Maybe the best 865PE motherboard
Written: Mar 19 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stability, speed, quality
Cons: Quality always comes at a price
The Bottom Line: This motherboard provides stability and great performance with a lot of flexibility. But, all that comes at a price.
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| sasa_sur's Full Review: Asustek P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard |
I never buy assembled PC configurations because I find that most manufacturers make some compromises to cut cost and you can never get exactly the configuration you need. A few months ago I decided to replace my old PC and to build a new one. I was using an Athlon processor so it was necessary to change the motherboard since I decided to go with Intel Pentium 4. I chose P4 because of hyper threading technology and reduced heat dissipation.
When choosing a motherboard I looked at price/performance ratio and that left me with Intel 865PE chipset as the best choice since it provides very good stability and excellent performance at an acceptable price. I chose ASUS because of their good reputation in building quality motherboards.
Intel 875PE chipset provides better performance in some cases but is much more expensive.
What is in the box
The board comes with a set of cables. Two UltraATA 100/66 80 pin cables, one E-IDE 40 pin cables, one floppy cable all in a nice black color. Then there are 2 S-ATA cables and an I/O shield for installing the motherboard in the case. There is a nice and informative printed manual, printed quick start guide, support CD and a bonus CD containing InterVideo WinDVD suite.
On the support CD there are drivers, Trend Micro PC-cillin 2002 antivirus software, ASUS live update utility and ASUS PC-probe. ASUS live update utility enables updating the BIOS from windows environment and ASUS PC-probe is a software for monitoring various motherboard functions.
I find ASUS live update utility to be very useful since it makes BIOS updates very easy without the need to make additional boot disks.
Description and layout
It features full ATX design and traditional ASUS yellow colored PCB. On the back panel there are the following connectors: 1 x Parallel, 1 x Serial, 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse, Audio connectors, 1 x RJ45 LAN connector, 1 x S/PDIF Output, 4 x USB 2.0/1.1, 1 x IEEE1394 or Firewire.
For expansion cards there are is one AGP 8X/4X slot , 5 PCI slots and ASUS Wi-Fi slot for optional wireless LAN upgrade. There are 2 UltraDMA 100/66/33 and 2 Serial ATA connectors for Hard disks, floppy disk connector and E-IDE Raid connector. All of these connector are nicely positioned so that the cables don't run over the board so better cooling is possible.
For additional flexibility there are 2 more USB 2.0 connectors that supports additional 4 USB 2.0 ports which makes a total of 8 USB ports all with USB 2.0 compatibility.
ATX power connector is positioned close to the floppy disk connector and this is the only complaint I have about the layout. Additional 12V ATX 4 pin connector is located near the CPU.
Then there is one more Firewire connector which I have connected to the front panel on my case.
There are 3 Fan connectors for CPU, Chassis and Power FAN, S/PDIF out connector, CD / AUX / Modem audio in, GAME/MIDI connector, COM2 connector and Front panel audio connector.
The board layout is excellent and it was very easy to install it in the case and connect all the necessary cables.
Features
Motherboard is based on Intel 865PE chipset with Intel ICH5R Southbridge which has Serial ATA RAID 0 support. There is a VIA IDE-RAID controller so you can build array of maximum 4 ATA-133 hard disk as an RAID0, 1, 0+1 or JBOD. I have only one S-ATA disk in my system so I don't use this feature but it is nice to have for the future.
There is integrated 6 channel sound which automatically detect detects and identifies what types of peripherals are plugged into the audio I/O jacks and notifies users of inappropriate connection.
The BIOS has some excellent features for overclocking like Intelligent CPU frequency tuner which enables quick overclocking up to 30% (depends on CPU and RAM). It automatically detects and optimizes every relevant parameter to provide both performance and stability. Then there is frequency selection from 100MHz up to 400MHz at 1MHz increment and adjustable FSB/DDR ratio for advanced users.
Also BIOS has an integrated crash protection and it regulates the speeds of all the fans installed.
Only annoying feature is voice POST reporting which gets boring quickly but can be disabled.
There is integrated gigabit LAN controller which automatically detects errors in the cables.
The board supports DDR400 RAM but not all modules might function correctly. ASUS has a list of supported modules in the manual and also on the web so it is advisable to check it before buying memory modules.
Performance and stability
On the ASUS site you can find the following quote "ASUS Hyper Path, a unique technology for the ASUS P4P800 series, optimizes the true potential of the Intel 865PE chipset to deliver the highest performance amongst competing 856PE-based solutions". In practice it means that ASUS was the first to find a way to unlock the restrictions Intel has put in it's cheaper chipset 865PE so it can't compete with more expensive 875PE solution. It means you get the performance for less money.
I used the board for over 4 months now. There were no stability issues and the performance is excellent. ASUS live update provides stable and easy way to update the BIOS. ASUS MyLogo enables you to change the boot screen which is a nice touch and enables you to fully customize your system.
I have tried some overclocking and it was easy to do using ASUS built in overclocking abilities. I tried to overclock by 5% and there were no stability issues but performance gains were minimal. At higher overclocking settings the system crashed while playing Call of Duty but I can't be sure that the motherboard is to blame. Maybe it was due to memory or graphic card.
Conclusion
Without overclocking my system works perfectly with no glitches or mysterious crashes. This was the main reason for choosing ASUS and I think it was worth paying a little more.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 150
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Epinions.com ID:
sasa_sur
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Location: Zagreb, Croatia
Reviews written: 44
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:An Epinions user from Zagreb, Croatia. Currently swamped with work.
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