Good but maybe no longer good enough
Written: Nov 28 '02 (Updated Nov 28 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Big brand motherboard at an affordable price, with lots of useful features
Cons: Already outdated, upgrade path cut off with no multithreading support
The Bottom Line: People that bought this motherboard early on have benefitted a lot from its potential but now with multithreading on the horizon, it's future looks bleak.
|
|
|
| isvikthere's Full Review: ASUS P4S533 Intel Socket 478 |
At the time I'm writing this review on the ASUS P4S533 motherboard, the very last examples must be residing on the shopshelves. Because the main component of this motherboard which is its SiS 645DX chipset has now been replaced by a newer model,the SiS648 to be found in the newer Asus
motherboard model called P4S8X, on sale since last September.
THE GOOD
Anyway,the P4S533 is designed for Socket 478 Pentium4 processors, so both the Willamettes which have 400Mhz Frontside bus and 256kb level 2 cache and the Northwoods, which have 533 Mhz Frontside bus and 512Mhz level 2 cache. It can accomodate processors ranging from 1.4GHz to up and
over 3.0Ghz (more about those later). The chipset contains the SiS 645DX North Bridge and SiS 961B South Bridge.
The board has 3 x DDR DIMM Sockets for Max. 3GB of unbuffered PC2700 (=333Mhz/PC2100 (=266 Mhz) / PC1600 (133MHZ) DDR-SDRAM, but for PC 2700 it is limited to Maximum 4 banks. PC2700 and PC3200 memory rival and sometimes surpass the performance of the more expensive RDRAM (rimm)-memory type found often on motherboards with Intel chipsets.
It has one AGP 4X and six PCI slots, so no more ISA ! The two IDE channels support four 133/100/66 UDMA devices. There is also on-board 6 channel audio delivered through an integrated C-Media CMI8738 audio controller with a S/PDIF-in/-out interface, on which I can't comment because I still use my Creative Soundblaster Live! soundcard and have the on-board audio disabled.
Optional on this motherboard is built-in LAN for10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, but mine hasn't. Be careful here as there are different versions of the motherboards Bios (Basic In and Out System) depending if you have on-board LAN or not, so be careful which one you download and install.
The board has features like Hardware Monitoring giving information through 3 FAN sensors, 4 Voltages and 2 temperatures monitoring but all of this you find today
on almost any bigger brand motherboard.
Also present are the ASUS Post Reporter for system voice warnings Q-Fan, Smart Card Reader, Memory Stick and Secure Digital support (optional) there is also Asus EZ Plug for flexible power connectivity, it can replace the connector for the proprietary square 12V plug required by the Pentium4 processors. So instead of the square plug you simply use one of the basic 4-cord 12V plugs coming out of your power supply if you haven't enough 12V connectors
left ask your computershop for a splitter (costs about 3 US$)
In fact most of the extra connectors on the board are there to accomodate an ASUS iPanel, which is simply an expansion box you can buy separately and which you install in a free big 5'25inch bay. This iPanel, depending on the model (there are two: Basic and Deluxe) provides for Smart Card/Memory Stick /Secure Digital reader connectors and a front panel audio connector and hardware monitoring through a small LCD display.
Attached to the motherboard with the other connectors (2xPS2/2xSerial/1xparallel/audio/RJ45) are 2 USB headers and on the board itself there are connectors for 4 more USB ports. Included in the motherboard package there is an expansion plate with two extra USB ports. I am currently looking how I can make an opening in the front of my full tower case in order to install it there instead of at the rear of my tower, above or under my PCI-cards as intended, the two USB connectors sit on a bracket which you fix like you would a PCI-controller card.
On the Asus CD there are of course the indispensable SiS Drivers for AGP, IDE and USB, together with ASUS PC Probe which is the hardware monitor software, the ASUS LiveUpdate utility and useful tools the likes of Cyberlink PowerPlayerSE, VideoLive Mail and Trend Micro PC-cillin 2000 anti-virus software with Windows XP support. Although I would advise you the minute you purchase this board to get on the net and go looking for the updated versions of all these programmes.
Finally this ATX-board's dimensions are 12.0" x 8.6" (30.5cm x 21.8cm)
So that's enough of the specifications. For me this board does exactly what I bought it for : OVERCLOCKING !
- it allows my Intel Northwood P4 1,8Ghz processor to run stable at 2,53 Ghz and provides room for all my expension cards (Soundblaster Live!, Intel Network controllor card, SCSI-card) makes my IBM harddrive run at UDMA 5-setting for optimum speed.
In fact the moment I entered the bios by pressing the DEL-button it immediately offered me the setting of 2,4 Ghz for my 1.8Ghz Processor which is in fact intended to run at the 400 Mhz bus speed instead of the 533Mhz speed the 2.4Ghz setting requires. The BIOS soft control allows you to play around with a wealth of busspeed and voltage settings to squeeze that last bit of performance out of your system.
THE BAD
When I bought this motherboard I was aware of the fact that the newer 648 SiS-chipset would be available soon, but as I could no longer postpone my upgrade I went for the P4S533 with the now older 645DX. Therefore I gave up on the AGP 8x, USB 2.0 support and Serial ATA the SiS 648 caters for because I have no such devices anyway. In fact in benchmarks the first AGP 8x enabled Nvidia videocards show only marginal performance gain so not much is lost there. But more useful is the even bigger bandwith between the north- and southbridge the SiS648 caters for. Here the SiS645DX achieves only 533Mb/s where the 648 attains 1GB/s.
USB 2.0 is also quite another ballgame as this newer USB-version gives much better transfer speeds than the first generation and what's more USB 2.0 is backwards compatible with USB 1.1 devices anyway.
Worse is that my pride and joy does not and never will be able to work with Intels newest 3,06Ghz Multithreading (MT) processor and whichever other multithreading enabled P4-processors are bound to follow. This in great contrast with the Intel motherboard chipsets which were also released some while ago.
This means that when my current setup will become outdated a new motherboard will be mandatory as with this new generation of Intel processors my upgrade path has been cut off. D'oh !
THE UGLY
vik :D
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 118
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
isvikthere
|
|
Reviews written: 46
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
Amongst other things, a computer hardware enthusiast who writes only about things I know/own.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.