Best Last Generation P4 Motherboards?

[Tony Hill]

Thanks very, very much, especially to Tony and George, for the great
info.

I think I found a MB - the Asus P4V8X-x -- that will fill my needs at
a real good price. The only thing that's stopping me from buying one
is that I can't find any reviews of it anywhere, and there are no NG
threads that even mention it.

So I was hoping you guys might know something about this board,
considering how much you know about everything else

Err, it's a VIA-based board, and a rather dated one at that. Newegg
sells them brand-new for $50, though for the price I'd probably spring
for the extra $18 for the faster and VIA-free MSI 865PE Neo2-V (or
even just spending $10 more for an MSI 848P Neo-V). Unless you're
really tight on cash, the extra performance and, more importantly,
fewer gray hairs being caused by VIA's rather... umm... tricky drivers
are more than worth it IMO.

 

[Never anonymous Bud]

Err, it's a VIA-based board, and a rather dated one at that. Newegg
sells them brand-new for $50, though for the price I'd probably spring
for the extra $18 for the faster and VIA-free MSI 865PE Neo2-V (or
even just spending $10 more for an MSI 848P Neo-V). Unless you're
really tight on cash, the extra performance and, more importantly,
fewer gray hairs being caused by VIA's rather... umm... tricky drivers
are more than worth it IMO.

I already suggested one of the 865 chipset MBs available thru
dealers advertising on Pricewatch for as little as $40.

 

[George Macdonald]

Booting from a striped arrray and having a stable Win9x system are not in
any way the same thing. As long as BIOS (on-board or in the I/O
channel) supports booting, any OS will boot. Once the OS takes over,
surrender all hope. ;-)

It's the bit in the middle that gets ya.

Yes, I did a lot of work with Promise "controllers" a *long* time ago.
They worked rather well even then for any OS I could throw at them. Of
course some didn't recognize anything other than the basic BIOS calls
(INT13H?).

Our hot-swappable drives with the Promise kit are still working very nicely
on the Win2K server. At 80GB they're now taking ~50mins to re-build though

Sure they did! WinNT4 happily booted off a Promise controller in RAID-0.
I don't remember the specifics, other than that was one of my
compatability tests. I'm pretty sure they had full drivers available too.

Funny it was in my head that they advised against that... or I read it
somewhere at Mickeysoft.<mumble><grumble>

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

[Lee Waun]

Oh god not that show. As a Canadian I for one have never ever watched an
episode of that show. I have only seen segments while channel surfing and
the battery in my remote dies when it gets to that channel. Had to replace a
lot of batteries for my remote because of that show.

 

[keith]

Hey! Don't forget the beer! :>

It's drinkable. Since the pub's raised the price, I drink cheap or
better (for my birthday my wife bought Dos Equis - yum).

"Keep your stick on the ice."

Now say the man's prayer.

 

[keith]

Oh god not that show. As a Canadian I for one have never ever watched an
episode of that show. I have only seen segments while channel surfing and
the battery in my remote dies when it gets to that channel. Had to replace a
lot of batteries for my remote because of that show.

Like too many Canuckistani's you have no sense of humor. ...sometimes I
think my wife is Quebecois, but amazingly she's a Texan with a
Canuckistani sense of humor. ;-)

 

[keith]

It's the bit in the middle that gets ya.

The middle bit?? Promise raid controllers had boot BIOS. It's the end
bit that get's ya. Rather like my SATA drive under Linux. :-(

Our hot-swappable drives with the Promise kit are still working very
nicely on the Win2K server. At 80GB they're now taking ~50mins to
re-build though - have to upgrade the mbrd.<sigh>

That seems long, but 80GB is a lot of "stuff". I been contemplating such
a setup for a while, but haven't had the energy.

Funny it was in my head that they advised against that... or I read it
somewhere at Mickeysoft.<mumble><grumble>

Dunno why. I was setting up drives that way back in the '88 timeframe.
I did quite a bit of drive performance testing (using system benchmarks
and Intels drive metrics) back then, some using these sorts of cards as
experiments, and WinNT-4 was the platform of choice.

 

[Jim Lyons]

Thanks again for all the help you gave me on the board., guys, I took
your advice and lucked into a new or like-new, ASUS P4C800 Deluxe MB
(w/Intel 875P chip set, 800MHz FSB, Hyperthreading SATA/ATA RAID) etc.
for only $91 on Ebay .

Now I have to look around for a chip and some memory. I was wondering
if XT handled extended memory and resources better that Win 98 -- I
can't imagine it being any worse -- and whether I should opt 256Megs
512 Megs or more, given that I like to have multiple windows open when
I do web surfing, word processing, and several other things at the
same time.

Regards,

Jim

 

[Never anonymous Bud]

Thanks again for all the help you gave me on the board., guys, I took
your advice and lucked into a new or like-new, ASUS P4C800 Deluxe MB
(w/Intel 875P chip set, 800MHz FSB, Hyperthreading SATA/ATA RAID) etc.
for only $91 on Ebay .

THAT was a very good move.

You might not need or use the full capabilities now,
but you have plenty of headroom for the future.

Now I have to look around for a chip and some memory. I was wondering
if XT handled extended memory and resources better that Win 98 -- I
can't imagine it being any worse -- and whether I should opt 256Megs
512 Megs or more, given that I like to have multiple windows open when
I do web surfing, word processing, and several other things at the
same time.

W2K is the '3rd generation' of WinNT (I suspect you meant NT),
and handles memory MUCH better than 98.

256 megs should work fine for most things.

 

[George Macdonald]

Thanks again for all the help you gave me on the board., guys, I took
your advice and lucked into a new or like-new, ASUS P4C800 Deluxe MB
(w/Intel 875P chip set, 800MHz FSB, Hyperthreading SATA/ATA RAID) etc.
for only $91 on Ebay .

Now I have to look around for a chip and some memory. I was wondering
if XT handled extended memory and resources better that Win 98 -- I
can't imagine it being any worse -- and whether I should opt 256Megs
512 Megs or more, given that I like to have multiple windows open when
I do web surfing, word processing, and several other things at the
same time.

While WinXP (not XT) is much better, Win98 wasn't really all that bad at
managing memory until you got above 512MB and even then it was trivial to
go higher.

First check the Asus web site (the global one at www.asus.com.tw) for
memory compatibility with the mbrd and I'd advise 512MB to start with on
2x256MB DIMMs - it's a dual channel mbrd and buying 2 128MB DIMMs is a bit
of a waste and won't save much, anyway.

Good luck with it.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

[Never anonymous Bud]

While WinXP (not XT) is much better, Win98 wasn't really all that bad at
managing memory until you got above 512MB and even then it was trivial to
go higher.

How much memory it handles, and HOW it handles it, are 2 VERY different things.

 

[George Macdonald]

How much memory it handles, and HOW it handles it, are 2 VERY different things.

And whether the average user is going to notice any difference is another
err, *different* thing.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

[Mike Kirkland]

So why the subject line? "Best Last Generation P4 Motherboards?".

If you're spending money anyway, why not get something worth while,
such as 800 MHz with dual channel, Hyper Threading and a mb with Intel
875P chip set, SATA such as e.g. Gigabyte GA-8IK1100? That is what I
did and it didn't cost a lot.

Because he wants to do it on the cheap. I have both an 875 chipset mb
and an 845 chipset mb. For what he wants to spend and his purposes the
845 is all he needs.