I remember hearing something about Microsoft being sloppy when it came to their integrated MSDN versions, is there any truth to that?

I did a binary compare of SP0 + manual slipstream of SP3 vs. MSDN SP3 and there were no significant differences.

It's a long time now, so I don't remember the exact details, but the only difference was around Drivers.cab (and/or SP.cab). There were less drivers in MSDN version, but I think they're obsoleted or merged.

Other than that, I found no differences.

I've seen MSDN SP3 integrated work flawlessly on many installs. No drivers missing.

GL