Both FIC and EPoX companies responded to our news-story “EPoX and FIC Mainboards on VIA KT400 and NVIDIA nForce2: Different Mainboards, Same Design?” posted on Thursday. Apparently, the mainboard makers share certain R&D resources, what probably helps the manufacturers to improve profitability and time-to-market for the products.

A response from an EPoX representative did not contain a lot of information, but alluded that not only the mainboards we mentioned, but a lot more products on the market utilise coherent designs and technologies. A FIC official said that EPoX and FIC share R&D resources what allows them to deliver a broader range of products to market in a timely manner.

As you see, mainboards makers admitted that there are numerous products on the market that are either equal, or have a lot of similarities. It does not mean that there are loads of such “twins” on the market and that is why our choice is not so broad - different mainboards have different BIOSes, are equipped with different software and provide different performance-tuning opportunities. It means that when choosing a mainboard you should now pay attention to all those factors before making your decision.