p5v800 vs asrock 775 dual 880

[Eddie G]

Which of these 2 mobos is recommended? The Asrock has 4 PCI slots and
the Asus has 2. But the Asus supports SATA 3 Gb/s where the Asrock is
1.5.

Any thoughts/suggestions? I just bought a new AGP video card so I do
not want to buy a PCI Express card, and I still want to use my ATA 133
(IDE) HD and these boards support both AGP and PCI Express (for when I
upgrade). I have been pricing barebones systems with these 2 mobos
with an Intel 820 CPU (along with heat sink and case fans...but no
other hardware at this time). Memory I'll buy on Ebay, and
slickdeals.net to find a SATA hard drive when I need one.


What web sites do you prefer for buying a barebones system? I do not
feel comfortable putting a system together myself, and don't know how
much I'd save anyway. I am comfortable installing hardware, though.


Thanks!!


Eddie G

 

[Paul]

Which of these 2 mobos is recommended? The Asrock has 4 PCI slots and
the Asus has 2. But the Asus supports SATA 3 Gb/s where the Asrock is
1.5.

Any thoughts/suggestions? I just bought a new AGP video card so I do
not want to buy a PCI Express card, and I still want to use my ATA 133
(IDE) HD and these boards support both AGP and PCI Express (for when I
upgrade). I have been pricing barebones systems with these 2 mobos
with an Intel 820 CPU (along with heat sink and case fans...but no
other hardware at this time). Memory I'll buy on Ebay, and
slickdeals.net to find a SATA hard drive when I need one.


What web sites do you prefer for buying a barebones system? I do not
feel comfortable putting a system together myself, and don't know how
much I'd save anyway. I am comfortable installing hardware, though.


Thanks!!


Eddie G

P5V800-MX is a VIA chipset P4M800. Board form factor is MicroATX.
Always download the Asus user manual from support.asus.com.tw, before
you buy. That way, there are no surprises.

P4M800 has a single channel memory controller.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/p4-series/p4m800/

Some comments here:
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.asp...&model=P5V800-MX&page_size=10&page=2&count=19
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813131567

775Dual-880Pro is also a VIA chipset. This board has dual channel
memory, while the other board has single channel memory. Even though
it shows four DIMM slots, two are DDR and two are DDR2. You
cannot mix them, so in effect, there are only two usable slots
for memory.

http://www.asrock.com/product/775Dual-880Pro.htm

Since the VIA chipset documentation says it has a genuine AGP slot,
the 880Pro should not have a performance issue with your AGP card.
Of course, there could always be a disagreement between any AGP
slot and AGP video card, and some chipset brands are better than
others, when it comes to stuff like that.

The other issue is the PCI Express video card slot. Asrock has a
tendency to "not go into details", when the tech aspect of something
doesn't please their marketing department. In the case of the
775Dual-880Pro, it would be the fact that the PCI Express video card
slot runs at x4, rather than x16. If you were to buy a high end
PCI Express video card, you might lose some performance because of
that fact.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/downloads/presentations/chipsets/p4-series/p4-series_comparison.pdf

The Asrock doesn't seem to allow changing the CPU clock setting.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting what I'm reading, but it looks like it
auto detects and just displays what it finds. The DRAM timing
options are also incomplete, but not in a way that prevents you
from doing what is necessary.

http://download.asrock.com/manual/775Dual-880Pro.pdf

The Asrock wins, because it has the dual channel memory (buy two
matched sticks to take advantage of it). But the quality of
the BIOS and of BIOS upgrades is also a factor, and I don't know
how well Asrock does on that account. The comments here are
quite mixed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813157080

Maybe look elsewhere.

Paul

 

[Eddie G]

Thanks, Paul...

You said Asrock wins because of dual channel memory. I am a gamer and
am more concerned about graphics so my question is with a high end
video card (which I will get someday, but am still using my AGP card
now) how much of a difference is there with pci-e slot running at 4x
vs. 16x.

Also for gaming how important is dual channel memory vs single channel?

Thanks!!

Eddie G

 

[Paul]

Thanks, Paul...

You said Asrock wins because of dual channel memory. I am a gamer and
am more concerned about graphics so my question is with a high end
video card (which I will get someday, but am still using my AGP card
now) how much of a difference is there with pci-e slot running at 4x
vs. 16x.

Also for gaming how important is dual channel memory vs single channel?

Thanks!!

Eddie G

Tomshardware tested video cards, by insulating the connector
pins and testing with various numbers of PCI Express lanes.
Going from x16 to x4 means the graphics card runs at 70-80%
normal speed.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/22/sli_is_coming/page8.html

Memory bandwidth is more important for memory-bound applications.
If you were writing emails, or web surfing, the connection to
RAM might not be too important. If you are running Photoshop,
things might be different.

In the Winrar test here, you can see that the P4 is more
affected by the memory subsystem, than a comparable Athlon64.
But this article is just comparing memory timings, and not
single versus dual channel bandwidth.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/01/19/ups_and_downs/page10.html

It is getting harder to find an appropriate article. Here, the
largest impact was 10%, with smaller percentages for some things
than for others. My biggest concern with these articles, is
comparing apples-to-apples.

"ASUS P4C800 Deluxe (875P)"
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1814&p=9

"Intel 865 (Springdale) Chipset: Mainstream Dual DDR"
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1823&p=12

In any case, you can see there is some difference.

In this article, they compare an 848P single channel
chipset, versus 875/865 dual channel chipsets. The 848P
is basically the same silicon as the 875/865, but with
only a single memory channel connected.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/11/03/intel_brings_low/page5.html

Paul