*** Official ASUS P4C800/Deluxe (875P) Thread ***

[computer]

Thanks John. This is on the Native controller(s), right? Strange it would show UDMA 5 in the DM, maybe it's drivers. ?

What about this please....
I'm decided I'm not going to be running RAID, I have no need for it. (Some time in the future I may get another WD740 and run them in RAID, but not now). So, where does that leave me driver wise...use the Promise drivers that don't mention RAID, and different drivers have to be used if I run RAID? How can the "Promise FastTrak 378 ATA Driver V1.00.1.30" give UDMA 6 support on the Native controller?
Thanks John.

 

[Nuker43]

Can someone help me out here?

I just bought a SATA drive and i JUST learned about raid. Now that i know about it i WANT it. It sounds like the speed is insane with a raid setup.. however i am a little lost.

How exactly do i set up a raid 0 with this mobo? I mean exactly what do i need to buy other than 2 SATA drivers?

Thanks for help.. if someone could link me to a site that explains this that would help also.

I tried searching this thread but its HUGE and after an hour i gave up.

Please help.

 

[DaveR]

Well, what did you test it with? While I am in "playing around mode" I could load XP pro and test with a benchmark program on Intel and then Promise. I can leave my bios alone if it is 1011 for this testing. Just how big a buffer does the Promise have?

Anyway, my stuff is due Thursday, but as of 17:00 tonight it is already here in Portland. I just need to be sure Xeon does not go to fedex and take it!

Originally posted by: computer

Originally posted by: DaveR
Computer...one thought as I keep seeing the Intel Raid as being the one of choice. What was your stripe size? It seems as though most say a 128K is best in the real world but makes the testing programs barf. It seems the benchmark programs like 32K.

I didn't use RAID, I used stand alone single drives.

 

[DaveR]

Well, I do not have a case speaker in my Antec. I was going to have errors as I was going to turn it on without cpu or memory or drives first. Maybe that is not needed.

Originally posted by: computer

Originally posted by: DaveR
WOW...a lot going on. My MoBo should be here by Thursday. I will see what I have for ATA6 if it has a d/l BIOS.

Computer, you seem to be the only one so far on all the forums who thinks the Promise is faster than the Intel for Raid.

Also, I started reading the manual and it also seems that you can hit ALT-F@ during bootup and it will look for a floppy with an updated BIOS. Is that a good way to update? I was thinking anyway that I should make sure all works before I flash anything.

P.S. Does this MOBO only need a powered set of speakers on the audio output line in order to hear the POST messages?

I ask as I was thinking that I could put the board in the case, hook up power and the speakers and then power it on to hear it complain about no cpu.

That's because I'm the only one that's done hundreds of benchmarks comparing several drives, and the ICH5 & Promise controllers. That's also why I do things myself since you can't believe what you read, UNLESS someone has done what I have done. The ICH5 only won maybe 1 or 2 out of 12 tests, and not by much on those. Now, again, this is with BIOS 14 with only UDMA 5 support on the ICH5, however like I said before, the ATA100 drives which are UDMA 5 were also faster on the Promise. Everyone automatically assumes the ICH5 is going to be faster because it's not on the PCI bus. Logically, that makes sense but there are obviously other factors that come into play here like the massive buffering on the Promise controller that I also mentioned before. Since drives never see the 133mb/sec on the PCI bus in the first place, evidently it's a non-issue to require a bus of 266mb/sec bandwidth.

I can't answer about the BIOS update.

Remember, this mobo has no beep codes unless you have USB devices hooked up (or a problem), and only then if you have a case speaker connected. I don't think you need external speakers to hear Voice or beeps.

 

[DaveR]

You only need that second sata drive. The manual on the MoBo should tell you what you need to know. I am going thru this now...choice is if you want to use the Intel or Promise for raid 0...stay tuned.

Originally posted by: Nuker43
Can someone help me out here?

I just bought a SATA drive and i JUST learned about raid. Now that i know about it i WANT it. It sounds like the speed is insane with a raid setup.. however i am a little lost.

How exactly do i set up a raid 0 with this mobo? I mean exactly what do i need to buy other than 2 SATA drivers?

Thanks for help.. if someone could link me to a site that explains this that would help also.

I tried searching this thread but its HUGE and after an hour i gave up.

Please help.

 

[benRWiart]

Hi, finished to build my new comp a few weeks ago, works great, but I have a little problem with my usb. When i plug a device it doesn't automatically launch the program linked to it (digital camera), and my computer doesn't see it. I have to restart my computer to detect the device. I guess it's just an option to configure but where?
Thx for any help

 

[computer]

Well, what did you test it with? While I am in "playing around mode" I could load XP pro and test with a benchmark program on Intel and then Promise. I can leave my bios alone if it is 1011 for this testing. Just how big a buffer does the Promise have?

Anyway, my stuff is due Thursday, but as of 17:00 tonight it is already here in Portland. I just need to be sure Xeon does not go to fedex and take it!

Right off the top of my head, I used Sandra, PCmark '04, ATTO, AIDA32, PCwizard, HDtach, Winbench, file copying tests, and a few others. I used a SEPARATE HD for the IDE master with XP on it. The test HD's must be blank and not being used with an OS to get accurate results. All drives were stand alone masters, and blank.

Notes:
No cards/peripherals were installed (except of course for a
the video card). All hard drives were blank, just formatted
drives using their respective manufacturer's format CD in
NTFS. All drives were stand alone master configurations.
No case was used. Main OS hard drive was an IBM 60GXP
20gb, 7200rpm, 2mb buffer. Drives were frequently
defrag'd during the tests.

It's not a buffer size per say, as in a memory chip buffer, but buffering done by Windows and I think some kind of a "prefetch" file for lack of a better term. When Promise is installed and enabled, run MSCONFIG and you can see part of it in the startup group, it should stand out to you. I can't recall the name and I can't check now since I'm adding cables to my P4C800 setup right now. An example, as in Sandra for one; the buffered read and buffered write rates are over 2000mb/sec on the Promise, but on the ICH5 they are 70-100mb/sec depending on the HD.

 

[Xeon]

Originally posted by: DaveR
Well, what did you test it with? While I am in "playing around mode" I could load XP pro and test with a benchmark program on Intel and then Promise. I can leave my bios alone if it is 1011 for this testing. Just how big a buffer does the Promise have?

Anyway, my stuff is due Thursday, but as of 17:00 tonight it is already here in Portland. I just need to be sure Xeon does not go to fedex and take it!

Originally posted by: computer

Originally posted by: DaveR
Computer...one thought as I keep seeing the Intel Raid as being the one of choice. What was your stripe size? It seems as though most say a 128K is best in the real world but makes the testing programs barf. It seems the benchmark programs like 32K.

I didn't use RAID, I used stand alone single drives.

LOL! *Rubs his hands together and gives an EG*

 

[Nuker43]

So how much of a proformance boost am i looking at here?

I am going to raid0 2 36.7 drives at 10k rpm.

Will i see a difference if i just use normal sata and a single drive or would the difference be noticable in raid0.

I also have some concerns about raiding. Is there any precausions i need to take or be aware of? I heard that raid's are risky in that you can lose information and have a ton of crashes. I only plan to use the raid0 drives for my OS and applications such as games.

Anything i need to know?

Thanks in advance!

 

[computer]

Dave, that Promise caching startup item I mentioned is run by Run32dll and is ptipbm.dll "SetWriteBack", a registry tag. I haven't tried to compare tests with it unchecked to with it checked. I can't find any info on it yet as to whether it's required or not.

 

[DaveR]

Thanks Clint and Michael.

I will try some of these tests when I get a chance. I wonder if Fedex will deliver today. My memory, however is via USPS, so may take a few more days.
I can't spend too much time on this as I need this new system for work!

P.S. I printed the 149 page manual! I sure hope Newegg sends a version 2 MoBo, but they should have the latest, I would guess!

 

[ItsMillerTime]

Anyone here still running the oem hsf?
Just wondering what the mobo and cpu temps are. I'm running the sp-94 on my P4C, but tried the stock cooling on the P4P800-SE and temps are around 40C.

Don't like the SE board at all; the 2.8Costa that was doing 249fsb on the P4C gets errors at 239 on this board

I posted on the p4p thread, but no answer in two days.

Am thinking about exchanging for the P4P800-Deluxe.

 

[DaveR]

Clint, you are starting to get questions on the Broadband forum I sent you to.

 

[DaveR]

Well, I got my stuff. I looked at my MoBo and it has a 1014 BIOS. I see E02 on some labels but where can I see that it is a rev 2 board?

 

[jhites]

Originally posted by: computer
Thanks John. This is on the Native controller(s), right? Strange it would show UDMA 5 in the DM, maybe it's drivers. ?

What about this please....
I'm decided I'm not going to be running RAID, I have no need for it. (Some time in the future I may get another WD740 and run them in RAID, but not now). So, where does that leave me driver wise...use the Promise drivers that don't mention RAID, and different drivers have to be used if I run RAID? How can the "Promise FastTrak 378 ATA Driver V1.00.1.30" give UDMA 6 support on the Native controller?
Thanks John.

Clint - Yes, the UDMA6 is available on the Primary and Secondary IDE controllers. Don't know why it is reading UDMA5 in XP. May be due to the OS or could be that I have it set to Auto in the BIOS. Will have to play with it sometime to find out the answer. Oopsy - I thought that you were using the Promise Controller and not Primary IDE. Promise driver won't do squat for Primary IDE.

ItsMillerTime
Doubt that the P4P800-Dlx will do any better than the SE, since it is still the same chipset. I had a P4P800-Dlx some time back and the P4C800-Dlx out performed it as well. Personal opinion is the i875 is just a little more stable for OC system than the i865.

 

[computer]

Anyone here still running the oem hsf?
Just wondering what the mobo and cpu temps are. I'm running the sp-94 on my P4C, but tried the stock cooling on the P4P800-SE and temps are around 40C.

I was never over 90°F idle with mine (2.4C @3.4). I just tried a TI-T707TN HSF unit with a 60mm Vantec 6000rpm+ and it's about 77° idle now and 102-104°F under load. (FYI, it came with a 70mm fan but it was defective. I tried to jump the fan's thermistor so it would run at something more than 1500rpm and it fell off!)

Clint, you are starting to get questions on the Broadband forum I sent you to.

Thanks Dave. I don't know why I wasn't notified.

My mobo's have the revision next to the model #, right below it.

 

[computer]

Clint - Yes, the UDMA6 is available on the Primary and Secondary IDE controllers. Don't know why it is reading UDMA5 in XP. May be due to the OS or could be that I have it set to Auto in the BIOS. Will have to play with it sometime to find out the answer. Oopsy - I thought that you were using the Promise Controller and not Primary IDE. Promise driver won't do squat for Primary IDE.

Yeah, I'm going to be using the Promise, but for more benchmarks I wanted to find a way to give UDMA 6 support to the Native controllers so I could test them with ATA133 and SATA drives. I guess going back to BIOS 1011 is only way. Or, would anyone know if 12 or 13 would be better? I don't see those versions at the Asus site, but I did find them elsewhere and d'loaded them. Does anyone know if something was wrong with these 1012 and 1013 versions?

 

[ItsMillerTime]

jhites,
I'm more concerned with the motherboard temperature issue, it's 40c at idle. The p4c mobo was around 30c with stock cooling; I'm not worried about the cpu running at that temp, but isn't 40c too high for the mobo even at full load?

 

[DaveR]

I do not see it! I assume it is on the component side. There is a model label on the Parallel port, but I see no rev or version label.

I also got a Sapphire 9600 8x AGP card. Not sure...it is 8X AGP, but is it AGP Pro? I wonder if any board with 1014 BIOS would be anything but Version 2?

Originally posted by: computer

Anyone here still running the oem hsf?
Just wondering what the mobo and cpu temps are. I'm running the sp-94 on my P4C, but tried the stock cooling on the P4P800-SE and temps are around 40C.

I was never over 90°F idle with mine (2.4C @3.4). I just tried a TI-T707TN HSF unit with a 60mm Vantec 6000rpm+ and it's about 77° idle now and 102-104°F under load. (FYI, it came with a 70mm fan but it was defective. I tried to jump the fan's thermistor so it would run at something more than 1500rpm and it fell off!)

Clint, you are starting to get questions on the Broadband forum I sent you to.

Thanks Dave. I don't know why I wasn't notified.

My mobo's have the revision next to the model #, right below it.

 

[computer]

I just booted up this POS and got to the black XP screen, and it just stayed there, nothing happened. I reset, and when it passed POST, I get the "bad BIOS checksum error" crap. I reset then hit delete and go in the BIOS, and it's f***ing GONE!!! ALL BIOS entries, areas, are blank!!! It's just the blue and gray frames and outline for the AMI BIOS, the top nav areas, and nothing else!!! Keyboard won't tab through the top nav areas, it does nothing! I unplugged it for a while, then it booted ok, but the damn BIOS was cleared back to default!! What the ****????? It was fine yesterday!

 

[computer]

I do not see it! I assume it is on the component side. There is a model label on the Parallel port, but I see no rev or version label.

I also got a Sapphire 9600 8x AGP card. Not sure...it is 8X AGP, but is it AGP Pro? I wonder if any board with 1014 BIOS would be anything but Version 2?

Dave mine is between the 2nd and 3rd PCI slots, and yes, boards with v1014 are probably Rev. 2.x. I don't know if the 9600 is Pro.

 

[computer]

Originally posted by: ItsMillerTime
jhites,
I'm more concerned with the motherboard temperature issue, it's 40c at idle. The p4c mobo was around 30c with stock cooling; I'm not worried about the cpu running at that temp, but isn't 40c too high for the mobo even at full load?

40°C is only 104°F, and if something is that under full load, you're heatsink must be chilled! Idle, that's high IME with this mobo, but under load that's great.

 

[ItsMillerTime]

Originally posted by: computer
I just booted up this POS and got to the black XP screen, and it just stayed there, nothing happened. I reset, and when it passed POST, I get the "bad BIOS checksum error" crap. I reset then hit delete and go in the BIOS, and it's f***ing GONE!!! ALL BIOS entries, areas, are blank!!! It's just the blue and gray frames and outline for the AMI BIOS, the top nav areas, and nothing else!!! Keyboard won't tab through the top nav areas, it does nothing! I unplugged it for a while, then it booted ok, but the damn BIOS was cleared back to default!! What the ****????? It was fine yesterday!

WTF?
Is everything besides the bios settings back to normal now?

BTW, just got back my replacement 2.8C from Intel and you guessed it, it's a %*&!ing SL6WT China chip again


I rma-ed mine due to random reboots at 236fsb, err, I mean default settings

computer, you're talking about the mobo temp, right? Just making sure.

 

[computer]

Yes, everything is back to normal now. I can't have this crap happening, this going to be a "mission critical" PC and in the next few days I'm moving over to it. That's scary.

No, in the posts where I mentioned temps, that was CPU temps.

 

[DaveR]

Thanks, got it! Rev 2.00.

I do not believe the card is AGP Pro as it fits back without even removing the warning label.

Now I need my memory, but I can start by mounting the MoBo in the case...if nothing else but to protect it. Lots of stuff falling out of the box.

So far, Newegg has been fine, except I wonder about the Sapphire. I opted for the Retail Box. I got a Lite Retail version without cable/manual, etc. It does have driver cd. However, nowhere on Newegg does it say retail-lite!

Originally posted by: computer

I do not see it! I assume it is on the component side. There is a model label on the Parallel port, but I see no rev or version label.

I also got a Sapphire 9600 8x AGP card. Not sure...it is 8X AGP, but is it AGP Pro? I wonder if any board with 1014 BIOS would be anything but Version 2?

Dave mine is between the 2nd and 3rd PCI slots, and yes, boards with v1014 are probably Rev. 2.x. I don't know if the 9600 is Pro.