Asus P4S333 SiS 645 Pentium 4 Motherboard...best P4 board available?

[NFS4]

Looks like it to me...I wouldn't mind having one myself

http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.asp?review=p4s333&page=1&mscssid=&tp=

 

[Diable]

I have to agree with you, the P4S333 looks like the best P4 board available. I was going to get another P4T-E for my second P4 rig but why should I when the performance of the P4S333 is almost equal to a P4T-E plus its cheaper.

 

[Insane3D]

Anyone besides Asus make one? If so maybe I'll build a P4 rig to play with....

 

[Diable]

MSI makes the 645Ultra and it cost around that same as the Asus board, about $120 and ECS makes the P4S5A and it sells for about $80.

 

[GL]

What's the stability like? Anand stated in his i845 roundup that everything but the i845 was unstable.



<< Although the P4X266A and SiS 645 chipsets are both faster than the i845 with DDR SDRAM, neither chipset has such a stable following of platforms as the i845. We've been working on a P4X266/P4X266A roundup alongside the i845 DDR roundup and the maturity of the boards is like night and day; the i845 platforms are much more stable, especially when operated with all memory banks populated. >>

 

[NFS4]

<< What's the stability like? Anand stated in his i845 roundup that everything but the i845 was unstable.



<< Although the P4X266A and SiS 645 chipsets are both faster than the i845 with DDR SDRAM, neither chipset has such a stable following of platforms as the i845. We've been working on a P4X266/P4X266A roundup alongside the i845 DDR roundup and the maturity of the boards is like night and day; the i845 platforms are much more stable, especially when operated with all memory banks populated. >>

>>


GL, you're just reading too fast there man He states that both the P4X266A and SiS645 are faster than i845D, yet he only states that the VIA boards were immature. He doesn't mention the SiS645 when mentioned stability problems.

And of all the reviews of I've seen of the 645 boards, there have been NO stability issues whatsoever.

 

[ElFenix]

jeez you're up late... i guess finals are over... maybe an all-nighter?


might be the best p4 board "available," but really i think the article wasn't good enough to really show it as they didn't isolate the board in the tests very well. and of course the i850 still looks pretty damn good from a sheer performance standpoint. of course, who wants to shell out the extra dough for i850 and dRDRAM? (although DDR is gonna get expensive pretty quick due to 645 and i845 demand, plus whatever ALi is putting out... wish they could do as good a job as they did on the Aladdin V)


and i doubt any of them are compelling enough to keep me away from an AK35GTR

 

[NFS4]

<< jeez you're up late... i guess finals are over... maybe an all-nighter? >>


I had my last exam Thursday night.

 

[Budman]

<< ...I wouldn't mind having one myself >>



2 things i was sure i would never hear NFS4 say.

1. NFS4 wanting a P4.:Q

2,NFS4 wanting an other SIS product.:Q








I am just messin' with ya Brandon.

 

[GL]

<<

<< What's the stability like? Anand stated in his i845 roundup that everything but the i845 was unstable.



<< Although the P4X266A and SiS 645 chipsets are both faster than the i845 with DDR SDRAM, neither chipset has such a stable following of platforms as the i845. We've been working on a P4X266/P4X266A roundup alongside the i845 DDR roundup and the maturity of the boards is like night and day; the i845 platforms are much more stable, especially when operated with all memory banks populated. >>

>>


GL, you're just reading too fast there man He states that both the P4X266A and SiS645 are faster than i845D, yet he only states that the VIA boards were immature. He doesn't mention the SiS645 when mentioned stability problems.

And of all the reviews of I've seen of the 645 boards, there have been NO stability issues whatsoever. >>



Remind me to go get some sleep I'm studying too hard But Anand still states that neither chipset has a stable following of platforms in relation to the i845. I'm sure the SiS is better (they do have an Intel license and didn't have to reverse engineer anything right?). Still, if I'm going to shell out the extra bucks for a P4 platform, $50 extra for an all-Intel solution will be well worth it.

The problem with internet reviews is nobody does any real reliability testing, and if they do, they tend not to publicise their methods. I'm sure Anand's the exception (I remember he wrote up a whole methodology article and I think it mentioned stability testing), but I've owned so many computer parts now that have had issues clearly overlooked in reviews I'm getting skeptical as to their true usefulness. In fact, I've seen people review my videocard (AIW Radeon) without even doing a satisfactory job of testing it's VIVO/TV features for some unknown reason. I wish reviewers would do some long-term reviews like a lot of the car reviewers do. I tend to purchase hardware about half a year after it's released anyways.

Let's hope the SiS645 mobos are rock solid - it'd be nice to have something beat out Intel in performance and reliability. It'd be a nice addition to the rig I'm building in the Spring.

 

[NFS4]

<<

<< ...I wouldn't mind having one myself >>



2 things i was sure i would never hear NFS4 say.

1. NFS4 wanting a P4.:Q

2,NFS4 wanting an other SIS product.:Q








I am just messin' with ya Brandon. >>



1) Never said I wanted one. If I "DID" have a P4, this would be the board I would use, not some RDRAM backed montrosity.
2) I have no beef with SiS, just "luck of the draw" motherboard manufacturers like ECS.

 

[Budman]

ok

 

[Insane3D]

Ok, so only MSI, Asus, and ECS make a 645 board? I avoid Asus and MSI boards as a rule, so that leaves ECS. I am assuming the ECS does not have much in the way of o/c'ing options. My K7S5A treated me very well, so I don't mind going with an ECS.

 

[thermite88]

I have been using a Shuttle AV-40 with the VIA P4X266. I am very happy with the performance. I can overclock to 116 FSB using CL2 and 118 FSB using CL2.5, with a P4-1.5G running at 1.74/1.78 GHz. I got this OC result using one stick of Mushkin 512MB Special. I have two more sticks of Crucial 256MB which does not OC as well. Worst, when I tried using all three DDR sticks, the best OC I can do is 105 FSB. (The momory is running at FSB+33MHz) It demonstrates what AT talked about stability in the i845D roundup. BTW, the AV-40 is absolutely stable using a single Mushkin stick.

I am looking for the next upgrade, the Asus P4S333 looks attractive, but I am not convenced yet. The DDR333 is not such a big deal since the increase in performance is small. In fact, when I compared the Sandra memory score, the VIA using agreesive timing does as well as the SIS at 333 since SIS does not have option for more agressive timing.

I consider the ability to OC to be more important. AT showed that the 845D can be push to beyond 140 FSB. GamePC showed the SIS 645 limited to 115 FSB. Are there more definitive answer to the OC capability comparison?

 

[StanFL]

I've worked a bit with both SIS 645 and 845D boards and while I didn't experience any problems with either chipset, if I were in the market for one, the 845 would probably win out. The main attractiveness of the SIS is the DDR 333 support but 333 memory is still relatively scarce and pretty expensive, negating any price advantage between the two chipsets IMHO. Then there are lingering bad experiences in the back of my mind with prior SIS chipsets that are hard to shake, while the 845D is something I'm 100% comfortable with, even with just 2 mem banks to work with.

 

[thermite88]

What is the highest overclock using ANY Sis 645 motherboard reported so far? I saw 115 FSB at GamePC.

Can it approach the level report by AT for the i845D boards?

AT reported up to 140 FSB for the MSI 845 Ultra.

Overclocker.com in Taiwan report the Asus P4B266 overclock to 130 FSB and concluded that the limitation is imposed by the CPU itself.

In the same review, OC Taiwan compared the memory bandwidth from 845D, VIA and SIS. VIA at 266 is very similar to SIS at 333 and both are far ahead of the 845D

 

[Diable]

OC Workbench had a pic of a MSI 845 Ultra overclocked to 176mhz(8x176)on there frontpage the other day.

 

[Bovinicus]

It looks like an interesting product. The performance is all but equal with the i850, minus the extra cost of RDRAM, even though the extra cost is very little right now. This just makes the P4 platform a little more diverse and little more interesting than before.

 

[thermite88]

<< I've worked a bit with both SIS 645 and 845D boards >>

StanFL, how do they overclock using your CPU? Any noticible different between the two?

 

[WetWilly]

Ok, so only MSI, Asus, and ECS make a 645 board?

Pretty much everybody is making SiS 645 boards - it's more an issue of availability. Aopen's 645 is just becoming available as well. I've got to admit though, I can't remember the last time I've seen a well-featured Asus board debut at as price as low as the P4S333.

FYI, the 650 boards are now hitting the street. For the same price as the MSI 645 Ultra, their microATX SiS 650 board with integrated video and LAN is now available for ~$100.

 

[RobSan]

Yeah, just saw a PCChips SiS 645 board with sound & LAN at ComputerGeeks for $89, so the flood gates are opening.