I just built a P4 system around an MSI 645E-MAX for somebody as a high performance gaming rig. This is one smooth mobo. Excellent bios control. In combo with Mushkin PC2400 2-3-3 DDR, and a Western Digital special edition 80GB 7200rpm 8meg buffered drive, I have to say, performance seemed very brisk. I'm going to build another for myself with this $85 mobo as a DAW and see how it compares. Here was the parts list for the gamer rig; by the way, 128mb Geforce 4200 cards are amazing:

*P4 1.6a @ 2.13
*MSI 645E Max-C
*Mushkin 256DDR PC2400 2-3-3 with heat spreader
*Chaintech Geforce4 4200 "GT21" Special Edition VIVO 128Mb vid card
*Western Digital 80Gb 7200 special edition 8meg buffer drive
*Dell P793 Diamondtron monitor(top of the line 17")
*Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio
*Logitech's THX certified Z560 4.1 speakers(amazing speakers) :D

Tommy P.