ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe: New ASUS Mainboard on Old i865PE Chipset

by Ilya Gavrichenkov
06/06/2004 | 03:29 PM

We’re counting days to meet the next generation of Intel’s chipsets. According to the current information, it is expected at the end of June. Still, in spite of the imminent arrival of the Grantsdale and Alderwood (the codenames of the two new chipsets), mainboard manufacturers don’t forget about the i865/i875 families.

Some of them not only continue producing mainboards on these chipsets, but also release new modifications of their time-tested i865/i875-based products. You don’t have to go far for examples: the well-known ASUS has recently introduced its new mainboard based on the i865PE.

The newcomer, the P4P800-E Deluxe, is another member of the extended family of P4P800 products. This family has been enjoying high popularity in the user community, and that’s why we decided to take a look at the P4P800-E Deluxe. Moreover, this mainboard will surely remain a demanded product for the time being, since the transition to the Alderwood/Grantsdale platform requires considerable financial expenditures.

Particularly, mainboards on these chipsets will require a new processor of the LGA775 form-factor and a new graphics card with the PCI Express interface (both are yet unavailable in the market, by the way). Moreover, you’ll probably want to use DDR2 SDRAM with such mainboards and add a SerialATA hard disk drive into the bundle. Overall, it’s yet unreasonable to think that the lifecycle of i865/i875-based mainboards is approaching its end.

The P4P800 mainboard family owes its popularity to ASUS’s being among the first manufacturers who optimized the BIOS of its products so well as to provide the same performance as much more expensive i875P-based mainboards with their special Performance Acceleration Technology have. Besides, the P4P800 family is distinguishable for good overclockability, which shows in their high stability at high FSB clock rates. So these were all the reasons for us to take interest in the P4P800-E Deluxe and dedicate it an article. Of course, we will focus mostly on the differences from the “ordinary” P4P800 Deluxe – is the new mainboard in any way better?

Specification

As you understand, the formal characteristics of the P4P800-E Deluxe don’t differ greatly from the ones of the older basic model, the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe. In fact, only the number of IDE channels has changed – the new additional ATA RAID controller on the P4P800-E Deluxe supports two SerialATA-150 and one ATA/133 channel, while the analogous controller on the older version of the mainboard only supported a couple of ATA/133 channels. Another curious feature of the P4P800-E Deluxe is the advanced eight-channel AC’97 audio codec.

I’d like to note that the P4P800-E Deluxe has no cheap modifications, stripped of onboard controllers, yet. Well, the ordinary P4P800 may well play the role of this cheap version. And if you go shopping for an advanced mainboard, rich in additional capabilities, be ready to shell out about $130-140 for a P4P800-E Deluxe mainboard from ASUS.

The ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe came to our test laboratory in its Wireless Edition. This version of the product is shipped in a big colorful box that also contains:

• the ASUS WiFi-b kit (a user manual, a bipolar antenna and a wireless network card plugging into the special-purpose WiFi slot and supporting the IEEE 802.11b protocol);
• a CD with standard drivers and utilities;
• a WinCinema CD with additional software including WinDVD Platinum 5, WinRip 2 and WinDVD Creator Platinum 2;
• two SerialATA cables and one power cable for two SATA HDDs;
• two 80-pin Parallel ATA cables and a FDD cable;
• a bracket for the back panel of the system case with two USB 2.0 ports and one Game port;
• an I/O shield;
• a user manual.

The accessories are rich, really. The ASUS WiFi-b kit deserves our recommendation – it allows for an easy deployment of a wireless network. Again, you should note that only the Wireless Edition of the P4P800-E Deluxe mainboard comes with this nice addition. Mainboards without the wireless controller cost about $10 less.

Closer Look

The reviewed mainboard is based around the well-known i865PE chipset, so we won’t dwell upon its chipset-determined properties (you can refer to our ASUS P4P800 Review for this information). In brief, the P4P800-E Deluxe mainboard supports all the range of Socket 478 processors, including chips on the Northwood core as well as on the older 0.18µm Willamette core and on the new 90nm Prescott core. The compatibility with the Prescott is explicitly declared as such processors have relatively high energy consumption. The board carries four DDR DIMM slots, two for each memory channel. To enable the most efficient dual-channel memory access, you plug modules in pairs, into like-colored slots. Overall, it’s all as usual here.

The mainboard has an AGP 8x slot for 1.5v graphics cards. The manufacturer didn’t realize any protection system against old cards with 3.3v voltage, since such cards are practically extinct today.

Like on the previous version of the mainboard, the PCB contains five PCI slots and an exclusive WiFi slot, in its left part. By the way, when you install the original WLAN card from ASUS into this slot, the last PCI becomes unavailable. Now let’s examine the card, too.

The card supports the wireless networking protocol IEEE 802.11b, describing data-transfer rates up to 11Mb/s. Using the software that accompanies the card, you can use it in the Ad Hoc as well as in the Infrastructure mode, and the card can perform the functions of a programmable access point, providing connections to 31 clients. Thus, the owner of the WiFi-b kit can easily deploy wireless networks and connect to existing ones.

The software the manufacturer supplies with its WLAN adapter deserves our praises for simplicity and easiness of use. Even an inexperienced user will have no problems with setting networks up and connecting to them.

The WiFi-b kit is powerful enough to maintain connection to clients at a distance of up to 30 meters (indoors). More info on the WiFi-b can be found here.

Thanks to the ICH5R South Bridge chip employed in the P4P800-E Deluxe, the mainboard supports eight USB 2.0 ports, two Parallel ATA/100 channels (Intel’s chipsets don’t support the ATA/133 mode) and two SerialATA ports with an option of creating a RAID array of level 0 or 1. Four USB 2.0 ports are found at the mainboard’s connections panel and the remaining four are available as onboard pin-connectors. The bracket for the back panel of the system case that you get with the mainboard helps to output two onboard ports, whereas the other pair is supposed to be attached to connectors on the system case (if you’ve got such a case).

The rest of the mainboard’s capabilities, quite wide-reaching, are realized with additional controllers, which make the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe into a top-end product.

First of all, I’d like to say a few words about the extra ATA RAID controller Promise PDC20378 that supports RAID 0, 1 and 0+1. Thanks to this controller, the mainboard supports an additional pair of SATA-150 channels and one ATA/133 port. Overall, you can attach as many as 10 drives to the P4P800-E Deluxe: four with the SerialATA interface and six with the Parallel ATA interface. You may remember that the older version, the P4P800 Deluxe, used another RAID controller, manufactured by VIA Technologies. The new chip increases the number of SATA connections in the first hand, since the VIA chip didn’t support this interface at all. Overall, the SerialATA interface is gaining its ground and, for example, the upcoming Alderwood and Grantsdale will only support one Parallel ATA channel.

Another chip from VIA Technologies, the VT6307 controller, remained onboard, being responsible for two IEEE1394 ports. One port is nestled at the back panel of the mainboard and the other is onboard – you can output it through a bracket included with the P4P800-E Deluxe.

The network controller is new. Instead of the Marvell 3C940 chip the P4P800 uses, the P4P800-E Deluxe features the Marvell 88E8001 controller.

Its formal characteristics are the same as the previous chip had. That is, it connects to the PCI bus, provides Gigabit Ethernet and supports the exclusive Virtual Cable Tester technology. In practice, however, this chip is much better, especially as concerns CPU load. Thus, the networking capabilities of the P4P800-E Deluxe nearly match those of the much more expensive i875P-based P4C800-E Deluxe which uses Intel’s controller attached to the CSA bus. To prove the point, I’d like to present you the test results of the network controller of the P4P800-E Deluxe in PassMark Advanced Network Test. I compare the numbers with the results of the P4C800-E Deluxe (I used a server with a Gigabit Ethernet Intel 82545 card connected across the 64-bit PCI interface).

As you see, the use of the CSA bus allows the Intel 82547 controller to achieve a higher average data-transfer rate, but both controllers put a similar small load on the central processor. The user of the P4P800-E Deluxe also receives a bonus in the way of Virtual Cable Tester technology which can detect cable flaws with a good degree of accuracy.

The P4P800-E Deluxe boasts the new AC’97 codec from Realtek, the ALC850 chip. This is one of the first solutions to support output to eight speakers.

It’s no wonder then that we have six audio jacks at the mainboard’s back panel as well as optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs.

Fortunately, the novelty of the codec means it supports version 2.3 of the AC’97 specification, i.e. supports Jack Sensing technology for easy connection of speaker systems. As for the quality of the analog part, we used the RightMark Audio Analyzer to check it out:

Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB:	+0.18, -1.12	Average
Noise level, dB (A):	-66.9	Average
Dynamic range, dB (A):	67.0	Average
THD, %:	0.021	Good
IMD, %:	0.125	Average
Stereo crosstalk, dB:	-65.5	Good

General performance: Average

So, the analog part of the audio section is average, as usual for ASUS mainboards. Probably, the codec itself is also to blame, and the situation may improve with new drivers. Then, we ran the Sound Test of the Futuremark 3DMark03 suite to check out the load the codec puts on the CPU. This benchmark allows comparing the speeds of the Game 1 –Wings of Fury test without sound and with 24 sounds.

As you see, the new Realtek ALC850 codec puts a smaller load on the processor than the ADI AD1985 chip employed in more expensive mainboards from ASUS.

Summing up this section of the review, I’d say that the functionality of the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe can satisfy every user. Now let’s see how well the engineers put all the chips and stuff on the PCB.

PCB Design

In spite of the numerous additional controllers, the ASUS engineering team found a way to place them all neatly on a PCB of the standard ATX form-factor (245mm depth). Overall, the wiring layout of the P4P800-E Deluxe is similar to that of previous ASUS P4P800 Deluxe boards, although those extra controllers still made some changes necessary.

The CPU voltage regulator module is three-channel, like in the previous version of the product.

Our stress-testing of the board using a Prescott of the most power-hungry C0 stepping, overclocked to 3.6GHz, revealed no stability-related problems, so the CPU power module is very satisfactory.

The main ATX power connector is situated before the DIMM slots and causes no problems, but the 12v additional connector has been moved to behind the chipset’s North Bridge and the attached 12v power cable hangs over the CPU cooler, hindering airflows.

The placement of other connectors can hardly be called optimal. The Parallel ATA slots of the South Bridge and the FDD slot are placed in front of the DIMM plugs, while many other connectors are located in front of the PCI slots. As a result, you may run into troubles installing long expansion cards. The pin-connectors for additional USB ports are right before the third PCI slot – that’s no good at all. The SATA and PATA connectors of the Promise PDC20378 controller are scattered before the PCI slots in the same careless manner. It seems like the engineers were trying to save their time and just redesigned a portion of the PCB for the new Promise PDC20378, but left the rest of the PCB alone, without bothering about an optimal placement of the connectors.

The P4P800-E Deluxe inherited the most dangerous design problem from its predecessor. Although it has only five PCI slots, the AGP slot is placed very close to DIMM slots, and the installed graphics card will hinder installation or extraction of memory modules. Moreover, you should be careful when installing a graphics card into the AGP slot because you can accidentally brush against the memory slot with the card.

The number of PCI slots has been reduced to five, and ASUS used this fact to clear space to the left of the AGP slot. This is right since you very seldom use the PCI slot closest to the AGP. It is either left free for air to get to the graphics card or cannot be used at all because of the graphics card’s cooling system.

Otherwise, the PCB design has no evident drawbacks. The Clear CMOS jumper can be accessed easily; the North Bridge has a passive heatsink on.

The mainboard’s connections panel peeps out of the system case with two traditional PS/2 ports, one serial and one parallel port, with six audio jacks, coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs, four High-Speed USB ports, one IEEE1394 output and a network RJ-45 connector. The second COM port is realized as an onboard pin-connector.

BIOS and Overclocking

The BIOS of P4P800 series mainboards presented a mystery in itself. The engineers from ASUS developed it practically from scratch, from the basic AMI microcode, to be exact. As a result, the mainboards boasted specific optimizations that would work or not depending on the FSB frequency, memory timings and clock rate, and Setup settings. The situation remained practically the same with the release of the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe. Its BIOS is like a pea from the same pod to the BIOS of the previous version.

Well, after a scrupulous examination we found some differences: the P4P800-E Deluxe allows configuring the memory subsystem more flexibly. The timings remained the same, though. The appropriate page of the BIOS Setup gives you tools to change DRAM CAS# Latency (2, 2.5 and 3 are the possible values), DRAM Precharge Delay (5, 6, 7 and 8), DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay, DRAM RAS# Precharge (2, 3, 4), and DRAM Idle Timer and DRAM Refresh Rate.

Besides, there is the option of enabling the Memory Acceleration Mode which seems to be an analog of Intel’s PAT. Then, the BIOS Setup still contains the Performance Mode option that enables some optimizations in certain conditions, which positively affect the performance. However, like with the P4P800, you can only achieve any benefits from setting the Performance Mode option to “Turbo” if 1) the FSB frequency is 200MHz, 2) you use dual-channel memory, and 3) you use memory modules capable of working with 2-2-2-5 timings.

As for the changes I mentioned above, the list of supported memory frequencies for 800MHz-FSB processors has been enlarged. Mainboards of the P4P800 and P4C800 series allowed clocking the memory as DDR266/DDR320/DDR400, while the P4P800-E Deluxe supports DDR266/DDR320/DDR400/DDR500/DDR533 SDRAM!

These additional modes are clearly implemented for overclockers because there are already memory modules available that can work at such frequencies. On the other hand, you should be aware that the bandwidth of the 800MHz processor bus is 6.4GB/s and equals that of the dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM. So the benefits of using DDR500/533 (which has worse timings than DDR400) with 800MHz-FSB processors may look obscure.

To clear out the situation somewhat, we carried out a testing session with an ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe and DDR500/DDR533 SDRAM. The testbed included an ATI RADEON 9800XT graphics card and an Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz CPU (Northwood core). The Corsair CMX512-3200LLPro memory we use in the current testbed doesn’t allow enabling the Performance Mode at 200MHz FSB, so we also publish results for 201MHz FSB at which frequency the mainboard is less finical about the memory as in the Turbo mode. The Memory Acceleration Mode was enabled in all cases. OCZ PC4200 Enhanced Latency was used as DDR500 and DDR533. We disabled the Performance Mode altogether when testing DDR500 and DDR533, because otherwise their performance degenerated.

We’ve got funny results. It turns out that the use of dual-channel DDR533 or DDR500 at 200MHz FSB does make sense. That is, you can achieve better results with DDR400 SDRAM, but only if you also enable the Performance Mode, but you need support of 2-2-2-5 timings for that! Not all memory modules are operational at such timings. Note also the following fact: there’s no sense in increasing the FSB clock rate to 201MHz to set the Performance Mode option to Turbo (it is possible for any memory modules and timings if the FSB frequency is other than 200MHz). At 200MHz FSB, the mainboard automatically enables certain additional optimizations, missing at other FSB clock rates. Thus, setting a FSB clock rate different than 200MHz you will see the performance degenerating, in spite of your setting the Performance Mode to Turbo!

Thus, the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe mainboard seems to have three kinds of optimizations for the memory subsystem:

• Memory Acceleration Mode, enabled in the BIOS Setup, works with nearly every memory module and provides a slightly higher performance;
• Performance Mode gives a positive effect only with 200MHz FSB and requires that the memory modules were stable with 2-2-2-5 timings at such FSB clock rate. By setting the Performance Mode option to “Turbo”, you reach noticeable performance gains;
• Optimizations that the mainboard enables automatically at 200MHz FSB, without putting any restrictions on the memory modules. These optimizations provide the highest performance growth.

In short, from the point of view of the maximum performance, you should use the mainboard with 200MHz FSB, even though you don’t set the Performance Mode to Turbo.

Now that we’ve dealt with memory, let’s move on to overclocking options. ASUS traditionally pays much attention to the overclockability of its products. The P4P800-E Deluxe is no exception to the rule. The Setup offers an abundance of overclocking-related settings, which are all gathered in the JumperFree Configuration page:

When releasing its i875/i865-based mainboard series, ASUS announced the new AI Overclocking technology for speeding the system up by 30% (this depends on the CPU and memory used) without any effort. This technology shows itself as options like Overclock 5%...Overclock 30% in the BIOS Setup, which simply increase the FSB clock rate by the appropriate percent. It is of little interest to us, so we recommend setting the AI Overclock Tuner option to Manual and get the full access to all overclocking settings. They include:

• Adjustment of the FSB frequency. The formal range stretches from 100 to 400MHz;
• The AGP/PCI busses can be clocked independently: Auto, 66.66/33.33MHz, 72.73/36.36MHz, and 80.00/40.00MHz. Thus, you can just fix the AGP/PCI frequencies and don’t worry about them at FSB-overclocking;
• Control over the CPU voltage. The Vcore can be raised from the nominal CPU voltage to 1.9v stepping 0.025v. That’s flexible enough;
• Control over the memory voltage. The Vmem can be set to Auto, 2.55v, 2.65v, 2.75v and 2.85v;
• Control over the AGP voltage. The Vagp is adjustable from 1.5v to 1.8v stepping 0.1v;
• You can change the ratio of the memory clock rate to the FSB one. At over 200MHz FSB, the following FSB:Mem ratios are available: 3:2, 5:4, 1:1, 4:5, and 3:4.

For comfortable overclocking, ASUS claims support of the CPU Parameters Recall technology: if the system doesn’t start up after your changes in the BIOS Setup, you can roll the settings back to their defaults by pressing and holding the INS key when powering the mainboard on. This way you can get into the BIOS Setup at the “safe” settings and correct the wrong parameters.

Overall, the P4P800-E Deluxe offers good opportunities for non-extreme overclocking. In fact, its overclocking options haven’t changed since the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe. Well, this also needs proving in practice.

For our overclocking test we took an Intel Pentium 3.4GHz on the Northwood core with an unlocked multiplier. We reduced the multiplier to 12x and boosted the FSB frequency. The memory divisor was set as 3:2 to avoid any interference on the part of the memory. This way we managed to overclock the board to 300MHz FSB (or 1200MHz in the terms of the Quad Pumped Bus). Further overclocking was limited by the CPU, not the mainboard. The P4P800-E Deluxe was perfectly stable at so high a FSB frequency – an excellent result!

The Hardware Monitor page of the BIOS of the P4P800-E Deluxe contains a lot of useful info about the system:

Particularly, you can see the temperatures of the CPU and system, the rotational speeds of the fans, the CPU voltage and voltages on all the power rails of the PSU. Moreover, it’s here that you enable the Q-Fan technology, which reduces the speed of the CPU fan to muffle its noise. If the CPU starts getting too hot, the cooler automatically spins up to the maximum speed, saving the system from overheat.

ASUS also ships two curious utilities with its mainboard:

• ASUS Probe is a hardware monitoring tool, working in Windows;

• ASUS AI Booster serves for overclocking from inside Windows.

Winding up this section of the review, I’d like to mention a couple more of exclusive technologies from ASUS, implemented in the P4P800-E Deluxe. Firstly, the mainboard supports CrashFree BIOS 2 technology to restore the contents of the flash memory from the CD you receive with the mainboard. This operation is only possible, however, if the Boot Block hasn’t been damaged. Secondly, the mainboard supports a simplest voice diagnostics system called POST Reporter that informs you about boot-up problems. The messages are stored in flash memory, so you can replace them with your own ones.

Performance

In this section of the review we will compare the performance of the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe with that of a more expensive i875P-based mainboard. We decided to take a mainboard from the same manufacturer for this competition.

So, we used the following hardware for our tests:

• Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz CPU;
• Mainboards: ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe (i865PE) and ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe (i875);
• 2x512MB CMX512-3200LLPro DDR400 SDRAM from Corsair, 2-3-2-6 timings (the dual-channel memory access was enabled);
• ASUS RADEON 9800 XT graphics card;
• Western Digital WD400JB HDD.

We ran our tests under MS Windows XP SP1; the BIOSes of the mainboards were set up for the maximum performance.

I met the first surprise at the phase of configuring the systems. The ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe refused to work with Performance Mode = Turbo, asking for faster and more stable modules with 2-2-2-5 timings. At the same time, the ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe on the i875P chipset worked with these modules with the Performance Mode option set to Turbo without any problems. This fact explains the slight performance lag of the P4P800-E Deluxe in the following tests:

Note that if you install 2-2-2-5 memory modules into the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe and enable the Performance Mode (Turbo), the mainboard’s performance approaches that of the ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe.

In other words, the two mainboards from ASUS (on i865PE and i875 chipsets) do show similar speeds if you set them up identically. This is another testimony to the highest class of the ASUS engineering team that managed to boost the performance of the i865PE to the level of the i875P. Unfortunately, it’s more difficult to set the P4P800-E Deluxe up in the same manner as the i875P-based mainboard – you need to pick up specific memory modules. This fact only prevents me from saying that the P4P800-E Deluxe is as fast as i875P-based products. On the other hand, this situation may change as new BIOS versions appear.

Conclusion

The tests we have performed over the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe mainboard confirm that this product is a worthy replacement of the P4P800 Deluxe, which has been considered among the best i865PE-based products for over a year. The new version is an improvement on, rather than an overhaul of the previous one, but new features help it in meeting the current demands of computer users. Particularly, the P4P800-E Deluxe supports up to four SerialATA hard disk drives and boasts a unique eight-channel audio subsystem.

The ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe also inherited some of the queer points of its predecessor, especially as concerns configuring the memory subsystem for the maximum performance. The PCB design is worse compared to the P4P800 Deluxe, although not seriously.

Like its predecessor, the P4P800-E Deluxe has high overclocking potential and offers enough tools to actualize this potential. Its stability with the most powerful processors gives no cause for blame. This mainboard surely makes a good overclocking platform.

Overall, if you are searching for a not-very-expensive mainboard for your Socket 478 processor, the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe may suit you. At the same time, paying more money for an i875P-based board you avoid the above-mentioned configuration troubles.

Highs:

• High stability;
• Rich CPU overclocking opportunities;
• Original technologies and software: Q-Fan and AI technologies;
• Eight-channel audio;
• Rich accessories and reasonable price;
• If you meet certain conditions, you get the performance of i875-based mainboards.

Lows:

• Certain flaws in the PCB design;
• High demands on the quality of the memory modules.