, etc).
Relative to Asus, Abit and Gigabyte, they are much newer. However, MSI have been in the OEM board business for a few years, which is something epox don't have going for them. I would be more inclined to buy an MSI than an epox, but I'd still choose one of the big three first.
Hexus has a review of that board here if you are interested... I would favor the Gigabyte board that Issac lists above..
msi and epox boards I own the epox 8k3a+ with raid and built 2 machines, one with the msi kt3 ultra and one the ultra aru for raid. I liked both boards but bought the epox for myself as it has better handling of OCing options. Such as setting your pci/agp values back to normal when you hit certain fsb speeds that will match. This lets you not run cards and video at overclocked rates and risk frying everything. But it does not work for all fsb speeds, only the speeds the break down to multiples of 33/66mhz. I think the msi's may have a similar option as a bios update now, not sure though. The epox has more options for setting up raid arrays. They both have 0, 1, 0+1 although the 0+1 kinda defeats the purpose of IDE raid by having more than 1 device per channel unless you just want redundancy. The MSI just gives you options like server, av workstation, desktop. No mention of block sizes even in the manual. This is crazy. I know what I want. If I didnt know and didnt take the time to look it up you shouldnt be doing it. I hate being locked into crap like that with no spec. The epox lets you choose by block size from 4k to 2mb(I think, dont remember exactly).
The MSI seems to be slightly slower than most KT333 boards in the benchmarks. Out of box that is. It is red though, which can't be bad.
oddly the redness is one of the reasons im looking at it, to match my red gf4 card as far as bios ocability my buddy just got one and i set it up for him, and was really impressed (then again ive never bought a high quality board before) looks like there is FSB settings in 1mhz incement and the multiplier.. which is odd since the one i built was a 2100+ xp it allowed me to change it (didnt try to save settings though), spread spectrum tweak, core voltage setting, and AGP pro voltage setting.. another thing i liked was the thermal shutdown setting.. i just looked at that gigabyte board, i think its between that and this msi.. I've heard too many bad things about asus temp sensors, and if im gonna really be pushnig this rig, i wanna know what my temps are.. -scoob8000
I've got that board and had no problems with it, the onboard sound is great, and it looks sweet Got lots of features too. Ive never used any other boards apart from Epox and MSI so cant comment on the rest, just saying ive had no probs with the MSI
well, i just goit done reading the shootout over at tom's, a comparison of all 18 boards with the kt333 chipset, and the msi board come out right about in the middle.. they put the gigabyte in first place.. after reading a few others i think im comfortable enough to get this board.. the gigabyte outperforms, but lacks features... -scoob8000
I must admit the MSI board is very stable (Got one in number 1 system which I never use) Full of features, although I'm not too sure if anyone will make se of the USB2, there is another version of the board without all the extras and RAID so if you don't need RAID then maybe the cut down version would be a better buy.
The only difference i can see are 6-channel sound and a few BIOS settings. Oh.... and a noisy NB fan, (gotta love passive cooling! :dude and a CNR slot. You dont get a NIC with the MSI and the article fails to acknowledge that u get OEM copies of Norton AntiVirus and Norton Personal Firewall. The blue of the Gigabyte, matches my Hercules cards and is a bonus. I quote from THG "MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU: Strong on Features, Weak on Performance " Don't go for colour over perfomance!
i would say that MSI is improving compared to last time ... they are better now , but they're well know for their stability and afforable .. that's why i like them .. getting a MSI GF4Ti4200 soon ... cheap and good feature !
