Well in my own defense I'd like to say that I wound up with the Abit because my Asus MO died on me--and even though it was under warrantee I couldn't wait a week for the turn-around. I hailed a cab to Canal St. here in NYC and got the best sidewalk deal I could find in an hour :-)

Then I figured: ASUS-ABIT--6 of one, half dozen of the other. That RMA'ed ASUS is still in packaging they shipped it to me in.

And prior to building my current system I had pretty much bought pre-assembled packages from Gateway--at least since Win95.