Asus P4C800-E: Updating the Intel Flagship
by Wesley Fink on August 30, 2003 10:55 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
The P4C800 Deluxe was one of the very first Canterwood (875P) boards for sale in computer markets. AnandTech’s Evan Lieb first took a look at it in his review on April 17th. Evan, like other reviewers of the original P4C800 Deluxe, found that the motherboard performed very well compared to other 875 motherboards, but a number of problems began to concern end-users.
First, many complained that Asus had produced the only high-end 875P motherboard without the ICH5R South Bridge that provided Intel support for SATA RAID. While Asus had provided SATA RAID with a Promise chipset, some were very upset that ICH5R was not present. Second, a major innovation by Intel in the 875/865 chipsets is CSA GigaLAN — a technique that removes LAN from the PCI bus and gives it a dedicated “Communication Bus” away from potential PCI bottlenecks. Asus used 3Com GigaLAN on the PCI bus on the P4C800 Deluxe. In fairness, the only CSA LAN available at the time of the 875 launch was from Intel, and it was very expensive compared to competing solutions.
There were also issues with overclocking options that were widely criticized by Computer Enthusiasts. The vCore (voltage adjustment for the CPU) was only adjustable to 1.6V when competitors offered a much wider adjustment range. There was also an overclocking “hole” between 166 and 200FSB that was a concern for those using the Intel 533FSB processors. Asus listened to these complaints, and eventually released a BIOS revision that fixed both of these complaints — making the P4C800 Deluxe a desirable board for both stock users and overclockers. However, the hardware issues and the lack of Intel SATA RAID and CSA LAN could not be fixed with a BIOS update, and kept many from buying the P4C800 Deluxe.
As promised by Asus, all of these issues are fixed with their update to the P4C800-E. Since these features change significantly the appeal of the P4C800 series, we believed it was time to update the review. This will not be a full review, but will concentrate on changes to this Asus top-of-the-line board, and a retest to bring benchmarks into line with our new hardware and software standards. The P4C800 Deluxe is still available, but is now being sold at a lower price than the new top-line P4C800-E.
First, many complained that Asus had produced the only high-end 875P motherboard without the ICH5R South Bridge that provided Intel support for SATA RAID. While Asus had provided SATA RAID with a Promise chipset, some were very upset that ICH5R was not present. Second, a major innovation by Intel in the 875/865 chipsets is CSA GigaLAN — a technique that removes LAN from the PCI bus and gives it a dedicated “Communication Bus” away from potential PCI bottlenecks. Asus used 3Com GigaLAN on the PCI bus on the P4C800 Deluxe. In fairness, the only CSA LAN available at the time of the 875 launch was from Intel, and it was very expensive compared to competing solutions.
There were also issues with overclocking options that were widely criticized by Computer Enthusiasts. The vCore (voltage adjustment for the CPU) was only adjustable to 1.6V when competitors offered a much wider adjustment range. There was also an overclocking “hole” between 166 and 200FSB that was a concern for those using the Intel 533FSB processors. Asus listened to these complaints, and eventually released a BIOS revision that fixed both of these complaints — making the P4C800 Deluxe a desirable board for both stock users and overclockers. However, the hardware issues and the lack of Intel SATA RAID and CSA LAN could not be fixed with a BIOS update, and kept many from buying the P4C800 Deluxe.
As promised by Asus, all of these issues are fixed with their update to the P4C800-E. Since these features change significantly the appeal of the P4C800 series, we believed it was time to update the review. This will not be a full review, but will concentrate on changes to this Asus top-of-the-line board, and a retest to bring benchmarks into line with our new hardware and software standards. The P4C800 Deluxe is still available, but is now being sold at a lower price than the new top-line P4C800-E.
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jsapyta - Sunday, October 17, 2004 - link
Is this board good for gaming or should I switch to a AMD board?aditm - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
Can I have this Board please? Can I, Can I ?If so ... what am I sopose to do with it?
:(
Aniway Thanks !
:)
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
Thank you for your excellent review. To have theP4C800-E support both RAID 0 and RAID 1, would two
disks in RAID 0 configuration be connected to the two ICH5R SATA ports and another two disks in RAID
0 configuration be connected to the two Promise
PDC20378 SATA ports and then these two 2 disk RAID 0 arrays be configured to RAID 1 (mirroring)?
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
I too am having trouble loading a clean install onto a Raid Array, any insight would be appreciatedAnonymous User - Friday, September 12, 2003 - link
Using two WD raptors with the Asus P4c800-E want to run in Raid 0. I get in the raid set up but when I try to install windows [XP pro] I load the raid drivers {F6] window loads drivers.When it says loading windows for about two mins I get blue screen error something about drives or controllers not con figured. Could you shed some light on this problem. Works fine when using sata [non raid] Thanks NWAnonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
OK, I vaguely remember the 1.5 vs 2.0 issue for Prescott. However, what about the 100+ watts that made a problem with motherboard power supplies? Has this issue been resolved? The Asus web site and the manual state, "New power design supports next generation Intel PrescottCPU. Does this mean this motherboard has fixed the power issue. Also, what CPU heat sink/fan combination was used for the testing with 250+MHz FSB?Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - link
0sparkie - Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - link
Thanks,If I have any stability problems I ' ll inform U.
Icewind - Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - link
Its a 9800 which conforms to all the standards on mobos, so your fine.Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - link
I believe the manual's reference to the ATI card versions is concerning the old problems with stability and enabling AGP 8x on early versions of these video cards on AGP 8x motherboards. I have a 1 year old 9700 Pro running perfectly on this motherboard at 8x with fast writes enabled, but I am not overclocking.