Intel's E7205: Granite Bay Hits the Streets
by Evan Lieb on November 18, 2002 9:56 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ASUS P4G8X Deluxe: Board Layout
There weren't too many layout issues to report with this particular E7205-based motherboard. We had only a few minor complaints.
Looking at the positioning of the ATX (20-pin) connector, we see that ASUS placed it on the right-hand side of the motherboard. This is the best place to position an ATX connector, as the thick wires won't obstruct the installation/uninstallation of the HSF or passive North Bridge heatsink, as well as any other components that you may decide to modify or uninstall. Unfortunately, the ATX connector isn't located high enough; the ideal position would be at the very top, right-hand corner of the motherboard, perhaps directly over the silk-screened CPU multiplier options.
All three onboard fan headers are placed well. The chassis and power fan headers are placed at the very edge of the right-hand portion of the motherboard. This way, fan wires won't have to travel far to their destination. The third fan header however (the CPU fan header) was placed a bit too close to the CPU clamps and DIMM connectors. This makes it somewhat difficult to sneak your fingers in this area to unplug the CPU fan line, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue unless you have large fingers.
As is now common with almost all P4 motherboards, the ATX12V connector is located on the left-hand side of the motherboard. This isn't the best location for the ATX12V connector though (especially since it's located towards the midsection of the motherboard), as this connector ends up in your path of uninstalling the HSF. The ATX12V connector should be placed at the very top of the motherboard, somewhere on the right-hand portion of the board preferably.
We're glad that ASUS places the Primary/Secondary IDE connectors to the right of the DIMM slots and just above the midsection of the motherboard. We've experienced what a hassle it can be to have the Primary/Secondary IDE connectors placed on the lower portion of the motherboard. It makes it more difficult for the IDE cables to reach to the uppermost bays of a large-sized ATX case, and might have even get tangled up with our video card.
There are a lot of motherboard makers that place their DIMM connectors too close to where the video card is installed. However, ASUS doesn't make this mistake, and places their DIMM connectors far enough away from our GeForce4 Ti4600 and with a little room to spare, as is apparent in the picture below. We always like it when mainboard manufacturers do this because we're not forced to uninstall the video card if we want to uninstall memory.
Some of the other onboard features that ASUS includes on the P4G8X Deluxe (but that have nothing to do with performance) is ASUS's patented EZ Plug technology. EZ Plug is made possible by a standard 4-pin AUX connector, which all modern-day ATX power supplies carry. EZ Plug functions as a replacement for the ATX12V connector that the vast majority of P4 motherboards contain, and that ASUS includes anyway. While not incredibly useful, it's a nice feature to have nonetheless.
The USB and FireWire headers are positioned fairly well. There is a single USB header on this motherboard, located at the bottom of the board below the blue PCI slot (more on this PCI slot shortly). This is the best place to position the USB header, as it has little chance of getting tangled up with any other wires or hardware components. The two red FireWire headers are located nicely as well, nearly at the bottom of the motherboard. They might be a bit too high, especially if you were to make use of the onboard Serial ATA connectors, as the FireWire and Serial ATA cables would cross over each other, resulting in potential clutter. This isn't too much of an issue however.
Finally, we have the blue PCI slot. Here's how ASUS describes this technology, dubbed "Blue Magic":
Besides supporting all the conventional PCI applications, the Blue Magic Slot also supports wireless LAN cards. The great thing about the feature is that it supports 802.11a, 802.11b and Bluetooth standards, making the A7V8X the first motherboard with all three standards. ASUS is planning to introduce a wireless LAN card later this year equipped to handle the three standards.
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hrumsey - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Regarding previous comment:And I told this thing to show e-mail address. hrumsey@charter.net if anyone has questions.
It also removed paragraph indents that would make the above post a bit more readable- apologies.
And a clarification: The ZCR card could be seen to be flashed only because a jumper change is needed to put them in flash mode. In normal mode, the Thunder K8S Pro S2882 BIOS was squashing the Adaptec 2010S / 2015S BIOS.
Damn, I hope Google indexes that comment well.
Speaking of which, for you-know-who:
Tyan Thunder K8S Pro Adaptec 2010S 2015S ZCR RAID BIOS problem incompatibility bug hang failure download flash PCI-X
Tyan 2882 K8S Pro Thunder ZCR Adaptec 2015S 2010S RAID bug hang failure problem incompatibility PCI-X flash BIOS download
Thunder Tyan 2882 K8S Pro ZCR Adaptec RAID 2010S 2015S BIOS incompatibility problem failure hang PCI-X BIOS bug flash download
wildly incompetent screen-reading technical support monkeys
beta-testing on customers
See previous comment
hrumsey - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Anandtech's evaluation covers how good Tyan's tech support is in the absence of any real problem for them to deal with. I would suggest that this is not an adequate criterion.Our experiences were different.
The issue of product quality is relevant here, since it makes the quality of technical support more important if the product is poor. My company tried Tyan boards several years ago, and gave up when along with 4 DOAs, 3 quick in-service failures gave a defective rate of almost 50%. I mistakenly thought almost 10 years would be enough for the company to straighten out.
We ordered 3 Thunder Pro S2882s for a client taking a website inhouse who wanted a 64-bit option- this was before Intel's 64-bit Xeons showed up.
All of the following happened under time pressure, which isn't unusual, and why better support than Tyan's is necessary:
One of the three boards was DOA; wouldn't flash any of three Adaptec 2010S ZCR cards; the other two would. Tyan's tech support essentially kept assuming we were doing something wrong and, and at one point asked if we had the current BIOS on the ZCR cards. They must not have any sort of decent database, since the problem had to be explained anew every call. After they admitted the board was bad, they failed to warn us of their shipping deadline for replacing the board (which they will do, and with an E. Coast vendor and them in CA was necessary).
All the boards failed to see the ZCR cards. First tech said that couldn't be happening, second knew about the problem and said the "E" BIOS fixed it. It didn't. We delivered servers with drives unmirrored.
Site setup was busy for a while. When I finally had a chance to work on ZCR problem, Tyan could find no record of the problem (none of the emails we exchanged except ones I sent had case #s in the header). I explained everything again, and once again had to assure them again that we'd gotten the obvious stuff right. First tech said he didn't know how it could be happening, and thought I was missing something. Got email next day from supervisor acknowledging there was a problem and saying (again) they had a new BIOS out that would fix the problem. Downloaded, sent tech onsite to install. Didn't work, same result- ZCR card option grayed out in BIOS, system hangs. When I had a chance to go down and work on it personally, once again, no record of case. I went through everything from scratch once more, assuring them that yes, we'd read the FAQs and yes, the system was plugged in, and yes, we had tried every possible combination of their two blasted relevant jumpers, and that in fact there were about eight other germane parameters we had tried which none of them had thought of- and all of this while wasting valuable onsite time. When I finally convinced them that 1) we were competent and 2) it wasn't working, I was told I'd get a call back "shortly" from the responsible engineer. Three hours later, in a darkened factory, at 5:14:55 just as I was leaving, I got a call back from the engineer who actually knew what was going on. He finally admitted we had everything right. He had no solution, but agreed with my suggestion for testing and said he'd check- he lacked authority(!)- to see if management would authorize the replacement board I'd been asking for. And they did, but there shouldn't have been any question.
Next trip down I replaced the board in one server, picking the server in whichhe Gigabit Ethernet ports had failed- and it still didn't #$%^& work. Tyan said it had been working the day before for them with a 2010S ZCR card, and until today, I didn't know whether they were lying or not. I cussed some and ordered $1200 worth of controllers to replace what Tyan couldn't get right 5 months after the product's release.
Today I checked and saw that they have a new BIOS for the board available that "Fixes PCI ZCR card hangs system during POST". It's the third BIOS for which they've made that claim, and you know, it really doesn't matter whether they're right this time or not. And if they're not, it doesn't matter whether they're just mistaken or actually lying- theend result is the same.
We saw five of their high-end server boards. One DOA, one in-service failure, all five with a major design flaw. Eight years is enough time to take care of company-wide failures. Any company that will release a $500 server board with a 40% failure rate, and without first ensuring that everything on it actually works, and who then can't tell for five months whether or not they've fixed the resulting problems, and whose tech support is staffed with folks who can't deal those problems- well, that's a company whose products you want to steer very clear of.