P5P800 - AGP with LGA 775...

[BoboKatt]

Greetings all..

I really need to keep my ATI 9800 pro 256 AGP card and do not want to ditch it for a PCI-E video card. Thus from my limited research the Asus P5P800 came up as an option if I were to go the Intel route and still get to use the newer Intel CPUs. I was seriously considering an AMD64 3500/939 with a MSI neo2 Plat board but lately just been using Intel 3.2 CPUs at work and loving them. Also at almost any local stores around here those boards and any of the good other ones for AMD are always sold out or on back order... like the Abit.

What my question is, does the chipset that the Asus P5P800 use (i865PE) do a good job? Is it fast or at least comparable to the newer 900 series? Is it mature? Is it stable and does it allow for any decent overclocking... I would assume straight bus speed as multipliers are locked. Do I need ridiculous RAM to get any sort of overclocking or is generic or Crucial value PC3200 RAM ok (2 X 512)? Does the board even allow anything over 400MHz fsb?

Also it has 2 SATA and 2 IDE but the IDE are UDMA 100/66/33??? Does that mean I lose performance from my 2 ATA-133 drives? Would a PCI ATA-133 controller be an option or should I just add a freaking SATA drive and get it over with (adding though my 2 other drives as well). ? I am totally clueless on SATA and worried about which boots first or do I need a special driver to install Windows Xp.. argh...

thank you all in advance,

 

[Kovie]

Id consider the 865/875 chipsets to me are the second best ever created (440BX is top for me). Very fast, very stable and very overclockable. The chipset itself has also been available for over a year and a half now so its quite mature. For memory, you can just use the memory dividers to make any decent memory work if you are overclocking, but higher speed memory certainly wouldnt hurt.

As to your IDE question, no IDE drive can even use the UDMA 100 to its full extent. Maxtor kinda used it more as a marketing gimmick than anything else. Think of it as a six lane highway vs a eight lane highway. If there arent enough cars to fill the first six lanes, it really doesnt matter if you add another two lanes or not. There will not be any performance difference in the slightest.

 

[BoboKatt]

Many thanks for your reply. That certainly helps me out!

P5P800 it is...