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Thoughts on P4T533

C

CloudsShinji

Member
Hi,

I'm currently building a system for myself and I was just looking for some more opinions on this mobo and RIMM-4200s. I'm looking at a P4 2.4 (was going to go 2.53 but since the price isn't dropping on Sept 1... 🙁), and from what I could tell this mobo seems to be the top of the line right now. I haven't really heard anything bad about it (save that one thread on Overclockers, I think it was?) so basically I was just wondering if there were any last-minute horror stories out there before I go out and lay down the money for this and some RIMM-4200 modules.

In terms of overclocking, I don't think I'll be doing anything OVERLY extreme but I certainly plan on playing around with it and seeing what it can do. Hey, what's new hardware for, eh?

Well anyways, your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. 🙂
 
It's up to you trying a new board, but i'd like to say "good luck" 🙂 I'm not an overclocker by any stretch, I bought the board (yes, P4T533) for the next couple years. I spent almost a month before I made the decision, and after all that reviews and benches, I thought this combo (P4T533/P4 2.26GHz) would serve me nicely for the next few years. And? It served me REAL NICE for the past 5 days.

I know some people at forum are quite a bit extreme at overclocking, but if you follow the thread you can tell it's not their overclocking that causes system to be unstable. For me, I'm 100% positive that it's either the board or the memory. And I'm declined to think it's the board. I spoke to a nice tech person in Asus Taiwan, he seemed to know about this issue. He sent me a beta bios along with a memory testing prog, telling me to check the board/modules carefully. And yes, there were defenitely something wrong. Symptoms on my board were;

1. When both memory banks were populated, the system became totally unstable.
2. I took out the memory on bank1, and ran the test and it looked great??
3. I put the other memory back in bank2 and took the bank1 memory, memory failed within 5 secs in memtest.
4. So I thought it's the memory.
5. I fell asleep. 😉
5. I tried the bad memory in bank1, and got no errors whatsoever. (what the ...?)
6. I tried the good memory ("I thought") in bank2, and failed.
7. I went out for lunch. 😉
8. Tried various combinations of memory/bank.

At least I could say a couple things for sure about my board. It wasn't stable with those 2 memory banks populated. It ran sometimes OK with 1 memory stick, but it wasn't perfect either. No matter what I did, I couldn't keep the system stable. Not to mention while torture testing, It crashed almost on any occasion - writing e-mail, playing games, surfing on-line, etc.

Oh and btw I did not overclock this board at all. (In fact, Asus seem to overclock/overvault their boards.)

I returned the board and memory the other day and also got Gigabyte board (8IHXP). I'm now as happy as I can be.


P.S. If you still want a P4T533, I'd definitely recommend you to WAIT. Certainly the technology (32-bit rambus) is new, and you don't want to waste your time testing.


 
Thanks for your reply. 🙂

Wow, I have to say, I'm surprised and a little disappointed, hehe. I was actually considering that Gigabyte board (feature-rich by the looks of things) but I've always been a fan of Asus' stability. I guess that may not be the case this time... 🙁

Anyone else having similar issues with this board? 😕
 
That stinks, I was looking at either the p4b533-e or this motherboard...their around the same price, I guess I'm going to the P4B533-E.
 
If you've got your heart set on Asus, go for the P4T533-C. But I really like the GA-8IHXP. It's a quality board (6-layer vs Asus' 4-layer) and has much nicer features including an ATA-133 RAID controller (which you can use for additional IDE channels if you don't want a RAID configuration)! 😛
 
I've been running this board for about a week. I have the 1.03 revison, 1.002 BIOS, and 256mb of Samsung (week 28) all from Newegg. Currently my 1.6a's running stock, although I've tested it @ 133 bus speed after hearing about the problems. I'm using an Athlon/Intel approved 300W PS with EZPlug.


I set up a Win 98/XP dual boot. So far, the only issue I had was with installing the drivers for my Voodoo2 SLI (Soon to be replaced - caryovers from my celeron 400...). Win98 locked on every startup but XP was fine. I installed over 98 w/ 98SE and everything is fine now. I guess it was just Win98.


No crashes so far running more stressful programs (FS2002, divx, etc). I tested with Sandra, Super Pi, and Prime95(only about 30 mins @ 100 and then 133). Mabye I'll put it through a memory testing program but what's the point?


Most of the negativity eminates from that giant thread at ardocp. While some people appear to have valid complaints, most of the posts are ridiculous:

"but at 163, it failed the P95 overnight test." Duh...

"Got home tonight and my Prime95 was still running fine at 150MHz FSB with mem multiplier set to auto. I increased the FSB by 1 MHz until I got to 157 and then the machine would not even post. " Ok...

The there's some guy who keeps posting pictures of an Illegal sumout in Prime95. I'm not a Prime95 afficianado, but it does say right in the Readme that type of error is likely caused by a background process.

My favorite are the people who complain about the 1.004 BIOS. Well, it is a beta BIOS...

Then there's this guy: "first ran memtest at 133 MHz x 4 mem 1.625 V. It ran for 32 minutes without a single error. I then applied a 1/3 ohm resistor load to the Vcore line on the motherboard. This resulted in an additional 7 watt load on the power supply. Memtest then came up with 874 errors in the next 4 minutes that it took to complete the next pass."

I'm suprised that kind of transient didn't do worse to the board (I think he did this while it was running)! I wonder what would happen to other boards if he did that. This guy had some valid issues (he added small capacitors to filter a voltage and that might help people who OC at higher vcore), but I don't see how this helps the real problems with the board.


Other behavior worries me:

"134, 135,138,142,148,156, 162, 164, 166 passed my mini-test. All other fsb settings failed in some way. 145,150,158 are notable mentions as they failed within one minute" (voltage problem doubtful - I have an idea of what might be the true cause of failures at only certain bus frequencies but there's no simple way of fixing it, and it's pure speculation)

A few people complain about no stability at stock speeds. (possible voltage problem)

"Asus reproduced the issue" (had to do with failing at certain bus speeds but not others)


I'd wait for some official word/fix from ASUS, but my guess is the majority of people running the P4t533 (think of the small percentage who actually post problems to forums) are doing ok at reasonable frequencies. Whatever the problem, it doesn't seem to affect me for now (knock on wood).
 
Looks like we both got dark highlighting from typing the bracket in front of "Hard." Test: ardforums.
 
Well, I sat down this evening and read through the entire 59 pages over at Hard|OCP, and... 🙁 Wow. I mean the last thing I wanted to have to do was solder capacitors onto my mobo to even get it stable. It seems that the lower speed CPUs (like your 1.6) are working alright but I was looking at a 2.4 or 2.53....

Looks like Gigabyte may be my option... or maybe even the P4T533-C? Damn, now I really don't know. And after this fiasco it's like I can't trust the reviews on any sites.. ~_~
 
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