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Is now a good time for an 845PE/GE board?

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Lukozer

Member
Joined
Dec 15, 2002
Location
Flint, MI
With the release of the i875, and the availability of both the E7205 and SiS655 chisets, i'm wondering if the price of the "old" single channel 845PE/GE chipset will be dropping any time? I'm on the lookout for a new board, and providing it is faster than my current i845G chipset board and has better overclocking features and overall potential then i will be happy to go without dual channel DDR for the time being. Is now a good time to go with an 845PE/GE?
 
you can get an abit bh7 that'll run 220 fsb for around $90... but i gotta tell ya, it looks like a 300 fsb overclock with the canterwoods is very achievable http://www.vr-zone.com/reviews/EPoX/4PCA3Plus/ If the sprindale mb's oc as well only much cheaper, you,re talkin about some monster numbers that'll just make sense to get instead of the 845 boards. they'll give you a much higher fsb oc and will let u get the most outta the cpu. especially when the 800 fsb 2.4's with the 12x multiplier hits the street Can u imagine running a 300 fsb on one of those new 2.4 badboys cranking out at 3.6? The possibility alone would make me wait a while and think twice b4 jumping into a 845 mb
 
Let's be honest though, there is no chance of my P4 2.53ghz ever reaching 300fsb, and it's highly unlikely i will be able to afford one of the 800fsb processors when they are initially released. Since the fastest stock speed 800fsb P4 is the 3.0ghz model, which is under 500mhz faster than my current one, it's also very doubtful my wife would let me live another day if i went and bought one of those as well as the motherboard that i am pushing my luck buying now.... If only i could :)
 
well lets do a little thinking here cause we dont want mama banging us on the head with the frying pan. What i was gettin at is the canterwood mb's already have scaled down versions in the 140-150 range .heck in a month they'll be that much cheaper. as for the 3.0 800 fsb who needs em. the 2.4's are already in pricewatch for sale monday. granted they're runnin about 200. but in a month heck theyll be alot less... my logic was why pay almost a 100 bucks on something thats not much better than what u have now.... If i were in your place id sell my 2.53 and mb.put that plus a couple hundred more or so and presto, you got 1 heck of an upgrade.
 
I should mention that i'm in Canada, prices are rather higher here, even when taking the currency conversion into consideration. I never upgrade my processor unless it is doubling or almost doubling the speed of my current one, which means i won't be looking at buying a new processor until 5ghz cpu's hit my price range, which will no doubt mean i'll be looking at a P5 or whatever AMD are offering at the time, either way they'll both mean yet another new motherboard. The motherboard i'm looking at now is just to give me better overclocking of my current processor and all round improved performance, i'm not looking to change anything else. Besides which, i am not convinced that selling my 2.53ghz 533fsb cpu and buying a 2.4ghz 800fsb cpu is much of an upgrade.
 
Interesting questions.

I think the (correct, IMHO) conclusion you reached about moving from your 2.53/533 to a 2.4/800 applies to the motherboards, too. Right now there is a measurable benchmark difference between the 845PE and a new 875, just like there might be between the two procs. But that difference is going to be irrelevant by this time next year. It will matter even less three years from now when you might be ready to buy a P5/5.0. (They will be out sooner than that, but I don't think they will be a midrange product until late 2005.)

The relative performance difference between these boards won't matter over three years of ownership. So you should get a good, cheap 845PE board, right? Maybe not, because time has the same effect on price that it does on performance. At the extremes of your chipset example are the Abit BH7 (845PE) and the Asus P4C800 (875). There's $210US of real estate between their pricetags. Over the three years I think it will take for five gig procs to fall into the affordable category the difference comes down to twenty cents a day.

Bottom line: Nothing matters and in the end we're all dead so who cares anyway? ;)

I love the 845 chipset but I would lean towards the board that gave me the most options going forward. Procs in the 3.5-4.0GHz range are going to become affordable well before the 5.0 and would represent a substantial boost over your 2.53. If you want to make that jump having a default 800MHz FSB would be nice to have. Ditto for D-DDR capability, native S-ATA drive support and AGP8X. An 845 board can't do that.

I would wait to see what the 865PE boards look like before I bought an 845PE. The pricing looks to be comparable, at least after the initial gouging period, and I think its going to give you the best bang for your buck.

Also, know that you can wait for the prices to fall and the BIOS' to be debugged without missing a lot of performance. I agree with you that the 845G isn't a board I'd want to live with for the next three years, but its good enough to do the job for the next three months.




Hope this helped-

BHD
 
I'd get a Canterwood/Springdale mobo now if you want a new mobo (for example, Abit IC7 for $152 US at googlegear) and then wait another couple months for the 800 bus CPUs to stabilize in price.

This will mean you need two sticks of RAM since the i875/i865 chipsets are dual channel DDR. I looked in your signature and I think you might already have at least two sticks of PC2700, so you're good to go. Also, the Abit IC7 has lots of memory ratios available, so you can easily run your PC2700 until you get the wild hair to upgrade to faster RAM in the future.

If you really want to stay with the i845PE, then the Abit BH7 for $84 US at newegg can't be beat. But realistically, you already have a i845G mobo. Why get the i845PE when there are new exciting and better chipsets now. If the budget is really tight (maybe the little lady has a firm hold on the purse strings), then wait a couple weeks until the Springdales are out in full force.
 
I have to agree with batboy...

hold on to your CPU and go with the abit IC7...
you'll run full bandwith and have a great mobo for the 800mhz as well as early prescott chips.

it will be the last mobo you'll need till early 2005.

if you need help getting one, just PM me soon.
(maybe I could ship it to you)

I may just be ordering the IC7 by tuesday or so.

mica
 
I just ordered my Abit IC7 earlier today from googlegear.com (hahaha Mica, I beat ya). There is another thread that says MSI has a Springdale mobo available right now for about $99 US.
 
batboy said:
I just ordered my Abit IC7 earlier today from googlegear.com (hahaha Mica, I beat ya). There is another thread that says MSI has a Springdale mobo available right now for about $99 US.

maxvla has that springdale.....and it stinks.:(

mica
 
Lots of very good points brought up, thanks to all of you for that. After reading through and considering my options, i'm now left with a few choices

1) wait for the Abit IC7 board to arrive in Nova Scotia (i've been told this could take between 2-4 weeks) and buy one of those.

2) Go with the 845PE, in which case the Abit BH7 will be about my only consideration

3) Wait for the i865 series, though this could well take a few months for them to arrive in Nova Scotia so this is my least favourite option

and then there's another option i hadn't mentioned until now...

4) Go with a SiS 655 chipset board.

Any comments on the SiS 655 option?
 
SIS 655? Yuck! I'd get the BH7 before one of those critters. I bet the i865 won't be anymore than a month. The Abit IC7 is already in stock at online retailers.
 
WAAAAAAAYYYY too many bad experiences with online sales has guaranteed that i'll never buy online. Going back to the BH7, i read some results on that boards performance vs i875 and it didn't fare too badly at all. Granted these results were on the Abit website so i'm sure they were carefully selected but nevertheless, the BH7 did compare quite nicely... The results came from an Anandtech test.

http://www.abit-usa.com/news/2003/20030418c.php

Suddenly the BH7 doesn't look like a distance third choice after all. By the way, why do you say that about the SiS 655? Why would that one be such a bad choice?
 
Actually, the SIS 655 ain't bad... it's just that the Intel chipsets are so dang good.

I only order from a select few online retailers like newegg.com and googlegear.com. I've never had any problems with them. But, I know what you mean, some of the retailers are scam artists.

The BH7 is a great mobo, it's just that the IC7 is better. These new Canterwood/Springdale mobos with the dual channel DDR and mega bandwidth will rock.
 
the BH7 is a great mobo...yet I would still not get it if I was you.

you'll be bandwith limited with a 533 cpu....even if you OC it.

yes you'll be able to run a 800mhz cpu on it...
yet it will be bandwith limited at stock.
and you may not be able to OC it far.

no future with the BH7.:(

get the IC7...you'll thank batboy and me for it.;)

mica
 
Yep ,Just invision this: an abit ic7 with the new 2.4 (many will run to 3.4-3.6) runnin at about a 280-290 fsb It is a tremendous gain for a realtively small price.. or just keep your 2.5 and get the ic7.. its definitely the way to go
 
flapperhead said:
Yep ,Just invision this: an abit ic7 with the new 2.4 (many will run to 3.4-3.6) runnin at about a 280-290 fsb It is a tremendous gain for a realtively small price..

and be bandwith limited....

at 290fsb you'll have a 1160 bus cpu....but you'll have to use the 3/2 ratio on the memory we have now.

that gives you 773 memory bus.....a 33% drop in bandwith.:eek:

no thank you very much.

I don't need no 12 multi cpu running with that much of a drop in memory bandwith.

give me a 2.4b that runs 185fsb and full bandwith with great timings....thank you.

18 multi, 740 bus...740 on the mem=3330mhz goodness...
that will kill the 2.4c in real world benchies.;)

mica
 
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