Don't know if it's been talked about before, the Asus CUSL2-C "Black Pearl"
It's a special edition board with a black PCB. Also came with a branded screwdriver and a collectible box. I kept the box for awhile, but eventually it became too worn to keep. Still have the screwdriver and manuals somewhere around here.
Had it paired with a Pentium III 650 at 866Mhz and single stick of PC133 512MB (the chipset maximum). I cursed Intel that day because the limitation was more political than technical in nature. DRAM prices were so low that 1.5GB of PC133 cost less than 128MB of RD-RAM, but you would need to use VIA and not Intel. For perspective: 128MB was minimum, 256MB was good, and 512MB was above the curve. So while 1.5GB RAM would have been god-like, many of us accepted the 512MB limitation as a compromise.
In other words, the prohibitive price of the i820 and VIA's instability made the i815/E/EP a favorite. Wasn't special on it's own, but simply had the fewest "cons".
So what's to like about this specific model over other i815 boards? Aside from the color, it's was purposely designed with no 3rd party on-board devices. It's AGP and 6 PCI slots (or 5 PCI + 1 CNR) were ample, and allowed the builder to choose every single part. I had a GeForce 3 in the first slot, two Intel NICs, sound card, Firewire controller, and an MPEG2 decoder. The decoder was a holdover from my older, less powerful system that couldn't decode DVD video on it's own. The Pentium III didn't have that problem, however, the decoder's S-Video output quality was so clean that I kept it installed for several years. Could play a DVD on the TV while playing Diablo II or Quake III with no slowdown.
Over the next couple years 3rd party controllers became less taboo and it wasn't that big of a deal to use
some on-board devices. You only bought dedicated if it made a difference in your situation. So while the i815 platform was for the most part unremarkable, this particular board was a gem for picky builders at a time when it still mattered.
Interestingly enough, RAM doesn't seem to be an issue... Even on high load, during Firefox sessions and/or watching YT, it's only 3/4 full, sometimes even 1/2. It's the CPU that's slowing things down, which runs at 100% pretty much the whole time. Ever since I OCed the CPU, YouTube performance noticeably increased to the point where the video lags only once in a while, where running the system at factory clock resulted with continuous lag to the point where you can't really watch anything.
is it i875P?
Will bench that baby over the weekend!
- imagine THAT!!! 
