The Intel D850GB retail box contains all you will need to get up and running, including the standard components such as the motherboard itself, one FDD cable, one ATA-33 EIDE cable, one ATA-66/100 EIDE cable, a user manual and the driver CD. There are also special Pentium 4 HSF (Heatsink Fan) retention clips, a custom ATX backplate, and a pair of Continuity RIMMS for the unused memory sockets. All in all, it's a pretty complete package and even includes a "motherboard diagram sticker" that can be placed inside the PC case for easy reference and troubleshooting.

Setting up a Pentium 4 system is unlike any other installation you have ever done. It is actually not that hard, assuming you know what you are doing and follow the proper steps, but it still requires a bit more work than setting up a new Athlon or Pentium III system. That is one reason I was surprised at how relatively easy the Intel D850GB installation went.

Although this is not, by definition, an overclocking or enthusiast motherboard, the D850GB gives a good deal of real estate to work with and the oft-challenging work of installing the P4 HSF went off without a hitch. And best of all... from the very first boot, everything worked perfectly. From a physical design standpoint, there is little not to like about the D850GB, and even those inexperienced with Pentium 4 installs should make short work of this one. Even the included driver CD was a snap, and it automatically loaded the software program and defaulted to the drivers your particular setup required. These were user adjustable before installation, but it was nice to see the Win 98SE defaults go to different defaults than the Win 2000 install. Sure it's a little thing, but it shows that Intel is really thinking of the user when designing their driver install programs.

The only area I would improve on is the hardcopy documentation. The entire user manual is 23 pages long, and there are a few important omissions and pages that are definitely not in the right order. It starts off well and will have you installing the CPU and memory in no time. As you progress, however, more questions could come up that are simply not featured in the text or not organized in how the installation steps progress. I myself looked long and hard for the layout of the case LEDs, only to find it in a very small diagram placed way back on the second page. This is not a huge deal, but the documentation does so well in the key areas, but tends to drop the ball in the lower-profile ones. If the user manual had been as good as the hardware, we would have been up and running in record time.

If you've ever used an Intel board before you now exactly what to expect. First of all, you cannot even access the system BIOS of the D850GB from the start-up screen. You need to set an on-board hardware jumper, which then allows you access to the BIOS. Once the necessary changes have been made, you have to turn off your PC, adjust the jumper back, and then restart. Thankfully, given this procedure, there are few important BIOS options present in the BIOS anyway.

In terms of performance settings, the board's BIOS does no include an FSB speed options, there are few to none memory speed settings and very little to interest the performance tweaker. There is an option to change the basic CPU speed, but this only applies if you're running an unlocked CPU. What is there applies to basic setup for a standard PC, with options for PCI settings, IDE configuration, and full options for power management and boot menu.