875p board - impossible to find a good one

[MeloManiac]

I am going nuts here. Everytime I think I found THE 875p motherboard, I read something discouraging.

MSI's board have stability issues, is very RAM picky and what-not.
ASUS seems stable but didnt include ICH5 raid or CSA LAN capabilities (I hope I am getting these abbrevations right).
ABIT has a pretty bad board layout and a (relatively) noisy Northbridge fan.
Intel looks nice but didnt include Firewire which I need.

I was leaning very much towards the 875p but with all the issues I read about I have ruled it out for the time being. Also because I have two 512MB Apacer CL2.5 PC2700 modules and two Samsung 512MB modules lying around that I want to use in this board. I am not gonna play RAM lottery until I find something that works.

What to do.... oh well... What about Gigabyte. Or didnt they make a version with all the cool features that doesnt include SCSI?

I am looking for a replacement to my MSI MAX2-LRU board because of a few things: 1) The USB2 doesnt work. I tried everything. Reinstalling WinXP, drivers - everything. It just crashes with BSOD if I enable the USB2 in Windows and try to access a harddrive or a CD burner that I have. So I need a solution where USB2 works, so I am kind of disregarding SIS here... Also I have a Northwood (version B) running 533Mhz FSB even though it's a 400 chip. I guess that'll work with 875p, but I would like to be able to upgrade to 800mhz FSB. So that rules out 865 chipset. I also want onboard LAN and Firewire.

I hope someone will make a perfectly working, well-layouted, full-featured 875p board soon!! Maybe if MSI fixes their problems in the next board revision/BIOS update... oh well....

 

[snidy1]

ABIT has a pretty bad board layout and a (relatively) noisy Northbridge fan.

Not true. Great layout and fan isn't any noisier than case fans, actually quieter.

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

Gigabyte GA8KNXP and the Chaintech 9CJS Zenith are my favorites.

 

[sillen]

im gonna order a board tomorrow or after som reading up this weekend.. i was determined to get the msi neo for quite a while but with all the troubles and stuff going on there it now stands between gigabyte or asus.. help me decide!!!

 

[sumrtym]

Gigabyte so far has been the only one WITHOUT the finicky RAM problems. Go with the 8KNXP (non-ultra).

 

[MeloManiac]

Hmmm I just took the plunge and ordered the ABIT one. I hope I didnt make a mistake there.

 

[oldfart]

ABIT has a pretty bad board layout and a (relatively) noisy Northbridge fan.

IC7 has an excellent layout. The NB fan is quiet. This is coming from a quiet PC guy. I use Speedfan to lower the rpm a little which makes it silent.

 

[Krk3561]

Originally posted by: oldfart

ABIT has a pretty bad board layout and a (relatively) noisy Northbridge fan.

IC7 has an excellent layout. The NB fan is quiet.

Ditto. Unlike Evan Lieb, I thought the IDE connectors are in a good position (I'm using the round cables that come with the board, they're really nice ones too). The ATX and ATX12V arent in bad positions either.

 

[Krk3561]

Originally posted by: sumrtym
Gigabyte so far has been the only one WITHOUT the finicky RAM problems. Go with the 8KNXP (non-ultra).

Abit IC7 doesnt have finicky RAM problems. The timings issues was fixed with a bios release and Corsair LL works in it without problems like the other Canterwood boards.

 

[snidy1]

Originally posted by: MeloManiac
Hmmm I just took the plunge and ordered the ABIT one. I hope I didnt make a mistake there.

You won't regret it.

 

[Wurrmm]

I took the plunge as well. I just hope a bunch of new revisions don't come out soon.

 

[tommie]

before buying the 875 canterwood, you might want to look at some of the reviews/benchmark tests that have the asus p4p800 delux(springdale)(with ich5R southbridge & firewire) faster than the 875 version, and alot cheaper.. i know im rethinking this.

tommie j

 

[Blackbox]

Originally posted by: sumrtym
Gigabyte so far has been the only one WITHOUT the finicky RAM problems. Go with the 8KNXP (non-ultra).

Is the non-ultra more stable?

There seems to be a lot of trouble getting boards to run at low latencies according to the 8KNXP forum.

I like the sound of the 8KNXP but if it won't run at 2-2-5-2 then I'm not interested.

 

[oldfart]

With the 13 BIOS, the IC7 memory performance has improved dramatically.

The NEW Abit BIOS 1.3 for the IC7 Canterwood series appears to move to more aggressive memory timings. This means that memory timings that worked on 1.1 may no longer work on 1.3, and you may need to relax the timings a bit. However, your reward for this is DRAMATICALLY improved performance - particularly UNBUFFERED memory performance which correlates well with the increase in other performance benchmarks like 3DMark.

Stock Unbuffered Memory increases were in the range of 16 to 17% - which will certainly improve Abit's position in 865/875 review roundups We also saw increases in the 5% to 8% range in memory performance at 5:4 ratio and the same excellent performance at 1:1 we had seen with 1:1. It looks like Abit is following what Asus has done with their new P4P800 865 board which currently impresses everyone. With the new 1.3 BIOS, Abit's stock 800FSB/DDR400 scores now outpace those we are seeing with the Asus P4P800.

 

[Tom]

Not surprising given Abit's history as an enthusiast's manufacturer.

 

[JKing76]

My roommate has the IC7, and I think the NB fan is loud. I agree with the original poster, all of the 875 boards have at least one critical flaw. I'm especially ticked that Intel put firewire on their 865 board and not the 875. Plus, the don't appear to have a new BIOS to resolve the low-latency issue that's been plaguing all the Springdale / Canterwood boards.

 

[Wurrmm]

Originally posted by: JKing76
My roommate has the IC7, and I think the NB fan is loud. I agree with the original poster, all of the 875 boards have at least one critical flaw. I'm especially ticked that Intel put firewire on their 865 board and not the 875. Plus, the don't appear to have a new BIOS to resolve the low-latency issue that's been plaguing all the Springdale / Canterwood boards.

People are getting timings or 2-2-2-6 with the newer bios. As soon as my stuff gets here....I am pretty sure I will hit those timings as well.

 

[ronss]

had read where asus board was short on something , can,t remember but it made not get it.
abit ic7 doen,t have gig lan, got to have that , suppose to be some much faster than 10 t base
gig is too expensive

still leaning on the msi 875 neo2-fis2r, but i may instead upgrade the asus a7n8x deluxe with faster processor

 

[cmdrdredd]

Gigabit ethernet is MORE than you can even use. You'll never max it out...it's faster than a T3 and you cannot max a T3 with only a couple systems. It takes a whole college campus

 

[Krk3561]

Originally posted by: ronss
had read where asus board was short on something , can,t remember but it made not get it.
abit ic7 doen,t have gig lan, got to have that , suppose to be some much faster than 10 t base
gig is too expensive

still leaning on the msi 875 neo2-fis2r, but i may instead upgrade the asus a7n8x deluxe with faster processor

So you got to have gigabit ethernet, but its too expensive. Dont get an MSI, quite a few people are having problems with them.

MSI caught overclocking

You get what you pay for.

BTW, the IC7-G is $203 shipped at GameVe.com and Buyxg.com

Saw this up on HardOCP's website:

Others are heralding it as the board to buy. We have found it to be the only i875 board we suggest that you do not purchase.

 

[JKing76]

Originally posted by: Wurrmm

Originally posted by: JKing76
My roommate has the IC7, and I think the NB fan is loud. I agree with the original poster, all of the 875 boards have at least one critical flaw. I'm especially ticked that Intel put firewire on their 865 board and not the 875. Plus, the don't appear to have a new BIOS to resolve the low-latency issue that's been plaguing all the Springdale / Canterwood boards.

People are getting timings or 2-2-2-6 with the newer bios. As soon as my stuff gets here....I am pretty sure I will hit those timings as well.

On the Intel 875 board?

 

[Wurrmm]

Originally posted by: JKing76

Originally posted by: Wurrmm

Originally posted by: JKing76
My roommate has the IC7, and I think the NB fan is loud. I agree with the original poster, all of the 875 boards have at least one critical flaw. I'm especially ticked that Intel put firewire on their 865 board and not the 875. Plus, the don't appear to have a new BIOS to resolve the low-latency issue that's been plaguing all the Springdale / Canterwood boards.

People are getting timings or 2-2-2-6 with the newer bios. As soon as my stuff gets here....I am pretty sure I will hit those timings as well.

On the Intel 875 board?

On the Abit IC7-G and the IC7.