Ok Skuzzy, here it is.
I finally received my new hardware, and I promised to pass on my experiences with it. Here is what I bought.
Retail P4 2.8Ghz/533Fsb Intel chip
Retail Asus P4G8X Deluxe MB (Granite Bay Intel E7502 Chipset)
1 Gig RAM Corsair TWIN 2700 DDR (x2 512 meg matched DIMMS for dual channel motherboards, 2-2-2-5 latency)
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (OEM board by FIC)
Chaintec ATX Full Tower w/450 watt PS
Full CH Pro USB Setup (Pedals, Throttle, Fighterstick)
And I mated that with my existing Maxtor 80 Gig HD, and Plextor 40/12/40 CD-R.
The Asus motheboard was packaged very nicely, and came with a thorough manual that was clear and concise. It contained all the needed cables, includes serial ATA, fireware, an extra backplate that contained additional USB 2.0 ports (total of 6) and quite a few other "goodies". It also came with a couple of CD's, containing all the necessary drivers for the MB and on board devices.
The system as a whole went together nicely, and I actually got everything plugged in correctly on the first try. I installed a fresh copy of WinXP Pro, with all the latest drivers, the latest Asus drivers, and updated to SP1 and all the security updates. There was one point where you had to pay attention to the order and the manner in which you installed the drivers for the motherboard, from the Asus CD, concerning the USB 2.0 ports. The worse part was that if you don't actually read the "README", you can install it incorrectly, and permanently damage the ability to use USB 2.0 (it just thinks its the original USB) without a complete reinstall of WinXP.
I did notice that the machine crashed once (shut itself down totally) during the online SP1 install. But went thru upon reboot with no problems. And I installed DX9.0
The system seems quite stable except that I had it crash once during Windows XP auto updater for SP1, and twice during Norton SpeedDisk (2003). Which I still can't figure out why.
The BIOS is quite adaptable and lends itself to overclocking. But right now I'm running everything at stock speeds, until it gets some burn in time.
My 3DMark2001 benchmark was 14,622. I need to check the website to see how that rates with other similar setups.
The only quirks that I've seen so far is due to a "feature" of the Asus motherboard called CPU Parameter Recall or CPR for short. Basically its for overclockers who lock the system up and instead of having to physically reset the BIOS on the motherboard with a jumper, its suppose to automatically reset itself to a default BIOS setup.
Whats happened is that each time I've had a lockup/crash (described above) I power off, and when I power back up the BIOS comes up in the "default" setup. A nice feature, but it seems to be activating when it is not necessary.
The most frustrating part of this is that when this happens, each time I get caught in a "setup loop". I change the BIOS (or even leave it at the default setup) and hit "Save & Exit". Instead of continuing with a boot with the new settings, the system powers itself down. And when I start it back up, I'm back to the default settings in the BIOS. Rinse and Repeat. After going thru this loop about 10 times, each time, I found that if I change the "Plug and Play System" to "NO", saving and exiting which powers down, then changing to "YES" during the next loop, the system then saves normally and everything is fine.
Other than that one weird quirk, it seems like a really nice setup.
Skuzzy, any questions? I know you were particularly interested in this new motherboards.
