Anyone heard of this Motherboard???

[Colin]

A friend of mine just bought a new motherboard a "P4V845" he paid $50
Canadian. I looked at the board, manual and the box and could not find a
manufacturers name anywhere. It has onboard AC97 sound and only 3 pci slots
and an agp slot. There is no separate 12 volt connector for the P4 but it
says on the box it is a P4 board also there is 2 dimm slots for either DDR
or SDram up to 1gig.

Does anyone know if this is a half decent board and who the manufacturer is?
I'm concerned about getting drivers and updates in the future.

Thanks in advance
Colin

 

[David Hollway]

A friend of mine just bought a new motherboard a "P4V845" he paid $50
Canadian. I looked at the board, manual and the box and could not find a
manufacturers name anywhere. It has onboard AC97 sound and only 3 pci slots
and an agp slot. There is no separate 12 volt connector for the P4 but it
says on the box it is a P4 board also there is 2 dimm slots for either DDR
or SDram up to 1gig.

Does anyone know if this is a half decent board and who the manufacturer is?
I'm concerned about getting drivers and updates in the future.

Thanks in advance
Colin

Colin,

I google'd for "P4V845", and the results suggest that it's a board made by
"PC Partner". Going to their website doesn't show that exact product name,
but the board at this URL looks very similar to your description:

http://www.pcpartner.com/products/old-via/DM-A07E.htm

If that IS the board, then my opinion is that it's not a terribly good
product; I don't personally like Via chipsets, as I've had (and heard of)
problems with driver stability with them. YMMV, however, and I'm sure
there's lots of people on this group who will offer a more positive opinion
of them.

I'm more concerned by your comment that the board doesn't have a separate
2x2 12V header, something also lacking in the board referenced above. This
is a requirement for the Pentium 4; in short, it's a way to get a guaranteed
stable 12v feed to the processor voltage regulator, because if power is
drawn off the same 12v rail used for the drives and other peripherals (as it
would be when drawn from the 2x10 ATX power connector) then the CPU would be
vulnerable to power fluctuations as the other peripherals' power
requirements changed (for example, a hard drive spinning up or a CD-R
beginning writing). There's a formal spec for power supplies with the 2x2
12v header; this "ATX 12v" spec is documented at
http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/ATX12V_1_3dg.pdf

I suspect that the manufacturer has left off the 2x2 header in an effort to
save money; in my view, this will lead to reduced system stability,
particularly if multiple drives/peripherals are used in conjunction with a
more power-hungry processor.

Drivers should not be a problem - most board vendors use standardised
components now for things like onboard audio and LAN, so drivers should be
available from several OTHER board vendors. For example, audio chips by
Realtek/Avance or Analog Devices are often used. And of course, the chipset
update will always be available from the Intel website.

In short: it's not a top quality board, but it may prove acceptable if your
needs aren't too demanding. For $50CAN it's probably not too bad a buy.

Hope this helps!

-David Hollway
mail as in header - remove spam blocker

 

[Colin]

Thanks for that info, Looking at the board you linked for me, it looks
almost identical to the board he bought and yes it is a VIA chipset (which I
don't like either, I thought only AMD used VIA chipsets)
I'll see if he is willing to take it back and maybe get Asus's cheapest
board which is the P4S533-MX for about 90 Canadian. I hope that is a better
board.

Thanks again for your information it was very helpful.
Colin

 

[Frank]

| A friend of mine just bought a new motherboard a "P4V845" he paid $50
| Canadian. I looked at the board, manual and the box and could not find
a
| manufacturers name anywhere. It has onboard AC97 sound and only 3 pci
slots
| and an agp slot. There is no separate 12 volt connector for the P4 but
it
| says on the box it is a P4 board also there is 2 dimm slots for either
DDR
| or SDram up to 1gig.
|
| Does anyone know if this is a half decent board and who the
manufacturer is?
| I'm concerned about getting drivers and updates in the future.
|
| Thanks in advance
| Colin

Here is a start:
http://www.i-store.com.au/product/?CategoryID=10&whichProductID=1125

You have a Micro ATX board that may be an OEM. (ie. it may be wired
differently) Do some searching before you put any power to it. There
is a link to APlus web page.
You have a few replies that are really irrelevant.

 

[Zoltan Fekete]

David,

I must say you are not right about the 2x2 12v header. The only reason for
the existence of this header is to take the power consumption load from the
standard ATX power connector. There is no such a thing as a separate power
line for this 12v header, it's source is the same point from the power
supply, as for any other component (which you can see for your self if you
open one ATX P4 compatible power supply, and have a look inside).

Lots of these cheap motherboards with VIA chipsets use a different kind of a
power connector (standard big header with +12 and +5 and two ground) to
supply this additional load, but still be compatible with the old ATX power
supplies that don't have the "new" P4 12v header....

Best regards.

--
Zoltan Fekete ([email protected])
Microsoft Certified Professional
YU Spin d.o.o. Novi Sad, www.yuspin.co.yu