Skylake MSI vs Gigabyte? Always used Gigabyte... MSI Compat. / Quality OK?

[haze295]

Pretty sure there will be a few topics such as this, but didn't see one yet for Skylake.

Looking over Tony's buying guide for Skylake, found that the higher end Gigabyte boards are stacking Sound Blaster Audio, and only have ALC on 3x PCIE Boards. Also, a lot of people are complaining about the BIOS on the new boards as well with Gigabyte, but nothing drastic.

This site has always said that Gigabyte was the way to go for the closest compatibility to Apple hardware. That has always been the case with all my builds (at least 5), but wondering now if that's changed?


MSI has some amazing high end boards, with Intel Ethernet, ALC1150, PCI 3.0 x5 @16x each, etc. My question is that:

Are the days of "Gigabyte is the best, most stable, longest supported..." over?


TIA for any advice on this

 

[Going Bald]

Since the OEMs went to UEFI the compatibility has increased to almost all OEM boards. Check the buyer's guides under the Motherboards headings for the Asus/MSI/Asrock board you are interested in. If it is in the list it is compatible.