>Now back to the ORIGINAL question ...lol... Motherboard recomendations!!!
> Anyone have any ???

I bought the MSI 865PE Neo2 a month ago. MSI 865PE. *Very* happy with it and the deal I got. I added a 2.6C P4 and can easily overclock to 3.0, probably higher. A little cheaper than the Asus equivalents, and Tom's hardware was very favorable to it. Tom You can reach some reviews from this link. About the only thing this board doesn't have is onboard wireless. If desired, you can get this as well from MSI. Check their homepage.

I've had some trouble with the 1GB dual PC4200 RAM. Some kind of seating problem in the motherboard. I've installed in two cases, and both times I had to remove and reinstall the RAM one or more times before it would pass the memory test on boot. The 2nd case install took me 6 hrs of install, fail, remove, clean, reinstall cycling before it finally worked :-( I decided to buy the bleeding edge RAM for overclocking, and this was probably a bad move...too expensive, questionable performance improvement, and the above issue. I'm also getting very frequent and reproducible crashes in Vegas, although never on render -- if I hit the L button to increase playback speed I can crash pretty much every time. OTOH, I've run long RAM burn-in tests and have had no problems. Probably just a bad install on my part and questionable 3rd party plugins...didn't take me long to install a bunch of cr*p. I'm not too worried; definitely not the fault of Vegas. I'll get it licked eventually.

One nice thing about this motherboard is a LED indicator that fits on the PCI slot and cycles through the tests on boot. Any problems and the LED will show you the problem.

Fosko, I'd definitely be looking hard at the power supply. Tom's hardware did some tests last year and basically panned *everybody*. Only 2 or 3 power supplies were *not* categorized as incompetent, unethical, dangerous cr*p. It was a real eye-opener article.

fosko,
If you get your CUSL2 working properly with your 1Ghz PIII CPU and have it tuned well I don't think you will see much of an improvement in performance when you upgrade to a P4. Clock for Clock, the P3 was faster and although posted speed tests on the internet may show improvements, I don't believe you will notice a big improvement when you video edit. Now, I am not comparing a CUSL2 with P3- 1000 which is NOT working up to par with a new P4. I am comparing a well tuned configuration which you don't at present have, but could be that if you work on it.

Of course, when a person has their mind set on something new, it's hard to talk them out of it. I know that feeling as well.

John

I have the P4P800. The only thing the P4P800 deluxe has on it:
2 extra IDE channels (they can be RAIDed, but the RAID controller is very very bad according to hardocp.com)
firewire

For me, it wasn't worth the price difference to go for the deluxe. With the P4P800 you have 2 IDE channels (2 optical drives, 2 hard drives) and 2 extra SATA ports so you can add 500GB in the future. 500GB plus whatever you already have should be enough.

The P4P800 is good for overclocking. CPU parameter recall means you don't have to mess with jumpers, and you change voltages. You can't push "extreme" voltages into your RAM, but you'd only need that with expensive overclocking RAM that doesn't affect performance much (3% difference between 1:1 and 5:4/3:2 dividers).

You might want to look lower at cheaper Abit, Gigabyte, and MSI boards too. I have no experience with them so I can't say whether they're good. As far as performance goes, all motherboards with the same Intel 865 chipset are pretty much the same. Ignore the performance tests, because the manufacturers cheat in one way or another (overclocking subtly, and by lowering memory timings). Also, I'd be wary of Tom's Hardware. Their methodology is usually weak.

2- You can use the Asus PC Probe utility or Motherboard Monitor (free download) to monitor voltages. Prime95 is good for checking CPU and RAM. I would suspect power supply or heat. You can run prime95 with a voltage monitoring program.

Thanks again for all your replies . really helped.

Here's where I am:
* I wrote ASUS. They wrote back with advice.. I'll post later. I tried to call them becasue what they siggested didnt work. This was Friday.. I'm still waiting for a call back.
* Finally had some time this weekend to break everything down. I followed JohnMeyer and Galeng's suggestions and took cards out, removed Motherboard....ooops!! What's that ?? I loose screw in the case between the case and Motherboard ??? Pretty embarrasseing after all this (now I know how my surgeon felt when he had to go back in to get his scalple after my removing my appendix:-).

I let the system run for 24 hours.. rebooted a couple of times.. no problems. I'm hoping this solves it.

A few things of note :
* I hear what you're saying Craftech, but I rendered a project on my P4 2.6 laptop at 1 hour 3 minutes. the same project on my CUSl2 P3 took over 4 hours ( I went to sleep after a while). Maybe the desktop is'nt tweaked to peak., but that's a big difference.
* the beeping I reported only happened once or twice..for the most part I just wasn't getting ANY precessing response..just CPU and Case fans.
* It's not like I did extensive testing, but when I was able to get it up and running those few times...I woould be fine until I tried to render a project.. then it would freeze and when I tried to reboot.. dead in the water. I even edited a one hour video (TV show.. took out commercials) fine.. but didnt have problem until rendering.
* is that true about the Intel 865 chipset ?? if that's so.. it makes it easier to find a Motherboard. Just look for that chip set and the features I want ?

thanks again.. and if it acts up again I'll report back.

Here is what I got back from ASUS:

Thank you for your support of our products!

The high-low wail that you are hearing is a voltage warning. This is the motherboard's way of saying that it has detected a problem with the electrical voltage your CPU is receiving, either too much or too little. In most instances your system will not run while emitting this warning in order to protect your CPU from damage. If your system continues to run while you get this sound, we recommend shutting it off.

To troubleshoot this problem, please follow these steps to try clearing your system's CMOS settings:

1: Turn off your system, making sure to disconnect the power cord from the wall or power strip. The green power light on the motherboard should turn off after several seconds.

2: Locate the circular CMOS battery and remove it from the motherboard.

3: Locate CLRTC (also may be labeled CLR_RTC). This is usually a set of three pins with a jumper cap, but it may also be two pins without a jumper or simply a pair of solder points, depending on which motherboard you have.

If your board uses three pins and a jumper cap, move the jumper from the Default position to the Clear position for at least ten seconds. Then, move the jumper back to the original Default position.

If your board uses two pins without a jumper, place a jumper cap on the two pins for at least ten seconds, then remove it.

If your board uses solder points, connect both points with a metal object (the tip of a flathead screwdriver or a paper clip, for example) for at least ten seconds, then remove the metal object.

4: Re-install the CMOS battery.

5: Plug the system back in, then power it on.


If the warning still persists after clearing the CMOS, check that your MB is not picking up EMI (Electromagnetic Interference), or improperly grounding against the case. Please remove the MB from the case and set it up DIRECTLY on the cardboard box it came in or some other non-static, non-conductive surface, like a telephone book. Install the power supply, processor (with heat sink and fan), memory and video card. Make sure to install the case speaker on your board.

If the warning stops then your problem has been caused by grounding. You will need to electrically isolate the MB from the case in order to correct it. To do this, you will need to use electrical tape to cover the brass stand-offs that support the MB, and insert paper washers between the MB and the heads of the mounting screws. The red paper washers should be included with your case hardware, or they can be purchased at Radio Shack or a computer store.
Make sure that no stand-offs are placed in a spot where the motherboard isn't designed to be grounded, as some cases will have different standoff locations to accommodate different styles of motherboards. Also check that there are no other metal objects that could contact the motherboard or any other electrical device attached to the system, such as a metal burr, loose screw, metal rod, or any other object that could cause a short.

If you still hear the warning, you may have a problem with your power supply or CPU. Try substituting another power supply of equal or greater power to see if this corrects the problem. You may also try installing a different CPU on this motherboard, or install your CPU on a different motherboard to see if the CPU itself is causing the problem.