Well I've had a major change of heart regarding Ausus motherboards and AMD processors. (If you're not a computer tekkie person, you'll probably just want to skip this message).

I've been through 3 motherboards by Asus (all same make/model) in the past 2 months. Severe but intermittent read/write data coruption errors, resulting in installing applications that don't run; windows boot disks that can't be read; irregular windows shut downs; and a myriad of other problems.

Since then, I've been visiting a lot of motherboard forums and finding out my problems haven't been unique to me with this motherboard and AMD processors. At the time I bought this board and processor it was a cheaper alternative to an Intel board and Intel processor. The long of the short is avoid any motherboard which uses the VIA chipset and optionally, the Promise Raid controller. There are lots of problems with the drivers as well as how the board integrates with Sound Blaster products and hardrives larger than 20 gigs.

A week ago, I took the m.b. and AMD Duron processor back to the store, where they confessed to me, they've had a lot of problems with AMD and AMD supported motherboards, and most of it can be traced to the VIA chipsets onboard. The store was good enough to credit me back the full cost of this mb and the AMD.

For nearly double of the cost on the old mb and the AMD, I now have a MSI motherboard, with an Intel 845 chipset, and a Pentium IV, 2 ghz processor. It is the most stable system I've had in a very long time and for the past week, has booted very quickly, been extremely fast at everything, and have had no boot problems or blue screens of death. You buy cheap you buy dear. Lesson learned.

Of course my existing AGP video card wouldn't work with this new board because of a conflict with the voltage, so I was "forced" to buy a new 64 meg AGP 4X N-Vidia GeForce III T2 card. (It's unbelievable for 3D.) So that's my sad story and I'm sticking to it. *G*