3-Way 845PE Shootout: Albatron, ASUS, Gigabyte

[First]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1723&p=1

Enjoy.

 

[serialb]

Thanks for the review!

BTW, is 6 Eastern the official time for article publishing? Cos I am just wondering why AnandTech would publish them in the wee hours for West Coasters.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: serialb
Thanks for the review!

BTW, is 6 Eastern the official time for article publishing? Cos I am just wondering why AnandTech would publish them in the wee hours for West Coasters.

No, Anand and I were just up late putting the finishing touches on the review.

 

[Oakenfold]

Excellent! I haven't even finished half of it!
TY for your hard work Evan!

 

[oldfart]

Great review Evan! Thanks for giving the overclocking crowd the kind of review we like to see.

I see the Gigabyte PE board has the same mem ratio limitation as their 845E board does. I also noticed that ASUS and Albatron offer the 3:4 ratio as well as the 4:5. ASUS calls it DDR355, Albatron calls it 2.66. Does this ratio actually work @ 133 and up FSB? The ASUS DDR355 option (133 x 3:4 ratio) implies that it does.

Will you be reviewing any others besides the Intel board? I'd like to see how EPOX and Abit look.

 

[Siegfried]

Very nice article Evan, just one request if possible though. You've shown that the Albatron board ran very well with memory even above 400MHz, but with no benchmarks. Would it be possible to give some numbers on its performance with DDR memory at 400MHz? It would be nice to compare it to the SiS board at that speed.

Thanks a lot!

 

[lookin4dlz]

Our hero risks caffeine overdose to get this out Thanks, I'll have to slack off at work for this read

 

[Rackemup]

Excellent article, thanks.

Looks like the ASUS P4PE board will be the one going into my new box. I'm a little disappointed they only included one Serial ATA connector though.

*EDIT* Just checked out a review on HotHardware.com ... they're showing 2 SATA connectors onboard so it looks like there's no problem.

I'm still disappointed that the SATA connectors are basically running through the PCI bus since it limits the speeds, but I guess I dont have any choice at the moment.

 

[Tates]

Thanks Evan

 

[buckchoi]

Good comprehensive review

Now the decision on whether to wait for dual DDR or just buy now!! ahhhhh damn

 

[WarSong]

Nice review! i'm sold on the p4pe. $198 at newegg... ouch!

 

[littlezipp]

Very nice review, you put a lot of time into that!
When will we be seeing some good SATA drives?
I still think I am going to have to hold off for Granite Bay though.

 

[Tates]

When will we be seeing some good SATA drives?
I still think I am going to have to hold off for Granite Bay though.

Around christmas time, first of the year.

 

[Yourself]

Originally posted by: Tates

When will we be seeing some good SATA drives?
I still think I am going to have to hold off for Granite Bay though.

Around christmas time, first of the year.

That why I'm going for the less expensive Albatron PE board now and a full feature Granite mobo when they hit in late '02, early '03.


Self

 

[lookin4dlz]

In re-reading the review, neither the Albatron nor the Asus allow the DDR memory to run async with the CPU. That takes them both off of my list. There's nothing definitive regarding the Gigabyte in this regard, but it appears to have other overclocking issues...

 

[First]

Originally posted by: oldfart
Great review Evan! Thanks for giving the overclocking crowd the kind of review we like to see.

I see the Gigabyte PE board has the same mem ratio limitation as their 845E board does. I also noticed that ASUS and Albatron offer the 3:4 ratio as well as the 4:5. ASUS calls it DDR355, Albatron calls it 2.66. Does this ratio actually work @ 133 and up FSB? The ASUS DDR355 option (133 x 3:4 ratio) implies that it does.

Will you be reviewing any others besides the Intel board? I'd like to see how EPOX and Abit look.

oldfart, my EpoX contact just emailed me today saying I should have their 845PE board by tomorrow. So yes, we will be reviewing their board, and ABIT's most likely too. I'll probably do another 3 or 4 individual 845PE reviews before moving on to Intel/SiS/VIA dual DDR solutions for later this year.

Oh yeah, and the ratios definitely work. What they call their "2.66X" ratio works perfectly fine above 133MHz FSB, way above that level.

 

[Tates]

Oh yeah, and the ratios definitely work. What they call their "2.66X" ratio works perfectly fine above 133MHz FSB, way above that level.

 

[Rick67]

So if the S-ATA isn't native, how does it compare to native S-ATA? Is it any slower? Also, does the SiS648 P4S8X have native S-ATA support?

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Rick67
So if the S-ATA isn't native, how does it compare to native S-ATA? Is it any slower? Also, does the SiS648 P4S8X have native S-ATA support?

No, there's not a single South Bridge that natively supports Serial ATA yet. We'll probably see them by year-end or early next year, which is when Serial ATA drives will start trickling into the channel.

 

[Rick67]

Originally posted by: Evan Lieb

Originally posted by: Rick67
So if the S-ATA isn't native, how does it compare to native S-ATA? Is it any slower? Also, does the SiS648 P4S8X have native S-ATA support?

No, there's not a single South Bridge that natively supports Serial ATA yet. We'll probably see them by year-end or early next year, which is when Serial ATA drives will start trickling into the channel.

Yeah but will there be a performance difference?

Thanks for the reply!

 

[jpetermann]

From other reviews i have read on these 845 pe boards, the Asus only has 2 phase power while some of the other boards (Gigabyte for example) have 3 phase power. What does that mean to the overclocker? I am not sure that I really understand the power thing very well. I am looking to go back to a P4 system, and I want to get one of these boards, so I would appreciate an answer to this power question.

Thanks,
PJ

 

[VincentVega]

PLZ Ewan, can you tell us where to get this fabulous F3b Bios for the Gigabyte board? The Bios with these wonderful "new" options, the F2 bios hides me?
F2 (public bios) has no advanced Chipset features!

Just send a copy to vincentbigmacvega@gmx.net

Or kick Gigabyte to release a new F3 to the dear customer...

The old (8IRXP) reboot error didn`t occur to you, with this F3b Bios?. My board still does with F2....

PLZ

 

[First]

VincentVega, hold the CTRL key and then press F1. This will bring up the Advanced Chipset Features section. Actually, I talked about this in my last Gigabyte review, I think I'll add it into the PE shootout as well.

 

[VincentVega]

argh

But still my question to the reboot thing...

Thx for help!!

 

[Rackemup]

Originally posted by: Rick67

Originally posted by: Evan Lieb

Originally posted by: Rick67
So if the S-ATA isn't native, how does it compare to native S-ATA? Is it any slower? Also, does the SiS648 P4S8X have native S-ATA support?

No, there's not a single South Bridge that natively supports Serial ATA yet. We'll probably see them by year-end or early next year, which is when Serial ATA drives will start trickling into the channel.

Yeah but will there be a performance difference?

Thanks for the reply!

There are a few different things in a SATA setup that will impact performance...

Is the motherboard using Native SATA support? (if yes you'll have dedicated 150Mb/s bandwidth, if no it's running through the PCI bus so you're limited to 133Mb/s plus you may have contention with other bus-hogging devices on the PCI bus). There are no boards with native SATA connectors yet since there are no SATA drives on the market yet... and no drives because there are no motherboards... it's a nice little circle.

Is the hard drive using Native SATA support? (not yet since there are no SATA drives on the market.. probably christmas for both Seagate and Maxtor at least).... if/when you buy a SATA drive check to see if it's a native connection or merely an SATA connector on an ATA drive. If it's native it'll be 150Mb/s ... if not it's the old ATA connector limited to 100/133Mb/s.

BUT, keep in mind that the hard drive itself is not able to deliver 150Mb/s so your limiting factor is probably the hard drive seek time... didnt IBM just announce a performance breakthrough that uses cache to speed up data delivery? that would probably help SATA evn more since there is extra bandwidth available to it now.

in any case... more bandwidth is always a good thing, the drives will use it eventually.