MSI or Asus? need help!

T

tycoot

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
73
I've always been an abit fan, but I don't have an abit choice, the local guy giving me a huge deal only has these two mobos:
ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI Chipset SATA RAID Dual PCIE MB w/Gb-LAN,USB2.0,IEEE-1394,&7.1Audio

MSI MSI-K8N NEO4/SLI nForce4 SLI Chipset Dual PCIE MB w/Gb-LAN,USB2.0,IEEE-1394,&7.1Audio
I had an asus a7n8x, was a good solid board, had some overclocking issues, I also had an old MSI k7? was for socketA don't remember exact model, was a pretty good board as well. I'm not sure how these two compare, I've seen the k8n neo4 rocking the benchmarks and reviews, so help me decide which one I should go with, and why. I'm also not going to be raiding, and ill have 2x 7800gtx.
 
It is the Neo4 Platinum
Other specs if needed:
amd x2 4800
1gig corsair pro (2x512)
74gb raptor
160gb hitachi
2x bfg7800gtx

I don't know much about either board, I tried looking up everything on the 2, I just need some pros and cons, Wish there was a side by side review of each :p

Any help would be great!
 
Of those two, go with the Asus. HardOCP revoked their award for the MSI board, and advises against buying it.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzE0LDc=

We at HardOCP are sorry to report that this MSI K8N Neo4 motherboard has experienced errors in the field with overclockers. There seem to be some bugs that MSI cannot fix that are specific to this board that we never experienced in our testing. That said, we are pulling our award given, and advise you to look elsewhere should you be in the market for an enthusiast motherboard.
Click to expand...

The A8N-SLI Deluxe did alot better.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzAzLDc=

Only thing to watch out for is the chipset fan, apparently some of them were crappy, but Asus should replace it with a new improved design for free if it gives you problems.
 
CastleBravo said:
Of those two, go with the Asus. HardOCP revoked their award for the MSI board, and advises against buying it.
Click to expand...

Well, the award was taken away due to some problems with overcocking on certain CPUs (Winchester I believe). They didn't advise against buying it, but just advised the reader to look at other reviews before making a decision (because of the fact that their own review didn't catch the problems with Winchester cores).

That problem aside, I believe that the problem had been resolved with the current BIOS update, and Winchester users have been able to overclock their rigs pretty well now. This is one good reason to go into the forums to look for more "current reviews" (aka user experiences) because once the site's reviews are set in stone, any new updates won't be acknowledged. All the positive (and negative) comments on the reviews will always be there, and some of it will be outdated as those problems get fixed (or broken).
 
"look elsewhere" means look for a different mb, not read more reviews.
 
It might also mean "look at different hardware sites (elsewhere) should you be in the market for an enthusiast motherboard", but I just worded it in the sense that [H]ard|OCP advises you to read different reviews, not more reviews.
 
As stated above,

The "issues" with the MSI board are well and truely part of history since the 3.6 Bios release for the SLI Platinum.

Including the -5v requirement for the Onboard SB Live thats also been resolved in the current manufacturing.

I'd still go with the MSI as it's a rock solid board, quick and just plain nice. Yes I'm biased but I also think it's about time HardOCP took another look at the board with the latest bios and maybe added it back to the great buy list it belongs on.

Several great minds are better than one, just as several reviews should be read before believing everything stated in only one!

But here's a start and they are quite a few months old:

http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/cpu_mobo/msi/amd/s939/k8nsli/index.shtml
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2358&p=1
 
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