Adequate performer
Written: Jan 16 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Certainly supports 2.4 GHz CPUs and beyond, good power management and monitor features
Cons: No RAID, not true jumper free
The Bottom Line: Fast enough for work and play, unless you are extreme gamer, but then XBOX and Playstation 2 seems to be better for much less.
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| yoshimato's Full Review: ASUS Intel 850 Chipset P4T-E (P4T-E/WOA) Motherboa... |
When I built my new PC last year, there wasn't any of the components listed for review, so I wrote a general how-to article. One year on, all the components on my PC are mostly listed on Epinion ready for review. This Asus P4T-E board is for Pentium 4 with RDRAM. The first choice is either Intel or AMD processor. I'm not philosophical about this and my old mother board is for AMD processors. This time the choice is simple for Intel, you just choose the speed of the Pentium 4 processor for the money you want to pay. If you want to save money, there are many ways even with Intel. For performance, the speed amongst Pentium 4 processors will tell you their relative performance. If you want to compare AMD and Pentium 4, there are a lot of comparisons but often apple and oranges. There are a lot of benchmarks but people don't use the same benchmarks, they don't mean much to average persons. Overall I find it difficult to find and compare. Going for Intel is for simplicity. If I have to spend so much time, that's money, I could afford to consult professionals or buy a Dell or whatever.
At the time Intel's roadmap is going for RDRAM memory, and only RDRAM chipsets are available for Pentium 4. RDRAM is promoted as significantly faster, up to 20%, than the contender DDR SRAM, which AMD processors use. At the time Intel is planning versions of chipsets that support DDR. Since DDR SRAM is simply doubling the speed of plain SRAM, these chipsets support plain SRAM which will allow lower cost PCs. Many experts do not like the idea of RDRAM, that it isn't as good as it claimed, that is, too expensive for the marginal performance gain, and that companies like Intel get financial rewards for selling RDRAM, which patent is owned by a single company. Now even Intel has two parallel lineups of chipsets, one for RDRAM and the other for DDR. Intel's roadmap isn't clear either, if they are going the DDR route, they are going back on their own words. And it doesn't like that they are going solely for the RDRAM route as announced years earlier.
At the time, Pentium 4 and RDRAM isn't selling well. You doesn't gain much from P3 to P4 unless the processor is very much faster. Say you don't gain much from a P3 1 GHz to a P4 1.5 GHz. People get surprises when their new upgrade is actually slower. A lot are opting for cheaper DDR. But then Intel design chipsets and motherboard to go with P4. People will get in when you lower the price. I know they sold a lot of P4 bare processors bundled with RDRAM in retail boxes. If you are quick, the prices aren't steep compared to the competition. No one wants the early Intel boards and they are dirt chip.
For performance you would like to buy only what you need currently, and cost effective regarding upgrading to future needs. Even if you know what you needs, it's good to get somewhat faster than your current needs so you can hang on to the PC longer. But what you need is a million dollar question. If you run old software now, such as word processing, they are so fast that they are scary. The software guys always find ways to slow down your hardware and load you with things you seldom or never uses. I gave up and tend to look at bang for the buck, and reasonable flexibility and upgradability. Just don't buy too much into the future, such as 4 GHz motherboard when the current fastest processor is 2 GHz. People have been saying that unlike P3, the P4 is not likely to allow people building their own computers, the high speed and heat will need very good design of the whole system. This is true to some extend when you see the huge heat sinks and fan that comes with the P4. But somehow they have to solve the problems, since the guys assembly the computers are more unskilled than you and me, in 3rd world countries. Once you have a complete PC, you can see how much it exceeds your requirement, which is a starting point for upgrades and your next motherboard.
I don't build my own PC to save money, as complete systems can be have for very little money, but their specs are not good. I don't do it for world beating performance at a budget, I don't play much games. I don't do it for labor of love, as labor cost time and hence money, and for the money I can save time and buy a better PC. I do it for fun first, and as a continuous plan to have what I need without breaking the bank. I buy a larger hard drive when I needs it and if it happened that I need a better board, I'll go for that. I can make good use of a $30 AGP card, I can do without a CD burner when everybody have one. But I may buy a $300 DVD burner with no hesitation, of course not at $500 or $1000.
The ASUS uses P4 and the Intel 850 chipset, that means RDRAM.
Main Features
P4 Socket 478 : newer processors use this socket, so I can upgrade easily if I want to. But the older socket boards are at deep discount at the time.
2.4 GHz + : I'm fed up that other manufacturers who don't state their maximum P4 speed, not even in the manuals. The reason is that most boards can go higher than the maximum P4 speed of about 2.4 GHz at the time, with 2.0 GHz for the top end PC systems. Without processors to test, you really can't claim that you support future processors above 2.4 GHz. And if you state 2.4 GHz, some may think that this is a limitation. But if you don't mention anything about it, like Abit, how I can be sure? There's no way I am going to analysis your manual and derive the maximum clock speed. Abit lost my business, though I am very happy with my previous Abit mother board. At the time my price/performance ratio analysis points to a 1.8 GHz P4. So a 2.4 GHz will give me significant improvement if I upgrade the processor when the price comes down. Currently the max speed is about 3 GHz and most decent desktops have 2.4 GHz. There's no point buying too much into the future as you may not need it, or new chipsets are required.
850 Chipset : that means RDRAM, 400 MHz FSB (memory bus), 4 x AGP. Newer chipsets support faster memory, and you have to pay more for more expensive memory. 4 x AGP is good enough for DVD playing, and 3D games. But if you are into beach volley type of games, 8 x AGP may be a good idea. At the time the AMD camp has 266 MHz FSB only. So I think this would be good for 3D graphics, number crunching and memory intensive applications.
Memory: 4 RIMM slots up to 2 GB of PC800/PC600 RDRAM. Support ECC, error correction code. I got 128 x 2 PC800 ECC memory. Have to be a pair. Anything slower or non-ECC is about the same price if you can find them.
Expansion slots : 1 AGP, 5 PCI, 1 CNR. CNR is designed so that you can use cheaper analogue modem and network interface cards I think. But for non-corporate PC's you don't save much for a PC or two. Say an Ethernet card is already as low as $10. The modem to have is cable or DSL, which is not applicable to CNR I think. Cox asked my opinion about new cable services, that would be a lot cheaper than current, always on but at a lower speed. That will sure kill a lot of remaining analog modems.
Hard drive IDE: 2 x UltraDMA ATA 100/66/33. Currently the fastest is ATA 133. 100 is good enough for capturing video in real time to disk, playing and working with DVD's. I think noise is one of the most important consideration when buying a drive. Quiet drives are not the fastest ones. And normally the interface speed, i.e., ATA rating, is not the bottle neck.
Integrated Audio: if you want it, you have to find boards that have this as an option, abbreviated as /W audio.
Integrated LAN controller: this is an option so some boards have it and some don't. If that means integrated Ethernet card, it's worth to have this option for cable and DSL modems. But a separate card is around $10 to $15, small, just plug it in. Most cable DSL modems nowadays have USB 1 that allow you to skip the Ethernet card altogether. It's much slower than Ethernet but that's not the bottleneck.
Jumper Free: you don't need to set any jumpers or switches on the motherboard. But this is not true. The Abit boards are usually true jumper free. The P4T-E is jumper free regarding only to the CPU settings – voltage, and clock rates. You still need to set some jumpers. No big deal.
CPU Throttle: the motherboard has several temperature sensors. If overheating is going to happen, the motherboard will slow down the CPU. If you play with overclocking, or you have a lot of cards and device in the drive bays, this is nice to have. If you are careful about heat and let your CPU and motherboard have plenty of rest, this is not necessary I suppose.
Back Panel I/O: I think this is standard PC99 layout, with 2 USB ports.
On board I/O: you can get two more USB ports, and you need this, by plugging the in supplied bracket, like a card, that holds the additional ports, and connect it to the motherboard. 3 fan connectors with variable speed. Compatible with ATX 2.03 specification but also supports older power supplies.
Standards: PCI 2.2, USB 1.1. Ethernet is 100 times faster than USB 1. USB 2 is faster than Ethernet. But firewire is 4 times faster than Ethernet.
Board size: standard ATX form factor
Accessories: manual and CD. All the things you need – clip for the P4, dummy for unused RDRAM slot, drive cables, of course no USB cables.
Other features: Wake on LAN (digital modem), wake on ring (analog modem), wake on keyboard and mouse. You can allow the PC to go standby when idle. You can wake up the PC by using the keyboard or mouse, or even power up the PC like this. Wake on LAN is a nice feature, you can wake up the PC by any activity on the Ethernet card, including browsing you PC's IP address. Of course you will likely to have cable or DSL and you ran some http server software on your PC. In other words, you PC is a server. That's more complicated than it sounds. Say it's handy if you get a home file from work. With cable that's a breeze for Mbytes of files. This is better than a portable. Standby doesn't only mean less power, but more importantly, less heat. Your PC may live longer and less chance of trouble.
No RAID: RAID doesn't cost much money and you may want this. There are several applications. Say if you buy two identical 40 GB hard drive. For redundancy you can have two drives working as a single 40 GB drive. Plug them in, you don't need to bother about it and treat the pair as an ordinary drive. But if you have a hard disk failure and lose data in one, you still have data in the other. If you do backups and this saves a lot of trouble. On the other extreme you can use the pair as one 80 GB drive. The advantage is that the pair is faster than a single 80 GB drive for the same spec, because it looks like that you have two guys to find things for you, and you gain on average. But the economics always favor a single drive. You also have to consider the space and heat.
Software: the software in CD is not for XP. I don't use them but the Asus monitoring software is useful and compatible with XP. You can set alarms when the temperature and fan speed are out of range. You can download the new drivers for XP if you want.
Warranty: 3 whole years. How can they do that when my fridge is not?
Support: At the time their website is under construction. Now they have FAQ, knowledge base, downloads and forums. Forum is always a good idea to see the number of different problems before you buy.
Installation
You have to set jumpers but they are not likely to change for the life of the board. Other CPU settings are set using BIOS software. It's about the same as installing motherboards several generations ago, only simpler. Screwing, slipping in the CPU and memory are easier. Nowadays all connectors are polarized and color coded. If not, yo can do no harm with it. To install XP on a blank hard disc, I need to set the BIOS option to boot from CDROM. XP detected all the standard hardware that need no specific drivers – hard disk etc. XP also detected all the specific hardware and installed drivers for it – my old PCI graphics card, firewire, and Ethernet card. That's the advantage of using older hardware, you are sure that they works and the drivers will all be included in the CD. When the motherboard is OK, you can move on to newer devices, preferably not all at once.
Performance
If everybody uses the same benchmarks, they are freely available, and that there are plenty of results to compare, I would give you some benchmarks. But I am not into benchmarks, not that I don't want to. Just too much trouble. Motherboards that uses the 850 chipset should perform just about the same. Some others for RDRAM that don't use the 850 are rare and the performance shouldn't be much different in the same price range. People do compare and test these boards so there would be big news if the P4T-E is significantly inferior to other 850 boards. With my setup, I can play DVD flawlessly without hardware accelerator. I can capture continuous video in real time to hard disk though the capture device compresses the video to MPEG-2 first. The camcorder has no problems with the firewire connection.
For heavy number crunching, the P4 at 1.8 GHz is a lot less than 1.8 times faster than 1 GHz P3, and a lot less than 3.6 times faster than a 500 Hz P3. That's align with a lot of disappointments regarding the clock rate of P4, that you can't compare directly with P3. And that's what AMD said all along, that clock rate is not everything. On the other hand, for Java code, the 1.8 GHz P4 is more than 4 times faster than a 500 MHz P3. Though Java interpreted codes are down to 2 times slower than native compiled codes. That's quite interesting as Microsoft tries to take out Java in IE, but that is the strong point of P4s.
Long term usage report
Initially I have some problems with power management. Everything is OK except that I can't suspend the computer. ATX 2.03 spec, for smarter power supplies, is I think from Intel that helps to reduce the heat from their P4 toasters. The P4T-E of course have to control the power supply. It got it's own power management schemes in BIOS. The power switch becomes a soft programmable switch and is part of the ATX spec, or up to ASUS. Windows XP have it's own ideas, which have to be supported by the motherboard and the power supply. XP don't have suspend, only standby and hibernate. ASUS call theirs suspend. You can also turn off idle monitor and hard drives via settings in XP or the BIOS. All in all, that's rather confusing because you don't normally need these before P4, which generates a lot of heat. Now I think I can do everything in XP. Standby and hibernate is the same except that standby is in a low power state but hibernate is truly off. For hibernate, the state of the computer is stored on hard drive and restores when switched on again. You don't need suspend, which is the same as standby. I have been using suspend previously because it's simpler via BIOS. Microsoft makes everything overly complicated.
I never had any problem with the board, nor anything else for over a year until recently. I tried a few new toys lately, including an ATI AGP graphics cards and external Surfboard cable modem. I never put in all new things at once so everything works find for weeks. Then one day when I was doing ordinary word processing, XP reports that the graphics card cannot complete a drawing function and XP have to close. I switched back to the older driver that XP approved and everything was fine. Though I got a second crash just like that. Then the cable connection was lost a day or so later. I switched from using the Ethernet card to direct USB connection and everything was normal. Today everything is OK except that I can't use the Ethernet card. The problem may be the modem, the Ethernet card or the board itself. If I can find some spares to swap around, I'll let you know what's the problem.
I think overheating might be a cause. I was careful about the heat because people have been scaring you to buy expensive cases for P4 costing hundred's of dollars – solid, good shielding but stays cool at the same time. I decided against it and brought the cheapest one that claims suitable for P4. But I was careful to control the heat. Since I have integrated audio, I have only 3 cards in the case, a PCI graphics card, firewire and the Ethernet. All are very small and cool. The others are standard drives in the bay, hard drive, floppy, and CDROM. I resisted all temptation to install all the other junks that I have, including two tape drives. Since my hard drive is so quiet, and my PC is so cool, I left only one fan on, the CPU fan, because even though the other cheaper fans are quiet, I can still hear them before I hear the hard drive when idle. Also I have been setting the power management scheme to everything on, since everything is cool. The reason is that at work I use the home PC remotely with something like PC anywhere. So convenient that I seem to have two hard drives on my desktop. So my home machine becomes a server and I can't allow it to standby. Actually I can try the wake on LAN feature but I never because initially I have loads of small problems to overcome and many software to install before I have a secure (encrypted) private network between the home and work PC. As time goes on everything is so good that I forget all about it. Until I installed the new AGP graphics card. Even thought it's much cooler than the state of the art cards but I leave it on all day and sometimes nights when I have to run some batch jobs. How that affects the Ethernet part of the modem chain I don't know, may be just the heat spread over, or may be just the XP settings for networking is corrupted and need to be corrected.
I am very much against overclocking. So I can tell you anything about it. I suspected that my last processor has a short life because of overclocking. It worked well so I leave it overclocked all the time and forgot about it. It died on me before I want to upgrade. People say that all P4's, or any processors, come from the same manufacturing process. They grade it, perhaps like eggs, and the faster ones cost you more. If your P4 doesn't make the grade, don't try to over clock it. If it can be run faster, Intel would have charged more for it. If you overclock it for a game or two, it's OK but to me it doesn't worth all the trouble of setting the clock speed.
I paid $170 last year. For the same price they give you faster boards now. After a year I know what exactly I need. I will buy this again today but of course for a bargain price.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
yoshimato
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Location: Beach Cities, CA, USA
Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Among other things I reviewed, I also like writing, or more appropriately, being read.
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