- Jul 27, 2002
- 13,314
- 690
- 126
After reading all the great reviews/bench results about the P4T533, I placed orders at NewEgg and GoogleGear this morning.
Later today I found this little thread - Asus P4t533 w 4200 rimm arrives ! ("only" 33 pages so far)
Reading a 33 page-thread might be a bit too intimidating, so I'll try to make it simple. Oh and before I go for it, let me tell you that I was going to cancel my orders after reading those 33 pages. And guess what? My orders were already processed and couldn't be canceled (I wanted to kill myself cause I asked for rush-processing). That being said, according to many (or everybody except those at benchmarking sites) in the thread, this board is turning out to be a nothing but a garbage. Below are the foundings from them. All the symptoms didn't happen to everyone, but we could draw a big picture from what they've gone through.
1. The board doesn't function well/at all at its stock FSB speed (133Mhz). Sometimes it doesn't even get you to the POST screen.
Possibly the most ridiculous event in the motherboard history. What the **** is ASUS doing here? Almost all users are reporting system/testing failure at FSB 133Mhz. I thought they're joking at first, but they weren't.
2. It's almost impossible to find a stable FSB on this board.
Symptoms vary. A user says he was able to run the system stably when he overclocked from 1.6 Ghz to 2.4 Ghz, while another users says he had to "underclock" his 2.4 to 2.0 for stable running. Here is a quote from a user.
The problem is that today it may fail at 165 and 167 and run ok at 166, but tomorrow after the room temperature changes a few degrees you'll find it may pass at 165 and fail at 166 and 167. Do you want to be testing for the "stable" frequencies all the time?? I can take a small fan and blow a little air on the ram area and move the stable and failing frequencies. The only frequency I found I could really run at was 172X3, since when I first tested I found that 171/172/173 were stable and 170/174 failed. The next day 173/174 were failing. 172 still worked since it started out in the middle of 3 "stable" frequencies and the failing frequencies hadn't "drifted" down to 172 yet. Being able to work at "one" magic frequency isn't what I call acceptable. Heck it's not even stable at 133X4. If people still want to keep buying this board and ram then fine, that's their business. Anyone that's aware of this thread and still buys the board and ram has only themselves (and ASUS) to blame if/when it doesn't work reliably.
3. Some users reported the instability of the motherboard when used with nVidia's graphics cards.
Would you believe this?
4. Stability issue with the new 32-bit modules
A recent founding showed the modules used for all the benchmarking prior to the board's release to the public were all ECC-rams. And this type of rams are not currently available on the market. In the meantime, many online retsellers are selling non-ECC modules bundled with this motherboard. It seems obvious that Asus knew about this, and I don't know how they're gonna deal with this. Other problem with the memory is with the FSB. Since the default FSB isn't stable, people try to find a stable FSB for their boards (At this point, "how high can it go" becomes meanigless). And of course it causes problems on the rams.
arghhhh.. I'm so angry and can't believe I didn't find this thread while I searching before ordering. Anyone with this board, please post your experience or fix information here. My packages will be here this Wednesday...
Later today I found this little thread - Asus P4t533 w 4200 rimm arrives ! ("only" 33 pages so far)
Reading a 33 page-thread might be a bit too intimidating, so I'll try to make it simple. Oh and before I go for it, let me tell you that I was going to cancel my orders after reading those 33 pages. And guess what? My orders were already processed and couldn't be canceled (I wanted to kill myself cause I asked for rush-processing). That being said, according to many (or everybody except those at benchmarking sites) in the thread, this board is turning out to be a nothing but a garbage. Below are the foundings from them. All the symptoms didn't happen to everyone, but we could draw a big picture from what they've gone through.
1. The board doesn't function well/at all at its stock FSB speed (133Mhz). Sometimes it doesn't even get you to the POST screen.
Possibly the most ridiculous event in the motherboard history. What the **** is ASUS doing here? Almost all users are reporting system/testing failure at FSB 133Mhz. I thought they're joking at first, but they weren't.
2. It's almost impossible to find a stable FSB on this board.
Symptoms vary. A user says he was able to run the system stably when he overclocked from 1.6 Ghz to 2.4 Ghz, while another users says he had to "underclock" his 2.4 to 2.0 for stable running. Here is a quote from a user.
The problem is that today it may fail at 165 and 167 and run ok at 166, but tomorrow after the room temperature changes a few degrees you'll find it may pass at 165 and fail at 166 and 167. Do you want to be testing for the "stable" frequencies all the time?? I can take a small fan and blow a little air on the ram area and move the stable and failing frequencies. The only frequency I found I could really run at was 172X3, since when I first tested I found that 171/172/173 were stable and 170/174 failed. The next day 173/174 were failing. 172 still worked since it started out in the middle of 3 "stable" frequencies and the failing frequencies hadn't "drifted" down to 172 yet. Being able to work at "one" magic frequency isn't what I call acceptable. Heck it's not even stable at 133X4. If people still want to keep buying this board and ram then fine, that's their business. Anyone that's aware of this thread and still buys the board and ram has only themselves (and ASUS) to blame if/when it doesn't work reliably.
3. Some users reported the instability of the motherboard when used with nVidia's graphics cards.
Would you believe this?
4. Stability issue with the new 32-bit modules
A recent founding showed the modules used for all the benchmarking prior to the board's release to the public were all ECC-rams. And this type of rams are not currently available on the market. In the meantime, many online retsellers are selling non-ECC modules bundled with this motherboard. It seems obvious that Asus knew about this, and I don't know how they're gonna deal with this. Other problem with the memory is with the FSB. Since the default FSB isn't stable, people try to find a stable FSB for their boards (At this point, "how high can it go" becomes meanigless). And of course it causes problems on the rams.
arghhhh.. I'm so angry and can't believe I didn't find this thread while I searching before ordering. Anyone with this board, please post your experience or fix information here. My packages will be here this Wednesday...
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