the big deal is that when you have the pressy and it doesn't boot since the bios doesn't regconize it, how are you gonna go around that? spent 70 bucks on a northwood celly?
I am pretty sure you can flash it at the Bios boot.
Anyways, I know that board, I built my dad a computer based on it and a 3.0 that I got a combo deal from outpost. Its ok, alot of the headers and ports are strange, couldnt use alot of the Antec Sonata connections and it was a sucky overclocker I tried the same 2.6 in the Asus and it wouldnt do half the OC with the same Memory- but for a stock setup its ok. The board was also flimsy=cheap. I will not buy third tier Motherboards for myself but for stock or near stock you won't see a difference but you do get what you pay for and considering they gave me that motherboard as the CPU and Motherboard were like $219 back when retail 3.0 northwoods were $230 makes you wonder..
Let us know how it goes.
BTW i got my new board,
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=PT880_Neo-FSR&class=mb
kakka, the hell with intel chipset, i'm going via, this one cost me 70 bucks brand new, well worth it, it's got everything an intel chipset has and alot more for less lol. Oh yeah, and this one take my brand spanking new CPU too
dual channel support as well as AGP/PCI lock, same as an intel chipset.