My First P4 system.. Which Motherboard to get???

Hey guys! I've been an AMD guy for a long time and i think its time for me to try an Intel P4 system. I'm planning on building a BADA$$ gaming system but like we all know everything starts by the motherboard, the only motherboard i've seen so far with the latest upgrades its the SOYO SY-P4X400 but to be honest with you i've never had or known somebody that used Soyo in the past. Is it a good board to go for? recommended for what we love to do?? (overclocking) personally i've always used Abit board but i dont quite like the agp8x they have out so far. Any suggestions will be really appreciate it

Let's get some gaming going....

Asus P4B533-E is a great board for OC and usually at standard voltages.

What features are you looking for?

Must have!

One thing i'm going to need for sure is RAID that was one of the reasons why i was taking a look at the Soyo board, next i'm going to need AGP 8X since i'm planning on getting the radeon 9700 Pro suporting the 8X agp, i know its too soon for me to start looking towards this new upgrades and perhaps i'm going to end up waiting till Agp 8x becomes a standard suported by all motherboards, dont really know what to do as far as picking the right board.

If you can live without the AGP 8x I'd recommend the Abit BD7-II RAID, IT-7 RAID or I believe you can get the Asus P4B533 with RAID also. If you must have 8x I'd wait til it's more of a standard.

you may want to take a look at the new Asus P4S8X as its loaded with all features: RAID, Firewire, USB2.0, AGP8X, etc.

Thanks Karlos!!!

That asus board seems to fill all my needs just like the Soyo Dragon but its a matter of giving it a little time to make sure that are not problems with it as i heard about the Soyo so far, seems to be a great board but the actuall facts we dont know them yet... I guess its not too good go move up to new upgrades untill you know its fully working? i could be wrong though...

Well,

I had this same dilema a short time ago. I didn't need AGP8x, but I did need Spdif out on the mobo, not like Iwill where I had to spend an addition $30 for an add-on piece w/ 2 digital in and 2 outs.

The Asus P4B533 is what I went with and it is a kick *** board. Wonderful overclocking features, 1 MHz incremental fsb, voltage adjustments for the cpu | ram | agp. And it also has two different plugs for the extra juice that the P4 needs (the new standard 4 pin square plug and an addition standard rectangular 4 pin drive plug option if you psu doesn't have the new P4 4-pin plug.)

Yes, the Asus board also has the Raid option. It doesn't have AGP8x, but other than that, it kicks ***.

Oh, I went with a GF4 Ti4600 instead of the Radeon b/c I haven't read anything too promising yet with the AGP8x boards out/coming out. There are random people with different boards having issues b/c the "standard" isn't quite ironed out.

If you absolutely must have AGP8x, do the research. I know a bunch of the Sis chipset boards supporting 8x run good, but randomly give issues and there isn't a known solution yet.

Good luck

I totally agree with you Audiofight.

All I can add is that even if you get AGP 8x, I doubt you'll get any real use out of it at present or in the near future.

1. We're barely touching the sides of AGP 4x at the moment;

2. Memory bandwidth is the achilles heel of AGP. A P4 on a 533 bus can use up to 4.2GB/s of system bandwidth. With AGP 8x, up to 2.1GB/s is needed. This information needs to be channelled through the Northbridge to and from the system RAM. In the worst case, this means that up to 6.3GB/s could be asked for a any given time (though I speak in theoretical terms). Since the most bandwidth you'll get out of a 32-bit RIMM4200 is 4.26GB/s, AGP 8x will be bottlenecked by the RAM.

So, to really get the best out of APG 8x, you require higher bandwidth memory and a motherboard to suit. If I was looking into AGP 8x, I'd also be looking into DDR-II or Quad-Band Memory (QBM).

Of course, this stuff isn't appearing together on motherboards at the moment.

IMHO, get either:

the AGP 4x and a current RAM/motherboard combo; OR

Wait until AGP 8x and faster RAM is available on motherboards and wait until the bugs get ironed out on them. You might be waiting a little while.


cheers

Can I also add that graphics board manufacturers seem to circumvent the system memory bandwidth issue by simply adding more RAM to the graphics board itself and increasing the memory bandwidth of the graphics card.

Very..Very..Very Useful information!

Damn guys... I really do appreciate the time you guys are taking to let me know all these different things, alot of good points were made by both of you guys and stuff that i can used towards making a desicion on which board to get! Thanks alot for your time and i'll igve you guys some feedbacks on what do i end up getting

WOW!

Great takes, Audiofight and Mavrick. Welcome to the forums, hope you plan to share more of your expertise with us.

Regarding AGP 8X, I am not even thinking about it in this round of building. A year from now I would expect it (along with Serial ATA drives and DDR400 or Dual DDR memory support) in any motherboard I was considering. But today the technology for all three is way too new, and the performance gains they offer aren't a dealbreaker in deciding to build now or wait.

The board I'd recommend if overclocking is a high priority is the aforementioned Asus P4B533-E. A lot of guys have had equally good results with the Abit IT7 MAX, but the Asus has a slight edge in reliability. (The Abit had some memory controller problems that resulted in RMA's.)


BHD

Left out with no other choice......

Ok here's the situation that i'm now... my boss will be paying for my motherboard and the cpu as well (isn't that great ) now the problem is that he told me to pick the motherboard and the cpu from our company supplier which happends to be Leadman Miami and they only carry Gigabytes motherboards, which leaves me with no other choice but to buy a gigabyte motherboard (if i want my boss to pay for it) the only board taht i saw there with raid and ddr memory was the GA-8IEXP, no agp 8x but since i'll stick to the knowledge from Mavrick and Audiofight i guess i wont be needing the 8x instead i'll get a gf4 4400..... so now my concern becomes.....
Is the Gigabyte GA-8IEXP a good board to go with? not like i have any other choice bu i've like to know

Thanks again for your support guys!!!

I think it is, but some owners have had problems overclocking. The Gigabyte bios makes you dig a bit deeper to find the overclcoking settings you need, and their documentation isn't the best. And I've put together from reading some of the posts here and elsewhere that the GA-8IEXP is a little fussier when it comes to overclocking memory than other 845E boards. (I'd only use Corsair XMS3200 CAS2 on this board.)

But on the other side it has the best feature set of any 845 board and is exceptionally reliable and stable.

The Giga is on my shortlist of boards that I'm willing to part with hard earned cash. If someone was offering me one for free, I'd be a happy man.


BHD

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum but have been browsing for a week or so. I am also at kind of a cross roads as far as motherboards go. I just built a system that consists of P4 5.34 533FSB, 2 512MB Corsair sticks of DDR 3200 memory (part # 3320942), Radeon 9700 pro, Creative Audigy sound card, and Mainboard P4PB 400-FL motherboard. I got the P4PB 400-FL because it was the only board that specifically advertised the use of 3200 DDR memory right on the box (it has a 200MHZ setting in bios that I can not get to work LOL). I want to overclock to 3GHz and want to get the most from my memory but am not sure that I got the right board. It dose have some cool features like overclocking of the FSB in 1 MHZ increments, voltage changes of the CPU, and CPU ratios changes (for AMD cpu's) form software in the OS (no BIO's changes needed and loads after you start the OS). With the CPU at 1.45V it crashes when it runs 3Dmark2001SE at anything over 138 FSB. When I raise the voltage to a bit over 1.50V it runs 3Dmark till about 144 FSB till the app stops for no reason. Oh, DRAM voltage is at 2.6V. I just am not sure if I should try to raise the CPU voltage higher (don't wan't to kill anything). I am also not sure what temp is dangerous for the CPU. At 144 FSB it runs at 40 C normal use and high 40's C directly after running 3Dmark2001SE. I am thinking about trying the SOYO Dragon SY-P4X400 Ultra Platinum Edition to see if I have better results but am not sure if I need to or if it is the right board for me. Any input would be very helpful. Thanks.

Neutron

The only help I can give you at present is to scan the forums and hardware sites for reviews of the boards you're looking for. My own investigations have led me the following conclusions concerning any piece of hardware...

1. What the box says, and what happens in real life, are usually different (and the box always looks better than real life);

2. The latest developments in technology don't always translate to more satisfaction when they are being used; and most importantly

3. Any single piece of new, cutting edge, technology (such as AGP 8x) usually requires at least one other piece of new technology (such as high-bandwidth RAM) to work properly.

When 1st introduced, Intel's P4 did not function any better that the P3's that were around. But now - a chipset or two later - with better RAM - P4's are king of the hill.

Well, enough of my banter. I'll try to post something useful next time.

Mavrick, thank you very much for posting. I also got my current mobo for the AGP 8X compatibility for my Radeon 9700 pro. Is there anyother mobo out there that has OCing from the OS with APG 8X, that is a good over clocker. I can also set any of the parameters that I OC to make a beeping nose when they surpass what I set for a warning. The same gose for CPU temp and a bunch other voltages I am not sure about. Dosn't mean my board is worth a **** All my friends have SOYO Dragon SY-P4X400 Ultra Platinum Edition boards. None of them have tried to OC and I have not heard any props about them here. They look real pretty It just makes me think I need to change boards when other's on this forums say they can OC with my same setup as me (except the mobo) with no voltage changes to 3GHZ

Neutron

I honestly can't really comment on the SOYO boards since I've never owned one.

Having said that, I must admit that I haven't seen a review of an AGP 8x board yet that mentions any overclocking strengths.

AGP 8x just doesn't seem to be mainstream enough for some of the 'top tier' board manufacturers (eg. Asus, Abit) to jump on-board with yet.

When Asus and Abit do release AGP 8x boards, I'd say that most of the bugs will have been ironed out (or will be via BIOS updates) and they should perform pretty well - just like the current crop of boards do.

Try searching the other forums such as the ones at Asusboards.com, Anandtech etc. to see if your board turns up in any of the threads. You might find out something interesting.

Cheers again.

regarding the Gigabyte 8iexp....

I've got it up to a stable 3.1 and my brok 16k on 3dmark.
Aiming for 17k now.

PS thats without any of the 3dmark "tricks" like running with no cd drives or floppies, sitting your pooter infront of the airconditioner blah blah blah. This is the way my computer runs period.

Gigabyte GA-8IEXP has AGP voltage adjustment too up to 1.70V, DDR voltage adjustment up to 2.90V, and VCORE up to 1.725V, what else could you ask more? The mobo has everything you need. Even the hidden memory 3:4 setting. Just select DDR266 (same as 3:4 setting) and you are done.

>>Even the hidden memory 3:4 setting. Just select DDR266 (same as 3:4 setting) and you are done<<

WHOA WHOA WHOA!!!!!
What do you mean hidden settings....EXPLAIN FUTHER!!!
I am drooling on my keyboard...where did you hear this. Are you sure....what do I do EXACTLY!!!
GET ONLINE>>>>POST NOW!!! PLEASE!!!!