P4PB thoughts?

[jkresh]

I have been waiting for the P4S8X, but I realized I have to order on Monday, I need time to get the system up and running before school and am pushing the limits already, if the SR7-8X is available at newegg on Monday I will go with it, but if not I still don?t know what board (not even sure what processor 1.8A, 2.0A, 2.2A, or 2.26B, since buying with AE gold can take advantage of pricecut even with buying now), I will be overclocking, but as it is my school system wont go to high as cant afford to have problems. I am seriously looking at the P4PB, it has gotten good reviews and seems to be almost as good as the 648, and better then the i845e or g. However the lack of licensing from Intel is somewhat bothersome, so before I buy it, I wanted to see what people thought of it. I will be willing to look at any board, available at either newegg, mwave, or googlegear, but want to limit the places I have to order from (Still need, CPU, memory (corsair xms) and power supply). Thanks.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

I have read some pretty positive reviews. The only knock on it seems to be the lack of DDR400 support.

The Pros - support of a tremendous number of features... very stable.

The Cons - lack of a license from Intel.

 

[jkresh]

does anyone know if it has pci lock, I cant seem to find anything that confirms or denies it (the anandtech review says know but it is also a preproduction board (lack of firewire) so I am wondering what the retail board has) if it does not then I will pretty much eliminate it as I could just get the P4S533 and a firewire/usb2 card and end up with the same features (except for AGP 8X, but by the time i get an 8X card I will have a clawhammer so it wont matter).