Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Sparks on April 06, 2003, 03:55:45 PM
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A sudden influx of hard earned cash has got me looking at building a new system for myself so I'm looking for opinions on Motherboards to run a P4. Sorry to the majority AMD guys but I'm a loyal Intel fan so it's P4 only.
I'm looking for something that will be upgradeable memory and speed wise for a while.
All suggestions welcomed.
Sparks
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Asus P4PE boards.
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I'd go with an Asus P4PE as well. Unfortunately, it seems the new Intel Granite Bay chipset has issues with AGP 8x cards (Asus P4G8X being an example).
BTW: It's not possible to build a P4 system at this time that is upgradable beyond the current 3.06 GHz 533 MHz FSB model. The next P4 released will have an 800 MHz FSB and will not work in current boards. Since it has an 800 MHz FSB, single channel boards had best run PC3200 (DDR400) memory for best performance.
A similar situation exists for AMD. Only the newest nForce 2 chipset based boards will supposedly be bios upgradable to support 400 MHz FSB Bartons when they are released. That means the 3000+ will be the fastest CPU supported on many boards out there.
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So Bloom - if you bought a 3ghz chip and MB to suit today what is your best guess as to its life span before it was obsolete?? Also what are the timescales around the launch of the new chipsets at 800FSB.
I'm just wondering whether it would be better to hold off??
The motherboards I have had so far have lasted me 2-3 years before reaching limits of upgrade / useability
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I've only heard good things about the SiS 655 chipset motherboards.
I recently bought the MSI 655 Max (w P4 2.8Ghz/533 processor) and I'm extremely happy with it.
The only other motherboard chipset that has near the same features for the P4 is the Intel Granite Bay boards. But I bought one of them inititally and had nothing but problems with it. So I bought a 655 board instead.
http://www.anandtech.com
has some excellent reviews of these and other motherboards.
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Sparks, that's a funny question ... any computer is obsolete the moment it leaves the store. ;)
Seriously though, it really depends on what you are doing with your system. To put it another way, a P3 500 MHz system is more than fast enough to do everything except video encoding and very serious game playing. So, if you weren't a gamer, it wouldn't be obsolete to you. If you were a gamer, it was obsolete 2 years ago.
I think a P4 3.06 (533 MHz FSB) should be an excellent system for a few years at least. That said, my opinion is to wait for the 800 MHz FSB P4s to become available. (I believe the release time frame is early May.) At that point I would get a new motherboard that supports 800 MHz FSB P4s. The release of 800 MHz FSB P4s will cause the pricing of current P4s to drop significantly. The 2.53 B is currently about the best performance/price on the Intel side of the fence. In mid-May the 2.8 GHz may have fallen to the same price. If you do this you will be able to upgrade the system with 800 MHz FSB P4s for as long as they are supported. You will also be able to take advantage of the newer features like AGP 8x support, Serial ATA, and other features that have been added to the new chipsets. (The i845PE lacks some features more "modern" chipsets like the Granite Bay and nForce 2 [for AMD] have.)
As for SiS chipsets, to be frank I've never cared much for them. I have had very bad experiences with some of them in the past. That said, the new P4 SiS chipset is among the fastest chipsets available for the current batch of P4s and is very inexpensive. On the downside, I don't believe it will be able to support 800 MHz FSB P4s either. When I do an Intel P4 based system, it always goes on an Intel chipset. With the exception of the new Granite Bay (E7205) chipset, that's always yielded good results. (Intel has now officially admitted that there is an AGP 3.0 [8x] bug in this chipset and it will not be fixed, pending the release of newer chipsets.)
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The 800 MHz FSB i875 (Canterwood) chipset was released today. The i865 chipset (Springdale) should be out next week.
Intel also released a 3.00 GHz 800 MHz FSB P4 today, but then recalled it. Supposedly, there is a bug in it. The benchmarks show between a 0 to 12% performance boost over the existing 3 GHz model.
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Source I read said Intel planned on releasing it, but made an anouncement Sunday evening saying that they had to delay the release. Nothing about it being released then recalled.
I'd be keeping an eye out for more news releases from Intel in the near future. I only wish they were good news. Actually, it isn't really good or bad news... just very interesting.
MiniD
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Recall is the wrong term, considering they weren't available to the public yet. "Suspending shipments" is the term Intel used.
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With the exception of the new Granite Bay (E7205) chipset, that's always yielded good results. (Intel has now officially admitted that there is an AGP 3.0 [8x] bug in this chipset and it will not be fixed, pending the release of newer chipsets.)
See!!! SEE!! I wasn't crazy ;)
Seriously, when did they finally admitt to the problem? I know this little issue definitely soured my opinon of Intel chipsets. Especially after the Granite Bay chipset was suppose to be the "premium" dual channel memory chipset, not to mention I paid a premium price for that motherboard, and then had such problems.
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Just built an ASUS P4PE based machine. The ASUS is a well
supported product, has everything ya need AH (6 USB, Ethernet,
OnBoard Audio that isnt a pain in the butt like Soundblaster).
Instructions were easy as pie. Running with 2.53GHz with 1 GB
PC2700 RAM.
Good Luck.
Sour
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got an asus p4g8x deluxe & love it
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Hap, you'll hate it if you ever try to use an AGP 8x card. (Basically any graphics card newer than what you have.) That board uses the E7205 (Granite Bay) chipset.
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Bloom - thanks for all the replies. Very interesting reading. Also just read a Motherboard review in PCPro magazine today. They seem to rate the E7205 chipset but never mention the AGP8 bug - funny that eh ;)
You mentioned the SIS655 chipset - the board they recommend in the review is a Gigabyte board - the SINXP1394 - but you say the SIS chipset is not too reliable??
The ASUS P4PE has a good review but seems to be a bit on the back edge of the curve.
Also in the review they talk about the new Prescott P4 which as you say means another new generation of motherboards :( but lanch date is given as Q3 ??
To be honest this is getting a bit too confusing for a plain old punter like me. No wonder the PC industry is struggling.
Sparks
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the ti400 is an 8x card works great w/p48gx