ASUStek P4P800-VM AWESOME !!!!
Written: Jan 02 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy installation, supports 4GB DDR memory and Intel P4 support
Cons: none
The Bottom Line: I would recommend this board for anyone looking to upgrade from an older motherboard or just to start over from scratch. It has plenty of expansion capabilities.
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| opinionated3's Full Review: ASUS P4P800-VM Motherboard |
Back in October I was tasked with with upgrading several of our older workstations. Most of them were Intel Celeron or Pentium II machines and it was necessary to replace the motherboards. We wanted to use the existing cases and drives so we had to select a motherboard that fit inside the case and worked with the ATX power supply. My boss contacted our supplier and he recommended a ASUS board since most of them were older ASUS boards that we were replacing.
The board that our supplier recommended was the ASUStek P4P800-VM.
The ASUStek P4P800-VM Motherboard uses the Intel® 865G chipset along with a 800/533/400 MHz system bus architecture to control the flow of all the information to and from the processor. This board supports the Intel P® 4 processors with Hyper-Threading and allows for the use of processors up to 3.2 GHz.
The fit
The most important factor for choosing a motherboard to fit in my existing case was the power supply. The case has an ATX style power supply and because of this I had to choose a motherboard that has the ATX power connections onboard. Fortunately for me the case I had to use has a removable shield where all the connectors are located. The ASUS P4P800-VM came with a shield that matches all the connectors that are included on the board. This shield just easily pops in place and I was able to install the new motherboard in place of the old one. The actual size of the board is 9.6"x 9.6" so it fit within our existing cases which are identical to keep uniformity.
The Processor
The ASUStek P4P800-VM is designed to work with Socket 478 processors, these include the Intel ® Celeron and Pentium P4 processors. ASUStek included the 478 pin ZIF socket (Zero Insertion Force) and a fan mount onboard this motherboard. The nice thing about this is that Intel® includes the fan with the correct mounting hardware inside their P4 processor retail packs. This motherboard is designed to be used with Intel® Celeron and Pentium 4 processors including those processors with HT or Hyper Threading. I chose the Intel ® Pentium 4 3.06 GHz processor with Hyper Threading. This Hyper Threading technology is designed to allow the processor to handle two sets of instructions at the same time or in other words do twice the work.
The Memory
Since we have a wide range of computer users I am glad that this board can handle a wide range of memory configurations. ASUStek designed this motherboard with multiple FSB (front side bus) speeds, this gave me an option when it came to the type of memory I could chose from. The board has a maximum of 4 GB of memory with 4 dual channel memory slots. With the dual channel configuration the memory speed bumps up to 800 MHz's( One memory module in the first slot of each bank of two slots). The memory modules that are compatible with this board is PC3200, PC2700, PC2100 unbuffered, non-ECC DIMM modules. Since I was setting this machine up for one of our Graphics Department users we decided on putting 1 GB of memory I chose two 512 MB PC3200 DIMMS from Kingston Inc., one of the leading memory makers.
Video Support
This board comes with an AGP (Accelerated Graphics Processor) socket, in this socket goes the video board. This board will support video cards that are 8x AGP compatible, but it will also support 4x AGP video cards. So when it comes to choosing this board to upgrade an older machine you maybe looking at having to upgrade your video card like I did. This board is designed to be used with AGP video cards that use +1.5V and +.8V it won't work with any other cards that are 3.3V. If you accidentally place a card that uses 3.3V a little red LED will light up and your computer will not come on until you remove the bad card. This is to protect your motherboard from damage. So be very careful and remember to ask about the video card you are about to purchase to make sure that it is a +1.5V or +.8V video card. For those of you looking to save a little money on a video card, you can chose to use the onboard or integrated SVGA adapter to handle your video. ASUStek has included Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 processor chip to handle the graphics. But this graphics processor chip will need to use part of your memory to process the video. I chose an ATI Radeon 9600 Graphics adapter to handle the video in this specific machine.
Sound Support
The ASUStek P4P800-VM that I selected comes with integrated sound. It utilizes the ADI AD 1980 Chipset, which is an AC'97 Codec that allows 6 channel audio. This gives you 5.1 surround support for the high end speaker systems, digital output through a special S/PDIF external connector, Aux and Line in stereo inputs, integrated headphone amplifier and MIC connection.
IDE Support
The IDE connectors onboard are used to connect the floppy and up to four hard disks or other internal storage devices. The board has two Ultra DMA 100/66/33 connectors giving you a wide range of hard drives can be connected to this board. Normally we attach a single Seagate 40 GB 7200 rpm drive and a 52x CD-rom drive to the Primary IDE controller or connector on the board. The Primary IDE controller connector is easily identified by it's blue color. The Secondary IDE controller is located directly behind the Primary IDE controller connector and it is black in color. With this secondary IDE controller we can add additional drives if the user has a need for additional storage. It also has an IDE controller connector for the Floppy Drive, which are nearly obsolete now. We are in the process of phasing out the Floppy Drives in all of our network workstations.
ASUStek included an additional feature on this particular motherboard that offers you a way to add additional storage space on your computer. They did this by including two SATA or Serial ATA connectors. Using these two connectors and the cables that were included we could add up to 6 Serial ATA drives. Which would seriously increase our storage capability. The SATA offers an increased data transfer capability since the standard IDE on this board is 100 Mbps and the SATA transfer rate is 150 Mbps. But this increase comes at a price, the SATA drives are a bit more pricey than standard IDE drives but they are much faster.
LAN Support
All of our PC's in the company are connected to our LAN or Local Area Network. This is handled through network interface cards or NIC's installed in every PC. ASUStek included an integrated 10/100 Mbps (Megabits per second) Ethernet LAN connection or NIC card onboard this motherboard. This LAN connection can also be used in the home by people using cable modems and in home networks.
I/O Ports and Expansion Slots
1x Parallel Port
2x Serial Port
4x USB 2.0 Port
1x PS/2 Keyboard
1x PS/2 Mouse
1x 15 pin SVGA port
3 port sound connectors (Headphones, Mic and Speakers)
1x Expansion port for the Digital output S/PDIF and
1x RJ45 connector for the LAN connection
What comes in the box
ASUS P4P800-VM Motherboard
The Users Manual
FDD cable
HDD cable
2x SATA cable
I/O shield
CD (drivers, bundled software)
Installation
Installation was fairly easy once I removed the old board from the case. Most of the standoffs lined up with the new motherboard so it was easy to attach it to the case. I only had to make one little change within the case to make room for the new board and that was relocate the CD-rom drive to the top position within the 5.25 drive bays. This was because the IDE controllers were blocked by the CD-rom drive if I would have kept it in the same location. After I got the motherboard screwed down in place, it was time to install the processor, fan and memory modules. Once I had them in place, I connected the 20 pin and 4 pin power connectors from the power supply to the motherboard. The 20pin connector is the standard ATX power plug, but the 4 pin connect is the special 12v power connection which is needed by the Intel Pentium 4 processors. Fortunately when the machine booted up it automatically adjusted the processor settings to match the 3.06 GHz processor that I installed. I didn't have to worry about setting it up myself.
After all the hardware installation was done and the system powered up it was time to install all the associated software drivers to make all of the integrated features to work. These features included;
1) Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2
2) Integrated 6 channel SoundMax audio
3) Integrated Intel 825562EZ LAN Ethernet adapter
Likes and Dislikes
After installing this board in about a dozen machines I am very happy with the choice. I think ASUS put together a very capable board and I hope that they don't decide to discontinue it anytime soon. I am glad ASUStek put 4 memory slots on this board so we can use the same board no matter what over memory needs might be. This is especially important in some of our Graphic Department machines often require a lot more memory than you average workstation. I am also glad that ASUStek included a 8X AGP slot so we can install a better video card. I haven't come across any thing that I don't like about this board as of yet.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 125.00
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