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#1
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Which motherboard to upgrade to?
First, just to give a little background, I currently have an ASUS
P4S333 motherboard with an Intel P4 1.7GHz CPU, a GeForce 2, 768 Megs of RAM, and so on. For Christmas I got a MSI GeForce FX 5700 video card. When I installed it nothing happened at all (I believe the term is that it didn't "post?") for a few minutes, and finally it dropped to the BIOS screen. The video card was checked and it is fine, and my old video card still works okay. After looking around the web it seems that the ASUS P4S333 has problems with the newer video cards. So I want to upgrade my motherboard. I never had any problems with my old ASUS board, so I figure I will stick with them. At my local store they have... ASUS P4P800 (regular and deluxe) ASUS P4S800 ASUS P4S533MX Frankly, I'm not enough of a hardware guy to know what the real differences are, apart from which boards are "better" than others. Basically, I just want something that will play the current games well (like KOTOR, etc.). I will be transfering all my current hardware (CPU, hard drive, CD-W, DVD player, RAM, Soundblaster card, and so on) as well as my new video card to the new motherboard. I will be using Windows XP. I am hoping to get some recommendations and advice about which board might be best for me. The ones above are all in my price range. I have read about some people having problems with the P4P800, but it is hard to tell if this is just the vocal minority. Since my P4 1.7 GHz CPU is a little old (~2 years?), do I have to worry about compatibility issues with these new motherboards? Would something like the P4P800 be pointless since my older hardware might not take advantage of all the features? What board might be best for my somewhat older hardware and new video card? Are there ones other than the above that I should consider? Thanks for any suggestions, I'm just hoping to make an informed decision Cheers, Mike |
#2
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Mike,
I would go for a P4PE-X board, it's cheap and well performing and compatible with your hardware (fx5700??). I don't like the sis-related board, to many conflicts with other hardware. The P4P800 board is very okay and prepared for faster cpu's.. But I stick with my first choise: the P4PE-X (i845pe chipset) cheers "Prime" schreef in bericht om... First, just to give a little background, I currently have an ASUS P4S333 motherboard with an Intel P4 1.7GHz CPU, a GeForce 2, 768 Megs of RAM, and so on. For Christmas I got a MSI GeForce FX 5700 video card. When I installed it nothing happened at all (I believe the term is that it didn't "post?") for a few minutes, and finally it dropped to the BIOS screen. The video card was checked and it is fine, and my old video card still works okay. After looking around the web it seems that the ASUS P4S333 has problems with the newer video cards. So I want to upgrade my motherboard. I never had any problems with my old ASUS board, so I figure I will stick with them. At my local store they have... ASUS P4P800 (regular and deluxe) ASUS P4S800 ASUS P4S533MX Frankly, I'm not enough of a hardware guy to know what the real differences are, apart from which boards are "better" than others. Basically, I just want something that will play the current games well (like KOTOR, etc.). I will be transfering all my current hardware (CPU, hard drive, CD-W, DVD player, RAM, Soundblaster card, and so on) as well as my new video card to the new motherboard. I will be using Windows XP. I am hoping to get some recommendations and advice about which board might be best for me. The ones above are all in my price range. I have read about some people having problems with the P4P800, but it is hard to tell if this is just the vocal minority. Since my P4 1.7 GHz CPU is a little old (~2 years?), do I have to worry about compatibility issues with these new motherboards? Would something like the P4P800 be pointless since my older hardware might not take advantage of all the features? What board might be best for my somewhat older hardware and new video card? Are there ones other than the above that I should consider? Thanks for any suggestions, I'm just hoping to make an informed decision Cheers, Mike |
#3
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Do NOT get any of the P4Sxxx series of boards. The S means it has an SIS
chipset. Very bad. You may not know that SIS stands for "Stability Is Secondary." -- DaveW "Prime" wrote in message om... First, just to give a little background, I currently have an ASUS P4S333 motherboard with an Intel P4 1.7GHz CPU, a GeForce 2, 768 Megs of RAM, and so on. For Christmas I got a MSI GeForce FX 5700 video card. When I installed it nothing happened at all (I believe the term is that it didn't "post?") for a few minutes, and finally it dropped to the BIOS screen. The video card was checked and it is fine, and my old video card still works okay. After looking around the web it seems that the ASUS P4S333 has problems with the newer video cards. So I want to upgrade my motherboard. I never had any problems with my old ASUS board, so I figure I will stick with them. At my local store they have... ASUS P4P800 (regular and deluxe) ASUS P4S800 ASUS P4S533MX Frankly, I'm not enough of a hardware guy to know what the real differences are, apart from which boards are "better" than others. Basically, I just want something that will play the current games well (like KOTOR, etc.). I will be transfering all my current hardware (CPU, hard drive, CD-W, DVD player, RAM, Soundblaster card, and so on) as well as my new video card to the new motherboard. I will be using Windows XP. I am hoping to get some recommendations and advice about which board might be best for me. The ones above are all in my price range. I have read about some people having problems with the P4P800, but it is hard to tell if this is just the vocal minority. Since my P4 1.7 GHz CPU is a little old (~2 years?), do I have to worry about compatibility issues with these new motherboards? Would something like the P4P800 be pointless since my older hardware might not take advantage of all the features? What board might be best for my somewhat older hardware and new video card? Are there ones other than the above that I should consider? Thanks for any suggestions, I'm just hoping to make an informed decision Cheers, Mike |
#4
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In article ,
(Prime) wrote: First, just to give a little background, I currently have an ASUS P4S333 motherboard with an Intel P4 1.7GHz CPU, a GeForce 2, 768 Megs of RAM, and so on. For Christmas I got a MSI GeForce FX 5700 video card. When I installed it nothing happened at all (I believe the term is that it didn't "post?") for a few minutes, and finally it dropped to the BIOS screen. The video card was checked and it is fine, and my old video card still works okay. After looking around the web it seems that the ASUS P4S333 has problems with the newer video cards. So I want to upgrade my motherboard. I never had any problems with my old ASUS board, so I figure I will stick with them. At my local store they have... ASUS P4P800 (regular and deluxe) ASUS P4S800 ASUS P4S533MX Frankly, I'm not enough of a hardware guy to know what the real differences are, apart from which boards are "better" than others. Basically, I just want something that will play the current games well (like KOTOR, etc.). I will be transfering all my current hardware (CPU, hard drive, CD-W, DVD player, RAM, Soundblaster card, and so on) as well as my new video card to the new motherboard. I will be using Windows XP. I am hoping to get some recommendations and advice about which board might be best for me. The ones above are all in my price range. I have read about some people having problems with the P4P800, but it is hard to tell if this is just the vocal minority. Since my P4 1.7 GHz CPU is a little old (~2 years?), do I have to worry about compatibility issues with these new motherboards? Would something like the P4P800 be pointless since my older hardware might not take advantage of all the features? What board might be best for my somewhat older hardware and new video card? Are there ones other than the above that I should consider? Thanks for any suggestions, I'm just hoping to make an informed decision Cheers, Mike To make an informed decision, download the three manuals for the motherboards from the Asus download page - enter model number, and select "manual" from the pulldown menu: http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/download.aspx Things to look at include: 1) BIOS page overview - some motherboards have more adjustments than others, and this can help sometimes, with making the stuff you plug in, work better. MicroATX boards, like the MX, generally have simpler BIOS, with fewer adjustments. It is handy to be able to adjust Vdimm, Vagp, Vcore, and memory timings. 2) DRAM compatibility - some motherboards are single channel memory controllers. Up to three DIMMs sit on one memory bus (like your current board). There are "speed versus number of stick" rules that restrict how fast you can run the memory. There are fewer issues of this type with dual channel boards, because there are fewer DIMMs per channel. Note that if you go with the P4P800, it will perform best with matched pairs of memories, so if you have 3x256MB DIMMs now, you may want to add a matching fourth one, so that the motherboard will run in dual channel mode and fetch data in 128 bit chunks, versus the 64 bit chunks of single channel or virtual single channel mode (some benchmarks see a 30% improvement in memory bandwidth). For the 875/865, there is some background info he ftp://download.intel.com/design/chip...s/25273001.pdf 3) Processor compatibility - check here for each board: http://www.asus.com.tw/support/cpusu...pusupport.aspx 4) Otherwise, you can enter the model numbers as a search term in groups.google.com or the search engine on abxzone.com forums. This will allow you to research what problems people are having. For example, there is a poll of users on abxzone.com right now, for owners of the P4P800 who are seeing graphics corruption when doing high overclock of their processor. There is a lot of posts to sift through on abxzone.com, so be prepared to read at least a couple thousand of them. You may also want to enter the part numbers of some of the chips, if you plan on using the integrated PCI chips on the board for doing stuff, as sometimes there can be problems with them. The pictures of the motherboard in the manual will make that a bit easier to find. No motherboard has a perfect feature set, so it is up to you to identify the parts of the motherboard that matter to you, and the parts that don't. That is one reason I don't really like to recommend motherboards, because they all have issues of one sort or another. For example, I'd probably suggest a P4P800/P4C800 family board, but you have to look carefully at the performance issues with the included Via and Promise chips, to decide which of the motherboards you can live with. Even Intel chipsets aren't perfect, as some of them have sound issues with the AC97 interface when they are overclocked. As for your original motherboard, the chipset supports AGP 1X and 4X, and could have an old style AGP status register. I think AGP 3.0 has a four bit status register, and when an 8X video card is used, your status register drops the MS bit of the AGP speed value, and the BIOS sees the card announcing that it is a 2X card. Since the chipset doesn't support 2X, the BIOS is kinda stumped. If you are in a mood for experiments, try placing the old video card in the motherboard, then set the AGP to 1X. Save and exit the BIOS, then power down. Place the new video card in there, and see if it POSTs. This will at least prove that it functions a little bit - a 4X max video card is a much better fit for motherboards that are AGP 2.0 compatible, because it will read 4X in the status register. The fact that your chipset had a bug that prevented 2X from working just makes matters worse. I think that was fixed on the P4S533. HTH, Paul |
#6
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In article ,
(Prime) wrote: (Paul) wrote in message ... In article , (Prime) wrote: First, just to give a little background, I currently have an ASUS P4S333 motherboard with an Intel P4 1.7GHz CPU, a GeForce 2, 768 Megs of RAM, and so on. For Christmas I got a MSI GeForce FX 5700 video card. When I installed it nothing happened at all (I believe the term is that it didn't "post?") for a few minutes, and finally it dropped to the BIOS screen. The video card was checked and it is fine, and my old video card still works okay. After looking around the web it seems that the ASUS P4S333 has problems with the newer video cards. So I want to upgrade my motherboard. I never had any problems with my old ASUS board, so I figure I will stick with them. At my local store they have... ASUS P4P800 (regular and deluxe) ASUS P4S800 ASUS P4S533MX Frankly, I'm not enough of a hardware guy to know what the real differences are, apart from which boards are "better" than others. Basically, I just want something that will play the current games well (like KOTOR, etc.). I will be transfering all my current hardware (CPU, hard drive, CD-W, DVD player, RAM, Soundblaster card, and so on) as well as my new video card to the new motherboard. I will be using Windows XP. I am hoping to get some recommendations and advice about which board might be best for me. The ones above are all in my price range. I have read about some people having problems with the P4P800, but it is hard to tell if this is just the vocal minority. Since my P4 1.7 GHz CPU is a little old (~2 years?), do I have to worry about compatibility issues with these new motherboards? Would something like the P4P800 be pointless since my older hardware might not take advantage of all the features? What board might be best for my somewhat older hardware and new video card? Are there ones other than the above that I should consider? Thanks for any suggestions, I'm just hoping to make an informed decision Cheers, Mike To make an informed decision, download the three manuals for the motherboards from the Asus download page - enter model number, and select "manual" from the pulldown menu: http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/download.aspx Things to look at include: 1) BIOS page overview - some motherboards have more adjustments than others, and this can help sometimes, with making the stuff you plug in, work better. MicroATX boards, like the MX, generally have simpler BIOS, with fewer adjustments. It is handy to be able to adjust Vdimm, Vagp, Vcore, and memory timings. 2) DRAM compatibility - some motherboards are single channel memory controllers. Up to three DIMMs sit on one memory bus (like your current board). There are "speed versus number of stick" rules that restrict how fast you can run the memory. There are fewer issues of this type with dual channel boards, because there are fewer DIMMs per channel. Note that if you go with the P4P800, it will perform best with matched pairs of memories, so if you have 3x256MB DIMMs now, you may want to add a matching fourth one, so that the motherboard will run in dual channel mode and fetch data in 128 bit chunks, versus the 64 bit chunks of single channel or virtual single channel mode (some benchmarks see a 30% improvement in memory bandwidth). For the 875/865, there is some background info he ftp://download.intel.com/design/chip...s/25273001.pdf 3) Processor compatibility - check here for each board: http://www.asus.com.tw/support/cpusu...pusupport.aspx 4) Otherwise, you can enter the model numbers as a search term in groups.google.com or the search engine on abxzone.com forums. This will allow you to research what problems people are having. For example, there is a poll of users on abxzone.com right now, for owners of the P4P800 who are seeing graphics corruption when doing high overclock of their processor. There is a lot of posts to sift through on abxzone.com, so be prepared to read at least a couple thousand of them. You may also want to enter the part numbers of some of the chips, if you plan on using the integrated PCI chips on the board for doing stuff, as sometimes there can be problems with them. The pictures of the motherboard in the manual will make that a bit easier to find. No motherboard has a perfect feature set, so it is up to you to identify the parts of the motherboard that matter to you, and the parts that don't. That is one reason I don't really like to recommend motherboards, because they all have issues of one sort or another. For example, I'd probably suggest a P4P800/P4C800 family board, but you have to look carefully at the performance issues with the included Via and Promise chips, to decide which of the motherboards you can live with. Even Intel chipsets aren't perfect, as some of them have sound issues with the AC97 interface when they are overclocked. As for your original motherboard, the chipset supports AGP 1X and 4X, and could have an old style AGP status register. I think AGP 3.0 has a four bit status register, and when an 8X video card is used, your status register drops the MS bit of the AGP speed value, and the BIOS sees the card announcing that it is a 2X card. Since the chipset doesn't support 2X, the BIOS is kinda stumped. If you are in a mood for experiments, try placing the old video card in the motherboard, then set the AGP to 1X. Save and exit the BIOS, then power down. Place the new video card in there, and see if it POSTs. This will at least prove that it functions a little bit - a 4X max video card is a much better fit for motherboards that are AGP 2.0 compatible, because it will read 4X in the status register. The fact that your chipset had a bug that prevented 2X from working just makes matters worse. I think that was fixed on the P4S533. HTH, Paul Thanks Paul, and everyone who has responded. It has been most helpful My priority really is stability, and that it can support my old hardware and my new video card. Looking at the asus page for CPU compatibility, it appears that all the cards I mention support my P4 1.7 GHz. I assume my soundblaster and harddrive are non-issues. My GeForce FX5700 should be OK with these newer boards as well. I am not interested in overclocking or anything like that. I don't really care if it is the lastest and greatest since I view this motherboard as a bridge to when I get a whole new machine in a year or two. From what I have read people aren't very keen on the SiS stuff as mentioned previously. So right now I am thinking of the P4P800. I am under the impression that for RAM I need two sticks of the same size and make. Is this correct? Right now I have a 256Meg and 512Meg. Will I need to get two identical sticks to replace them (I want 768+ Megs of RAM)? Really, any memory configuration will work. Your two sticks of memory will run in virtual single channel or single channel mode. You lose a little memory bandwidth that way. A matched pair of DIMMs gives you about 30% more bandwidth (helps apps about 10% maybe). You should look at the manual, as there is a table of memory speed versus processor FSB. CPU FSB DDR DIMM Type Memory Frequency 800 MHz PC3200/PC2700*/PC2100 400/333*/266 MHz 533 MHz PC2700/PC2100 333/266 MHz 400 MHz PC2100 266 MHz *When using 800MHz CPU FSB, PC2700 DDR DIMMs may run only at 320MHz (not 333MHz) due to chipset limitation. If your processor has an FSB of 400, then any memory faster than or equal to PC2100 will work. It will run at PC2100. If you were to buy a new processor with an FSB of 800, then again, there are three options for operating speed, and a pair of PC3200 DIMMs will nicely complement your new motherboard. They don't have to be expensive ones - you could use a pair of CAS3 DIMMs, like the 512MB PC3200 CAS3 on this page for $90 each. If you search on Newegg, you might even find a few branded memory products for less than this. http://www.crucial.com/store/listpar...P800&submit=Go Faster CAS doesn't help too much - here is a review for some OCZ memory on a Newegg web page. The author gets a 2% improvement in memory bandwidth, by going from CAS2.5 to CAS2, so you can see there is a diminishing return based on CAS as the controlling factor, when at PC3200 or faster: "runs 2-2-2-5 at 200 fsb as advertised, got it to 2-2-2-7 at 220 fsb stable...got to 228 at 2-4-4-8(dont know if stable but did benchmark 3dmark03). dont run turbo in bios with this ram. bandwith in sandra is over 5500. compared with corsair cmx512 3200c2(got that stable at 225 at 2.5-3-3-7) for 2 months straight bandwith over 5400 on sandra. u make the call" You get more memory bandwidth, by overclocking everything (processor and memory) via the processor clock setting on the P4P800. In any case, you can still do some overclocking experiments, even with PC3200 memory and an FSB800 processor, by using the available divider settings on the memory. Selecting "DDR333" causes the 5:4 ratio between FSB:MEM to be used, so some PC3200 can still be used while overclocking the processor up to 25%. HTH, Paul |
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