P4C800-E
Deluxe Motherboard
by-Thomas
Soderstrom
The P4C800 series has been around for a
while; it was one of the first 875P chipset boards. As usual,
ASUS had their
Deluxe version as well, adding a third-party SATA RAID controller and gigabit
LAN. Neither took advantage of key new technologies from Intel, the integrated
ICH5R SATA RAID and CSA Gigabit LAN, both of which offered dedicated buses for
faster-than-PCI transfers. With other premium boards offering both features, the
original P4C800 Deluxe was often overlooked by purchasers in this market. ASUS
addressed these shortcomings with their revised P4C800-E, adding both features,
plus additional BIOS settings for overclocking. Several review sites have
claimed increased stability when overclocked using sample boards ASUS sent them,
but how does the retail board fair?
For our site’s review, I actually
purchased a retail boxed board, removing any possibility of ASUS sending us a
“ringer”, that is, a board specially selected to be the highest quality simply
for promotional purposes. Reasons for this purchase can be found in our
CorsairTwinX1024-4000Pro review.
Out of the Box
Cables included in this package were 4
SATA data cables, 2 SATA to 4-pin power converters cables, 2 80-conductor ATA133
cables, 1 40-conductor ATA33 cable, 1 floppy drive cable, 1 4-port USB cable, 1
single-port IEEE1394 Firewire cable, and 1 joystick header cable.
Also included were the manual,
motherboard driver CD, a Quick Installation guide, a sticker for your case lid
(in case your manual isn’t handy), a shortcut key sticker for their Instant
Music feature, and Intervideo’s WinDVD suite.
Layout and Features
The board
includes five PCI slots and an AGP Pro 8x slot, compatible with AGP4x/8x cards
meeting the AGP 2.0 and 3.0 voltage specifications (1.5v/0.8v signals). While
many sites praise designs like this for moving the AGP slot downward one
position, allowing added room for DIMM mounting, I prefer boards to either have
six PCI slots, or five slots and an open position between the AGP and top PCI
slot. My reasoning is simple: some AGP cards are two slots wide for added
cooling, and mounting a PCI card so close to ANY AGP card affects cooling for
that card. If you look closely at the board, you’ll see there was plenty of room
to move the DIMM slots upward toward the top edge to maintain clearance while
moving the AGP slot to the top position allowed in a case! Fortunately, I no
longer need five PCI slots, since ASUS provides a near perfect Gigabit LAN
solution on this model, but having all five slots available when using a double
width AGP card would be an appreciated feature. Such placement can be found on
the less expensive ASUS P4P800 and Abit IS7 865PE chipset boards.
ASUS included a proprietary connection
on the bottom of the board for their wireless LAN card. Since this position is
shared with a PCI slot, your choice of proprietary ASUS or PCI wireless cards
will have the same affect on the usable number of PCI slots remaining.
Four SATA connections are provided, one
using the onboard ICH5R controller, the other using a Promise PDC20378 RAID
controller. The Promise controller also provides an added ATA133 connection. If
you’re using two or fewer SATA drives, and/or four or fewer IDE drives, I
suggest you disable the Promise controller to provide faster boot times.
Gameport and Serial Port 2 headers are
located on the board in case you have older equipment you’d like to interface.
While the Gameport header cable is included, the extra Serial Port cable must be
purchased separately. Gameport and Serial 2 are disabled in BIOS by default, so
be sure to enable what you need!
Other important layout features include
the ATX12v connector in a nearly ideal location, where it doesn’t have to cross
over the CPU heatsink, and the standard ATX connector being placed near the top
of the front edge, easy to reach even if you have fairly short power cables.
The rear panel includes PS/2 keyboard
and mouse ports, a Parallel port, a serial port, four USB 2.0 compliant ports,
an IEE1394 Firewire port, a Gigabit LAN port, a single SP/DIF digital audio
output, and analog audio ports.
Sound is provided by the good quality
AD1985 six-channel audio controller. The three3 analog audio connectors on the
rear of the board can be configured in a number of different ways.
Unfortunately, for a 5.1 surround sound configuration, you’ll eliminate both the
Microphone and Line In features of these ports. I tested the onboard sound using
a 4.1 analog configuration, so the Microphone port still served its original
purpose. As for digital sound, the single SP/DIF coaxial output port can be
supplemented with an optional SP/DIF output bracket that contains an added
coaxial output, and a digital output. Why ASUS chose not to include any digital
input provisions is beyond me!
For reference, Abit’s IS7 and IC7
series have five analog ports, along with digital outputs and inputs! While you
might not need such options, I’d like to see ASUS address these issues in the
future.
by-http://www.sysopt.com
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