Question? ASUS P4T-E or P4B266??

[Shagga]

I'm trying to decide if I should get an ASUS P4T-E or ASUS P4B266 Mobo at the moment. I like the P4B266 cos of the upgrade option such as USB2.0 etc, but I like the obvious advantage of RDRAM over DDR (Except the price!). The P4T-E only has 2 USB ports and I seem to be getting more and more peripherals using USB nowadays.

So, I have a number of Questions?

1) How much faster in real terms is the P4T-E with PC800 RDRAM over the P4B266 with PC2100 DDR?
2) Will the P4B266 be able to utilise PC2700? (if it's available yet!)
3) Will th P4T-E be able to utilise PC1066?
4) Would you just get the P4T-E and use my 2 x USB 1.0 expansion card (4 No. Ports altogether)
5) Is the P4B266 the best 845 Mobo ASUS produce?

Any pointers would be appreciated, as I'm struggling to think logically at the moment.....I'd just like to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,

 

[Shagga]

Bump!

 

[GTaudiophile]

Take a look at my posts in this thread to answer #1.

2) No, don't think so.
3) No, don't think so. Intel will have new chipsets coming out this summer that support ATA133/SerialATA, AGP 8x, 133mhz FSB, etc.
4) Sounds fine.
5) It's their only i845-D motherboard. They also make one based on the SiS635 chipset.

 

[GTaudiophile]

From your sig: England 5 - Germany 1

You got to be sh!tting me!!! The Brits knocked off the Krauts, 5-1? Wie furchtbar!

 

[StanTheMan]

if money is not a problem, buy the one with intel chipset. via sucks and has a lot of trouble. You have to update the 4in1 driver regularly to stay away from trouble. Also, their trouble (incompatibility problem) are usually with state of the arts pheriperals that we commonly used.
Here is the trouble that thay had that I can remember (more maybe), that have been solved and that hadn't been solved:
- AGP 4x (solved)
- 686B Bug, data corruption with SBLive (Solved)
- SBLive sound skipping & crackling problem with via chipset (Partially solved)
- Infinite Loop Error in WinXP* (Not solved)
- PCI performance problem** (Not solved)

*VIA tried to defend itself by saying that the problem occurs in all chipset (including Intel), but from this forum you can find out that the MAJORITY (almost ALL) users that is affected by this problem uses VIA chipset

**PCI performance problem caused your hard drive perfotmance with ATA 133 or RAID or SCSI decrease by almost 30%. This problem also affect you if you do video capture. This problem has exist since MVP3 chipset and affect ALL VIA chipset

I personally uses VIA KT133, and WIn2K, and used to affected by 686B bug. I havent find out if PCI pefoemance bug affects me.

 

[Diable]

1) From 0-10%, check out this review at GamePC where they compared the P4T-E, P42B266 and P4S333
2) Nope
3) I would think not
4) Yea
5) Be aware that Asus makes two boards named P4B266, the P4B266-C and the P4B266 with no C. The P4B266-C has no onboard USB 2.0 chip, no onboard sound and has one less memory slot then the standard P4B266. The P4B266-C sells for about $115 and its not listed on Asus' web page so you can't tell what else is different between the two.

Shagga, two 128MB sticks of RDRAM costs a couple bucks less then a 256MB stick of DDRAM so the cost of memory is the same for both boards.

 

[Athlon4all]

Neither. 850 is the best platform for the pentium 4, and with current Memory prices RDRAM and DDR is the same. P4T-E doesn't overclock as well as P4B266, but Abit's TH7II does just as good as P4B266. Plus, if u overclock to 133fsb, DDR won't benenfit as much from the increase as a RDRAM that's running at PC1066.

 

[Texmaster]

I've owned both of these motherboards and aside from the memory bandwith gain that makes 3dmark2001 look good, the better board is the P4b266 for a few reasons.

I've owned both the P4T and the P4T-E and both had some minor quirks that have dissappeared with the i845. One quirk was the display properties was a bit slow and Tribes 2 would sometimes lock up while loading on both boards. Those problems are gone with the i845.

Overclocking is also better with the P4B266. I noticed a 100mhz jump using the 266 over the P4T with the Northwood chip.

They say the i850 setup is 5% faster but to me thats null and viod if the 266 can overclock higher.

And I'm running PC2700 Kingston ram right now in my P4B266

 

[Vegito]

hey i'm assuming i can use the old 1.4 ghz socket 478 with this board... as long as it's a socket 478 ?

 

[Shagga]

Thanks for the input guyz. It is appreciated.



<< Intel will have new chipsets coming out this summer that support ATA133/SerialATA, AGP 8x, 133mhz FSB, etc. >>



OMG this is never ending! Now wadda I do?....LOL

Texmaster - I have been following your thread m8, great overclocking there my friend. However I am swaying to the P4T-E at the moment. Decisons decisions....

In the words of my boss, "Just Fzcking do it!"



Thanks all.....

 

[Athlon4all]

<< Texmaster - I have been following your thread m8, great overclocking there my friend. However I am swaying to the P4T-E at the moment. Decisons decisions.... >>

If you end up going P4T-E, do yourself a favor and go Abit TH7II. It overclocks just as good as P4B266, and does much better than P4T-E because it is a 6 layer 850 board.

 

[Amused]

Wait a second. My P4T-E can have the FSB clocked at 133. Shouldn't that and a bios update support the new PC1066 and procs when they come out?

As for ATA133, what's the big deal? My RAID-0 array can't even reach ATA 100 speeds.

 

[Radboy]

How many layers does the P4T-E have, and do you have a reference (link)? I looked at the Asus site & couldn't find any info.

 

[Amused]

<<

<< Texmaster - I have been following your thread m8, great overclocking there my friend. However I am swaying to the P4T-E at the moment. Decisons decisions.... >>

If you end up going P4T-E, do yourself a favor and go Abit TH7II. It overclocks just as good as P4B266, and does much better than P4T-E because it is a 6 layer 850 board. >>



I went with the Asus for it's bullet proof stability as shown by Anand's review a while back. It may not be able to clock quite as high, but it gets close enough. And in the end, stability is far more important to me than OCing

 

[Amused]

<< How many layers does the P4T-E have, and do you have a reference (link)? I looked at the Asus site & couldn't find any info. >>



4 layers.

 

[Texmaster]

<< Thanks for the input guyz. It is appreciated.



<< Intel will have new chipsets coming out this summer that support ATA133/SerialATA, AGP 8x, 133mhz FSB, etc. >>



OMG this is never ending! Now wadda I do?....LOL

Texmaster - I have been following your thread m8, great overclocking there my friend. However I am swaying to the P4T-E at the moment. Decisons decisions....

In the words of my boss, "Just Fzcking do it!"



Thanks all..... >>



Thanks Shagga! And your right, it never ends

 

[Diable]

<< Wait a second. My P4T-E can have the FSB clocked at 133. Shouldn't that and a bios update support the new PC1066 and procs when they come out?. >>



The problems not the bios its the boards. The P4T-E(and every i850 motherboard)uses RDRAM clock generators that don't support 133Mhz operation with a ram multiplier of 4x. You can remove the exciting clock generators on your board and soldier in new ones(Texas Instruments' CDCFR83 support 133mhz with multiplier of 4x)but that a pain in the butt. When P4's that run on a 133mhz bus are released our P4T-E's will run them but the ram multiplier will have to set to 3x to get the bus speed back to 400.

 

[hkazemi26]

I recently bought a retail boxed P4T-E and it came with two USB ports on board and I guess what would be a USB riser card. You install it where you would a PCI card on the case but it has a three pin connection to the motherboard (so its not a PCI card). So you really get 4 ports.

Hope this helps

HK

 

[bonkers325]

ddr baby