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P4 Mobo Roundup @ Tom's

GTaudiophile

GTaudiophile

Lifer
i845-B vs. i845 vs. P4X266A vs. SiS635 vs. i850...

Linky

Well, we shouldn't forget the good old brand name fetishists. I am not completely free from it either. I will never understand how anyone could even remotely consider driving or even buying a Lexus, this sorry excuse for a wannabe luxury car.

Muwahahaha

Edit: He's wrong on the stupid comparison chart used on page 2. i845-B does support USB 2.0 and ATA133 as shown on MSI's board!
 
I was looking at getting the Intel 845D, but it seems the only benefit would be stability...would the SIS645 or VIA REALLY be less stable?
 


<< Well, we shouldn't forget the good old brand name fetishists. I am not completely free from it either. I will never understand how anyone could even remotely consider driving or even buying a Lexus, this sorry excuse for a wannabe luxury car. >>


Ahahaha...I love Germans.
 


<< I was looking at getting the Intel 845D, but it seems the only benefit would be stability...would the SIS645 or VIA REALLY be less stable? >>



Well, in most cases you're only talking a 1-5% difference between i845-B and SiS635. The crux is that MSI's SiS635 board only costs $102 at NewEgg, while the feature-packed MSI 845 Ultra costs $139. Is USB2.0, RAID, and ATA133 worth the extra $37, 5% decrease in performance, and rock-solid stability? I think so.
 


<< Edit: He's wrong on the stupid comparison chart used on page 2. i845-B does support USB 2.0 and ATA133 as shown on MSI's board! >>



Actually MSI prob uses the NEC USB 2.0 chip, it doesnt mean the chipset has USB 2.0 support, just the MSI added it. As for ATA133 I do know the 845D uses the same southbridge as both the 845 and 850 and it doesnt support ATA133, althought MSI could again be using a different IDE chipset but I doubt it. I think your mistaken about the MSI 845D supporting ATA133, but I cant check because MSI hasnt put the product up on their webpage yet.
 


<< Edit: He's wrong on the stupid comparison chart used on page 2. i845-B does support USB 2.0 and ATA133 as shown on MSI's board! >>


I don't think that HE is the stupid one 😉 The i845D does NOT have native support for either one of those standards (it's all add-on via external chips). They will not show up until i845E with native support.
 
From Newegg:
"Please note that Some Mother Board Manufacturers may not choose toimplement all functions of the chipsets onto the Mother Board. Some mother board manufacturers may design mother board that exceeds the specification of the Chipset."

I think I'm confused with the company names, just tell me if I got this right...
MSI is the mobo manufacturer. And MSI makes one with the SIS645 chipset and one with the Intel 845D (i845-B)?
The fog is beginning to clear.

NFS4 - will your title eventually become "GOD" after so many posts?? 🙂
 


<< I will never understand how anyone could even remotely consider driving or even buying a Lexus, this sorry excuse for a wannabe luxury car.

HAHAHAHA Can anyone tell he's in Germany? 😀

I dont like Lexus either but you wouldn't find out in a computer motherboard article I was writing 😀
 
GTAudiophile wrote:

"Is USB2.0, RAID, and ATA133 worth the extra $37, 5% decrease in performance, and rock-solid stability? I think so."

That depends entirely on the user, at least insofar as USB 2.0, IDE RAID, and ATA/133. Personally, I don't have a use for any of 'em.

As for "rock-solid stability", I don't believe you could declare SiS 645 "unstable". It's performed like a champ in every review and I haven't seen any complaints from end-users 😀

Basically, it comes down to what YOU want and / or need. I chose SiS 645 because it outperforms the Intel chipsets, and does so at a lower price point. It also supports PC2700, should I want to use it.

By the time USB 2.0 comes in to its own, a whole new crop of boards will appear. IDE RAID is a joke. And ATA/133 is marketing, unless you're using 160GB drives. Of course, that's just IMHO. 😀
 
From Toms- MPEG-4 encoding definitely is a domain of the i850 and RDRAM. You can see very clearly that this platform is far the best for video encoding tasks.

But it only scored 1.4 points over SiS645 on that bench 🙂

What i missed in this review was OC FSB on all the boards.

Another thing, they used a reference board from SIS and i wonder if there isn't faster boards avaible today with SiSS645 chipset? It would be nice to see a round up Sis645 boards!

 
There's seems to be only two readily available SiS645 boards, the MSI 645Ultra(review here)and the ECS P4S5A(review here) . Neither review talks about the overclocking feature of either board but the 645Ultra review does compare the two boards.
 
It's important to note in Tom's Roundup a few points.
  • The P4X266 and P4X266A board both ran the P4 over the 2GHz clock, with the P4X266A clocking just over 2035MHz. While that might appear trivial, it factors in to benchmarks like these where the differences are often expressed in tenths of a second or portions of a frame per second.
  • SiS 645 was a reference board, not a shipping product. That said, shipping boards often fail to reach the same performance heights as their reference. In some cases, however, they outperform the reference board. Also, the tests were ran with PC2700, giving it a slight advantage. Of course, since DDR333 is a major feature, it only makes sense to pair SiS 645 with PC2700 modules.

That said, I'm most impressed that SiS 645 managed to win in nearly every instance. I think if we were to clock the P4X266 and P4X266A down to the same clock speed, SiS 645 would have walked away with each and every bench -- save for the Flask encoding and perhaps one of the Lightview demos.

i845D fails to impress. I think we can safely say this is the first time a non-Intel chipset not only holds the performance crown, but is actually a better choice. VIA has slightly outperformed Intel in the past (note: slightly) but the issues with VIA chipsets outweigh the slight performance benefit. SiS, fortunately, has the performance and the 'rock solid stability' to go along with it.
 


<< SiS, fortunately, has the performance and the 'rock solid stability' to go along with it. >>



Convince me of that! I'm still leaning towards i845-B.
 
Well, we shouldn't forget the good old brand name fetishists. I am not completely free from it either. I will never understand how anyone could even remotely consider driving or even buying a Lexus, this sorry excuse for a wannabe luxury car.

Sigh...just another reason why I don't visit Reverend Tom's site.

Looking at TRs roundup, the SIS645 looks like a very good alternative to the P4X266A and i845. Anyone have an average price on 645 based solutions?
 
Interesting review, but most of the benchmarks full within the margin of error for different boards built on the same chipsets IMO. Especially with the default O/C on some of the boards.

Still, in real world terms, there is a lot in it
 
MisterNi, you can get the ECS P4S5A for $82 the MSI 645Ultra for $99 and the Soyo SY-P4S Dragon Ultra for $163. All price form Pricewatch.
 
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