Which model meets these basic requirements?

[YourFullNameHere]

Yeah, I've looked thru websites and catalogs, but I have a feeling
that someone just knows this. I'm looking for a motherboard that
will:

Support plain P4 Northwood
800 mHz fsb
AGP 8x
Gigabit lan
Serial and parallel ATA
Sound/audio built-in
Five PCI slots
Dual channel DDR or DDR2

I haven't quite figured out whether DDR2 is worth it, but it would be
nice if it were an option. Not imperative.

I'm not huge on overclocking so I've been looking at Intel as well as
Asus. Any particular models come to mind?

If I've made a major blunder on anything in my wishlist, feel free to
talk me out of it. But I do have PCI cards and AGP already. Haven't
heard anything impressive about Prescott. Have a bunch of parallel
ATA drives, but I'll be moving to SATA next.

 

[Paul]

Yeah, I've looked thru websites and catalogs, but I have a feeling
that someone just knows this. I'm looking for a motherboard that
will:

Support plain P4 Northwood
800 mHz fsb
AGP 8x
Gigabit lan
Serial and parallel ATA
Sound/audio built-in
Five PCI slots
Dual channel DDR or DDR2

I haven't quite figured out whether DDR2 is worth it, but it would be
nice if it were an option. Not imperative.

I'm not huge on overclocking so I've been looking at Intel as well as
Asus. Any particular models come to mind?

If I've made a major blunder on anything in my wishlist, feel free to
talk me out of it. But I do have PCI cards and AGP already. Haven't
heard anything impressive about Prescott. Have a bunch of parallel
ATA drives, but I'll be moving to SATA next.

P4C800-E has GbE on CSA bus.
P4P800 family are also candidates.

Better hurry if you want Northwood, as they won't be around forever.

If you want DDR2, I think you may end up with an LGA775 board.
Personally, I'm not too attracted to DDR2 yet, as the only
performance level worth having is probably too expensive for
most budgets. You would have just as much fun overclocking some
DDR memory to DDR500.

There are a few 0.13u processors in LGA775 packages, but they
are probably expensive (like $1K P4EE). That would allow you to
move to a P5xxx board, but then you would not likely get the PCI
slots you want. The exception to that rule might be the P5P800,
but check Google for comments on that board. P5P800 is like
a P4P800, only the S478 socket is replaced with S775.

The first two boards mentioned are the most likely solutions,
and there are also some non-Intel chipset boards, if you want
to shave nickels and dimes from the price.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Pete D]

P4P800-E deluxe

 

[YourFullNameHere]

Thanks for your replies, Paul and Pete.

P4C800-E has GbE on CSA bus.
P4P800 family are also candidates.

After hours of staring at specs, those are the primary two that I had
bookmarked. I couldn't figure out the difference between them aside
from the chipset number. I hear that the P4C800-E is faster than the
P4P800. Any other prevalent differences that stand out?

Better hurry if you want Northwood, as they won't be around forever.

Strange. Is there any advantage in Prescott? Again, my reading turns
up "they're not faster and they get hotter but they'll tolerate the
heat." What the...?

If you want DDR2, I think you may end up with an LGA775 board.
Personally, I'm not too attracted to DDR2 yet, as the only

Yeah, I was slowly coming to the same conclusion. DDR2 may not be
worth the difference imposed by having to change motherboards.

 

[YourFullNameHere]

P4P800-E deluxe

Clear enough reply! <g> Any reason why you prefer it over the P4C800,
Pete?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Mercury]

You would do well to consider AMD 64 on a 939 mobo.
You will have upgrade options and resale value. The P4's will lose value
quickly - Northwoods less so.

Performance difference between P4P and C? It has been "engineered out". It
was about 3% or so = nothing.

If you don't really need GB Lan or ECC RAM ability then the P4P is likely
cheaper and just as quick.

 

[Pete D]

Yourf,

It met all your requirements, oh yes and I have one and it is a great board.
I have a 2.8G Northwood in mine running at 10% overclocked (3.080Ghz), runs
a treat. Not running the sound as I have a Game Theatre Pro 7.1. The onboard
sound also has optical out, etc, apparently it is pretty good, has Firewire
and 8 USB 2.0 ports, if you are running XP make sure to update to at least
SP1.

Cheers.

Pete D

 

[Bronney Hui]

Yourf,

It met all your requirements, oh yes and I have one and it is a great board.
I have a 2.8G Northwood in mine running at 10% overclocked (3.080Ghz), runs
a treat. Not running the sound as I have a Game Theatre Pro 7.1. The onboard
sound also has optical out, etc, apparently it is pretty good, has Firewire
and 8 USB 2.0 ports, if you are running XP make sure to update to at least
SP1.

Cheers.

Pete D

Pete,

Choose 320 as the DDR speed in bios and clock the mofo to 3.64 (260 FSB)
Vcore 1.55 ~ 1.575 5:4 ratio would still give you DDR416 @ 260FSB so
you're not wasting anything.