Asus P4S8X and A7N8X (asus 648 and nforce2) when?

[Ronny69]

Good news everyone,

I just received an email from Asus telling me the board is released tomorrow (14th August):


Dear User,
Thanks for choosing ASUSTeK.
This board will be released tomorrow.But we think it needs time to transfer the boards to America or Europe.So you can contact the
local reseller to order one.

Any future problem,please feel free let me know.

If you have any complain or suggestion about our tech support service,
please mail to Tsd@asus.com.tw with your previous mail as well as our TSD reply content using the subject "<feedback>+ Your previous
mail subject". If only for further tech query, please just do a simple reply. Thanks a lot!

Best Regards:

ASUS CSC Shanghai


Now, I just have to wait till a reseller has it in stock (I live in the UK so it will prob take ages!). However, at least we know it is released soon!

Ronny69

 

[Lecho]

That is indeed good news, and hopefully ASUS hasn't had the problems that ABIT and Shuttle has had with their boards. Any news about pricing? I would think that it would be no more than $120 US, the only thing that really interests me with the p4s8x over the p4s533 is the AGP 8x for future video upgrades

 

[Ronny69]

They didn't mention pricing and I don't suppose they would know because they don't sell it direct. Hopefully, it won't be much more than the P4S533!
Yeah, I was gonna go with the P4S533 but I decided to wait for the 648 chipset because I only upgrade once every 3 yrs approx (I'm a student thus can't afford it) so I have to get the very best I can afford.

Well, at least we have some substantial info now on its release.

 

[Lecho]

You are in the same boat I am, but I was just thinking... Dual channel will be coming in a few months, and likely faster than 648 I might just go for a i845E board for now with DDR266, and wait for dual channel. I don't know if I want to drop a ton on some nice Corsiar DDR400 CAS2 just to have it outperformed by DDR266 in a few months.

 

[Ronny69]

Ah, but this is the trap of PC upgrading... you get into the vicious circle of constantly waiting for products that are "just around the corner" and so you never get around to buying anything. I was gonna buy the Asus P4S533 but then I am waiting for the Asus P4S8X. I could wait for dual channel DDR but apparantly this isn't appearing till next year so I must resist from waiting and just take the plunge.

Good luck with what you buy though. Let me know if you find the P4S8X available anywhere. I have just emailed a reseller in the UK (www.komplett.co.uk) and they are updating their website with the P4S8X in the next hour or so - hopefully it will tell me when they will have stock of it. I will report back when I found out.

Cheers

 

[Lecho]

Oh, you are very right, and I have a friend that is always like that "I am waiting for X chipset". I was thinking no dual-channel until next year too, but the news said yesterday that VIA and SiS will have dual-channel solutions out by the end of the year. But then again, dual-channel is not guaranteed to be much faster anyway. I know there are a lot of difficulties involved in a dual-channel DDR chipset, just look at the nForce problems. I was just thinking that two 256MB modules of DDR266 are cheaper than one 512MB of DDR400.

 

[Ronny69]

Ok, here we go everyone, the first place I have seen retailing the Asus P4S8X:

P4S8X with Firewire SATA and Lan: http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=25969&t=1403&l=2&AvdID=1&CatID=10&GrpID=10&s=pl £123

P4S8X with Lan: http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=25971&t=1403&l=2&AvdID=1&CatID=10&GrpID=10&s=pl £104

They are due in stock 9/9/02 which is quite a while away! By the way, this is an english retailer and I expect North American retailer's will have it in stock before that.

I have spent the last week trying to find as much info on this board and trying to find out it's release date and where I can buy it so I am happy to have found all that! Alas, it is pretty expensive for the SATA solution which is the one I wanted - I don;t know if I can stretch that far.

I am now contemplating getting the P4S533 because its cheaper and readily available - what do you guys think? I need to have my PC upgraded before Sept 20th cos my old PC is gonna be going to my sis who is off to Uni and she is having my old mobo and CPU and memory etc.

 

[Lecho]

I don't know if SATA is really worth it, sure it'd be nice when it becomes mainstream, but I doubt it is really much faster. If I were to go with the P4S8X, I probably wouldn't get the SATA.

 

[ToBeMe]

Originally posted by: Lecho
I don't know if SATA is really worth it, sure it'd be nice when it becomes mainstream, but I doubt it is really much faster. If I were to go with the P4S8X, I probably wouldn't get the SATA.

Well sure if you upgrade your boards(s) frequently, there may be no real need now, but, saying SATA isn't "worth it" is just silly............read the reviews...........even using a converter with your old drives it will be "worth it"! That's kind of like saying you have the money and are using a TNT2, but, the R300 ATI 9700 may not be "worth it" because the .13 cards will be out soon and they may be faster.............. If you're buying a board and plan on keeping it a decent amount of time...................you ought to get the SATA option......it will only extend the life of your board and will reap you higher performance without the cost of updating the board again.....................

 

[Lecho]

You're right about it extending the life of the board, if you upgrade it bits at a time, which I do sometimes. It's a matter of value. Im going to be building a system soon, but I won't get SATA because the drives aren't out yet, and I don't really want to get a new HDD until I upgrade the entire system. The converters are nice because of the smaller cables, this is true. I would say that an R300 wouldn't be "worth" it right now because they are $400, if I had that much to spend on a video card, I would, but a Ti4200 is more like it. But, I guess it depends on what you want to do.

 

[ToBeMe]

I don't think you are fully understanding though................even with the older drive on a converter, you will gain performance through SATA.............go read some material on SATA.......

 

[Lecho]

Today's drives can't even saturate their 100 or 133MB/s of bandwidth, an extra 17 isnt going to help them. Access times and rotation speeds are what really matter, that's why SCSI is faster, not the extra bandwidth. The bandwidth is just there to facilitate the higher rpms, and lower acess times.

I have read up on SATA, to quote Patrick Schmid of Tom's Hardware Guide:

"...there is currently no pressure for a faster interface, and serial ATA offers exactly the same speed as UltraATA/133. Moreover, we are hardly likely to witness the arrival of hard disks with transfer rates anywhere near 100 MByte/s in the next few months."




"From the performance perspective, there is nothing to be gained from changing over to Serial ATA. The next generation of disk drives from Seagate, Maxtor, and WD and Co. is just around the corner, and it will still be well served by UltraATA/100. Anyone considering Serial ATA is more likely to be swayed by the robustness of its data handling and by the price of Serial ATA drives being pitted against that of conventional ATA disk drives."

I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm just saying that is probably better to wait for a technology to mature instead of jumping on it right away.

 

[wingtel]

Sis648 based MSI 6585 is out also.check sis.com.

 

[BDSM]

Abit's 648 is expected to be in stock at the 27th this month here in Sweden.. it's about $130

 

[Lecho]

Yeah, it looks like boards from MSI, Soyo, Gigabyte, AOpen, and more...

Still don't know where you can buy them though...



Linky

 

[Tru3]

Well hardocp.com put up their SR7-8X review and it didnt come out that well. Good performance at DDR333 but no OC'ing at all, AGP8x doesnt freaking work, and DDR400 is of course either non-functional or slower then DDR333. Well crap, i dont know if i can wait for the p4s8x bc of going back to school so i may just go with the VPSD P4pbX400. I have seen favorable reviews of the board but very few posts from users. It sucks to go back to school right at the begining of a new series of tech.

 

[Lecho]

You know, P4X400 with DDR333 might not be a bad idea... it's basically the same memory controller as the P4X333 which kicked some major anus, but no boards were ever released...

 

[jkresh]

I was thinking about the via P4PB, but ultimately decided against it because it had no pci lock (went with the 2.26 and plan on overclocking so pci lock was necessary).

 

[henryay]

I found this on pricewatch.
Atacom.com is selling the P4S8x with everything on it for $150 shipped.

Dunno if this company is reliable though. 6.78 on resellerratings and lots of complains on the BBB.
Anyone dealt with this company before?

 

[Tru3]

Who fing cares lol i want my damn board. WOOOT. Uh, I mean how do we know that this board will be any better than the SR7-8x? I mean it cant be worse lol but does asus have a generally better record for OCing? The 6 chnl audio is nice though i wish it had raid too. Is the 6 channel better than a SB live value? I was just about to give in and choose between a p4pb x400 or an it7. I wish i had a little better idea of how good this board actually is though. Oh well ill prbly get it tomorrow cause i gotta get 2 comps up and running for school.

 

[Lecho]

Atacom is not a bad place to buy from, maybe a little overpriced. $150 is a little more than I had hoped, even with SATA. There is a good chance that the P4S8X will not be so good either, I don't think there are any finalized reviews, but it seems that there are a lot of problems with the chipset/memory combo with DDR400. Shuttle was supposed to have one of the first boards out, but I haven't seen much about that board either, the AS45GT.

Update It looks like the boards are Back ordered, price is phone order only, and now up to $154.

 

[Tru3]

Yea the atacom thing was a big stupid mistake. I decided to go with the VIA p4pb X400 bc i have to order my board now. I think im going to get the VPSD bc i havent been able to find out much about any differences between it and the soltek board other then slight differences in price and that damned garish silver color the solteks come in. Lol blue matches my blue aluminum case better. As far as the lack of a pci/agp lock, thats not entirely true. It doesnt have a lock but several reviews have pointed out that the boards have jumpers for fixed FSB settings up to 160 fsb. WHen a fsb is set the jumpers apparently lock the pci/agp ratios at predetermined levels. So basically its like a primitive lock. Sorry for the weirdness of my post i gotta run. Good luck all. Ill post if all goes well next week.

 

[SnakeEyes45]

On PriceWatch, a company called myinfinity.com is listing "in-stock" availability of the P4S8x. I called them this morning and the person who answered (after "checking") said it is indeed in-stock. Price w/o Shipping is $151US.

However, Resellerratings.com lists terrible ratings for them ~2.23 and the comments are fairly bad. I'm not sure I trust 'em at this point on two areas: 1) is the board really in stock, and 2) are they worth doing business with even if they have it...

Anyone out there tried them before?

 

[Tru3]

I just talked to one of their people through the chat window at their website- weird ive never seen one of those b4. N E way they dont have it in stock either and its on backorder.

 

[Lecho]

Looks like backordered 'till the 26th... I also broke down and decided to run i845G w/ DDR333. All these delays and negative reviews of other 648 boards don't look good...