Any issues with MSI K8T-NEO-FIS2R?

[Ashley Gittins]

Greetings all,
	I'm several days away from ordering my amd64 3400+ system, and wanted to know 
if there are any known gotchyas with my intended purchase.

I decided to go with the K8T800 chipset after seeing both the hypertransport 
rates and general issues seen with the NF3 chipset with drivers etc. I 
understand most of those issues are well on their way to being resolved but I 
would feel more comfortable getting something that has worked for a while.

I'm looking at getting the MSI K8T-NEO-FIS2R motherboard, as it seems to be a 
decent performer, and is capable of driving most ram configs at DDR400. I 
expect I will have driver issues with the Lan interface, and possibly the 
audio, but I plan to use an existing SBLive and e100pro nic, so I'm not going 
to be too concerned if that's the case.

Are there any specific issues with the SATA interface on these mainboards, or 
anything else I should look out for which might affect my purchasing 
decision? I'm planning on booting my main system from SATA, with secondary 
storage on PATA.

I'm planning on getting 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS3200LL (low latency) sticks, 
under the assumption that I'll be able to run tighter memory timings with 
these units.

I've trawled the archives a bit and seen some reports of ide problems with the 
msi board, but with conflicting accounts from some. Has anyone here had 
experience with this model board?

If there are good reasons why I should look at another board, or another 
chipset altogether, I'd love to hear them. I'll be using Fedora for my 
day-to-day work (general desktop stuff, some devel, graphics) and will be 
dual-booting with XP purely for games.

I don't expect a completely smoth ride on AMD64, but I wouldn't mind being 
able to start out with something proven, and sit back on the bit where the 
bleeding edge has just started to congeal :-)

-- 
Regards,
        Ashley Gittins
        web: http://www.purple.dropbear.id.au
        jabber: agittins at purple.dropbear.id.au