Hi Musty,
Before deciding on buying the P4S800D-E, I didn't some Web research.
The board is discussed in ABXZone's SIS Chipset forums - the URL isl:
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=20bdd68f5b7c2b92ad21e8eb183af12f&forumid=63
I don't believe in paying alot for a few percentage more performance.
My motto is getting the most for my money... Bought components when on
sale.
Chose the P4S800D-E for the 875-like performance for $105!!!!
(Supposedly ASUS' marketing talk) I waited until the Intel CPU price
cuts worked thru the channel - bought the Northwood 2.8 Retail for
$179.
Built a new PC based on the ASUS P4S800D-E 655TX MB starting last week
of Feb 2004. Took a weekend to build it. It was a replacement for my
4 yo p3-500 self-built PC!
Started with:
Antec Sonata case (380W PSU included)
ASUS P4S800D-E
Northwood P4-2.8 (HT) Retail M0 stepping
Crucial PC2100 2 x 256MB (not PC3200)
ATI AIW 8500DV (old)
WD 200GB 8MB (old)
Pioneer 1x DVD-RW (old)
Followed the CPU, PSU, MB manuals. Laid my internal cabling along the
sides to minimize blocking airflow. Amazingly booted up on the first
try! (PC2100 actually worked!)
**IMPORTANT discovery*** Make sure you don;t turn off BIOS detecting
the hard drives in your PC - At least use the default AUTO. All those
performance tweaks telling me to set BIOS HD detection to NONE to
speed up boot-time left me worse off in Windows--then WinXP will only
use PIO access to your IDE devices!!! Dreadful molasses slow HD
performance and high CPU usage!!! So in my experience with WinXP in
this new PC, let BIOS AUTO-detect the IDE devices.
Anyways, I tried overclocking after 2 weeks of using the PC. Just
using the simple ASUS overclocking (without messing with the CPU/RAM
numbers), I was able use Windows with overclocking 30% -- 3.6Ghz!!!!
(using PC2100 DRAM!!!) Just using the stock Intel CPU cooler, PC2100
DRAM, I am stunned - I swear, I am not making this up -- this was
just heavenly. (Overclocking to 3.6GHz did require the +0.1 Vcore
option in order to run Windows without freezing, but the 20% - 3.36GHz
didn't. I have kept it at 10% overclocking - 3.1 GHz since I don't
really get much benefit from overclocking and just creates more heat.
ASUS Probe reports my MB and CPU temps are usually in the 30s (C) -
just doing light office work in 60F room temperature
I just added 1 stick of Buffalo Tech PC3700 512MB for a total of 1GB
RAM. According to SIS, the 655TX runs dual channel even if you have 3
sticks (My config PC2100 256x2 in Bank 0, PC3700 512x1 in Bank 1) I
can't tell if the dual channel is working, but I am pleased to have
1GB RAM when I'm using Photoshop!
My unsolved problem is the Marvell Gigabit Ethernet is extremely slow
(it was transferring very fast the first few days of using the new PC
- installing the WindowsUpdate driver hasn't helped)
Simply put, I got great performance without spending much money -- and
being able to overclock to 3.6GHz was just extra sweet!!! My PC is
fast and stable!
Good luck!
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