I'm a big MSI fan. They just released a photo of their next gen mobos. I need one.
MSI's Next Generation Intel Gaming Motherboards "Leaked"? - Futurelooks
MSI's Next Generation Intel Gaming Motherboards "Leaked"? - Futurelooks
MSI's marketing ****es guys like me off.
Z97 doesn't really add much to the table as a chipset. The only big thing I'm interested in is SATAExpress and M.2.
Any big name motherboard brand is going to be perfectly acceptable from the average to the moderately hardcore user. I'm not denying that. My issue is their stupid "gaming" moniker. They started this stupid trend and it's now taking off. People are starting to think you need "gaming" brand items for a better gaming experience. It's about as bad as game requirements stating an i7.
I actually used to happily use a few MSI boards in my AMD days. The 790FX GD70 was a damn beast and overclocked my 955BE higher than the Asus and Gigabyte top end 790FX boards.
Edit: It's kind of like P67a to Z77. Different features but unless you actually utilize them it's pretty moot. I had a 2500k and Biostar (yuck) P67a and had no interest in moving to Z77.
Maybe it's just me, but I really don't care about these new stupid bios features. I actually prefer the old style over UEFI because it thwarts noobs from trying to blow their **** up. That and I see it as, if I don't need to OC my SB CPU, then people with IB and Haswell shouldn't have the need either.