I'm having trouble finding supply of the latest stable 648 chipset mobo's so I am thinking of purchasing this system (I was very tempted to try the Gigabyte 8SG667 mobo w/ddr333 but cannot find supply in canada)

GIGA GA-8IHXP S478 850E 533FSB RDRAM AGP 6PCI USB2.0 LAN ATA133 RAID SOUND
INTEL PENTIUM 4 2.53Ghz 533FSB PGA
RAM BUS PC1066 16Bit 512MB (2x256MB RAMBUS)
PANASONIC 1.44MB 3.5' FLOPPY DRIVE
MAXTOR D740X 60GB 7200RPM ATA133 2MB Buffer
MSI GEFORCE4 TI4200 128MB DDR AGP TV OUT/DVI RETAIL BOX
SAMSUNG DYNAFLAT 19' 955DF .20MM(H) 1280x1024 @75Hz
CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY OEM
AOPEN 32x12x48x CD-RW w/Nero Software & Justlink
LG 16X IDE ATA33 DVD ROM DRIVE
ALTEC LANSING AVS500 5 PCS GAME SPEAKER SYSTEM
ANTEC SX840 20' WORKSTATION W/ 400W PS 2 FAN
MICROSOFT INTERNET KEYBOARD OEM
LOGITECH WHEEL MOUSE OPTICAL USB

Does anybody have any last minute warnings/advice before I pull the trigger?

Looks great! I recommend Kingston PC1066 because it clocks higher than other brands (you might get the bug to push it sometime), usually to PC1200 speeds. It's also less likely to be defective than some popular brands, so it has the potential to speed up the assembly process.

As for the soundcard, well, you might want to try the onboard sound first, the Audigy really isn't that great of a product to justify the added expense and settup hassle IMO, and the onboard soundchip is supposed to be of good quality.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

Thanks for the advice.. I blew my budget and had to back off to a non rambus system. I'm replacing the mobo with an MSI 648 Ultra, and using DDR333 memory for the time being. Oh and thanks for the tip on the audigy, maybe I'll feel out the onboard stuff first

M

Some onboard audio sux, some is accepatable, and some is good.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

System is up and running, seems stable (win2k, my msdn copy of xp had issues installing).

What kind of benchmark scores should I be shooting for? I'm going to run 3dmark2001 tonight. What else should I run for benchmark and burn in? Sandra?

Hope she performs, so a summary of what I'm running now:
MSI 648 Ultra
INTEL PENTIUM 4 2.53Ghz 533FSB PGA
Samsung DDR333 512M, CAS2
PANASONIC 1.44MB 3.5' FLOPPY DRIVE
MAXTOR D740X 60GB 7200RPM ATA133 2MB Buffer
MSI GEFORCE4 TI4200 128MB DDR AGP TV OUT/DVI RETAIL BOX
SAMSUNG DYNAFLAT 19' 955DF .20MM(H) 1280x1024 @75Hz
CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY OEM (went with it)
Lite-On 32x12x48x CD-RW w/Nero Software & Justlink
Lite-On 16X IDE ATA33 DVD ROM DRIVE
ALTEC LANSING AVS500 5 PCS GAME SPEAKER SYSTEM
ANTEC SX1080 W/ 430W
MICROSOFT INTERNET KEYBOARD OEM
LOGITECH WHEEL MOUSE OPTICAL USB

I like 3D Mark 2001 because it seems to stress the whole system.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

3dmark2001se so far I've scored:
9838 - out of the box

10290 - let MSI's video card driver auto-overclock up the card's clock rate.

10526 - increased ram speed to 'turbo' in bios, changed agp aperture to 128 instead of 64 (going to try 64 again with turbo mode)



MSI also has a FSB overclocking utility called fuzzylogic 4, but it hung my system (its supposed to) and didn't appear to continue after reboot so I think it hung earlier than it wanted to. I'd like to get this to work too but no luck so far.

Any other tips welcome, I'll post my 3dmark after each change

NOt terrible scores for that video card.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

Not good scores either.. other guys with the same setup (almost) have scored 14000.. but thats with 150fsb