I found myself in the boat of needing a new board fast, so I didn't want to play around with sites that said "I'll have that board in by Friday," only to find out they meant Friday, April 5 instead of March 8. I had decided that I wanted the ASUS Kt333 board most, but I got tired of looking for it. I concluded that it would most likely be unavailable until the 3/15 date that many sites list on Priceline as their ETA. I need something next week, not in two or three.
I went to Newegg.com and they indicated they had the Soltec, MSI and Gigabyte KT333 boards in stock. I wanted onboard Raid so that narrowed it to Gigabyte and MSI. I decided to try something new as I'm replacing an old MSI KT266 board that seems to have developed some odd problems with its IDE controller. I ordered the Gigabyte board late Thursday along with an Athlon xp1800+.
I checked the site again early Friday and it indicated the board I ordered was out of stock. I got that sinking feeling that I had ordered from a site that erroneously indicated they had the board in stock. I called NewEgg and was assured that my order was being prepared for shipping. I now have shipping confirmation with tracking numbers for two packages, one shipped Thursday PM and one on Friday. The bottom line is go with an online merchant who's site accurately indicates what is really in stock.
As for the board you want to get, there is probably nothing wrong with the MSI board. It even has a couple of nice features that the Gigabyte board doesn't -- sp-dif audio connection for dolby digital, d-led trouble shooting lights, and the fan/heatsink on the northbridge (Gigabyte has only a heatsink). For me, I just wanted to try a different brand as I had a bit of a rough experience with my MSI KT266 board, which I am now about to send for it's second warranty repair (the first was when the on-board CPU fan header burned out and nearly fried my T-Bird 1.333G).
Good luck in your purchase.
John
Ain't this fun!
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