Had it with ABIT, thinking about P4C800-E

Rugged · Oct 24, 2003

I have had enough of abits faulty products and was thinking about a P4C800-E. I will be doing some overclocking and wonder if it is worth my time to go with the asus board. The best I can get out of my current setup is 3ghz @ 250 fsb 1:1. Abits memory voltage is undervolting and unstable at anything above 2.8v and there is problems with anything other than a 1:1 ratio.
Thanks for any input.

My setup
Abit IC7-MAX3... voltage problems
P4 2.4C @ 3.0, 250fsb 1:1
Corsair XMS TWINX PC4000 PRO
Corsair Hydrocool watercooling
Ati AIW 9800 Pro w/zalman heatpipe
2 x WD Raptors raid stripe
2 x Maxtor 120g sata raid stripe
Antec True Control 550w power supply
Mitsumi 54x cdrom
Plextor 52-32-52 Premium cdrw
Lite On dvdrom
Lian Li PC65B case
ViewSonic P225fb 22"crt monitor
Philips Seismic Edge sound card
Klipsch Pro Media ULTRA 5.1

Ifishsum · Oct 24, 2003

I'm in the same boat as you Rugged, 3 failed Abit boards in 3 years...the capacitors went bad. I just ordered an Asus P4 board myself. The P4C800-E with Al overclocking advertises up to 30% overclock capabilities...I don't like that limit. P4P800S looks like it has much better overclocking options to me. I haven't used either board, that's just from the Asus specs. But 30% over wouldn't give you much more than you're getting now...

cypher · Oct 24, 2003

thats only using th AI feature. You can always go as high as you want manualy.

gruvin2 · Oct 25, 2003

Rugged WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!

Sorry to here your Max3 isnt working out for you.

I currently have the P4C800 Dlx and its been rock solid for me. If i want to go above 250fsb it helps to have active cooling on the NB. I have a P4C800-E on the way from Newegg. I'm getting ready to grab a couple Raptors and want the ICH5R as well as being able to put my 2 Maxtors in a true RAID0.

I highly recommend ASUS i have had nothing but success with these boards. I've had this one up to 295fsb with stock cooling and a 50mm fan on the NB. As cypher said you can OC it manually with all the tweaks. It has an AI feature to help you OC and it does all the settings for you. I personally don't use it.

Let us know what you decide to do.

flapperhead · Oct 28, 2003

unfortunately the max3 's seem to indeed have voltage instability probs over 2.8-2.9v.

Rugged · Oct 28, 2003

I ordered the P4C 800 E Deluxe from New Egg.

I should have the board tomorrow and I will post my results.

I also have the Abit IC7 Max3 on RMA, supposedly they have fixed some of the votage issues, I'll believe it when I see it. LOL

Ludivous_Kain · Oct 29, 2003

Heh. Good choice, Rugged. I also ordered a P4C800-E from Newegg a few days ago. Cant wait to finally unlock the potential of my proc and liquid cooling setup. My only qualm with my current board is the instability of the vcore setting. Does absolutely nothing. I can get my proc up to 241fsb with defauly vcore, before Prime95 gives me errors. (Though, I usually only run it for an hour before deeming the OC stable) Thing is though, after the 241, no matter how high I crank the vcore, the OC is no longer stable, even if I go to 242 with 1.7600v. Gotta love giga-byte. *lol*

Anywho, I also got a quick question for the other P4C800-E users here. With the ICH5R added, are you able to hook up 4 sATA drives in one single RAID0 volume? If so, screw my crappy 80gb WDs, I'm going for four Raptors!

Ludivous_Kain · Oct 29, 2003

BTW- Rugged, hows that Corsair Hydrocool system treating ya? I almost bought that, before I constructed my own SwiftTech liquid cooling set. Well, constructed is a strong word.. I simply purchase each part I wanted seperately.

Rugged · Oct 29, 2003

Ludivous_Kain said:
BTW- Rugged, hows that Corsair Hydrocool system treating ya? I almost bought that, before I constructed my own SwiftTech liquid cooling set. Well, constructed is a strong word.. I simply purchase each part I wanted seperately.

I am very happy with it. I am going to order vga and northbridge blocks for it too. The thing usually runs about 27.5C idle and 29.5C under load. Very quiet too.

Rugged · Oct 29, 2003

Ludivous_Kain said:
Heh. Good choice, Rugged. I also ordered a P4C800-E from Newegg a few days ago. Cant wait to finally unlock the potential of my proc and liquid cooling setup. My only qualm with my current board is the instability of the vcore setting. Does absolutely nothing. I can get my proc up to 241fsb with defauly vcore, before Prime95 gives me errors. (Though, I usually only run it for an hour before deeming the OC stable) Thing is though, after the 241, no matter how high I crank the vcore, the OC is no longer stable, even if I go to 242 with 1.7600v. Gotta love giga-byte. *lol*

Anywho, I also got a quick question for the other P4C800-E users here. With the ICH5R added, are you able to hook up 4 sATA drives in one single RAID0 volume? If so, screw my crappy 80gb WDs, I'm going for four Raptors!

Try upping your vdimm and relaxing your memory timings. What ratio are you running your memory in? I.E... 1:1, 5:4

mrgreenjeans · Oct 29, 2003

I've got the P4C800 dlx and nothing but good words. Have had no problems and have yet to find the limits of it's capabilties.

Ludivous_Kain · Oct 29, 2003

Well, I tried all three kinds of timing settings. 1:1. 4:5(which is what I'm running right now) and the other one, which I don't remember what actual setting it is. Point is though, I'm no longer worried with this mobo. I actually convinced one of my clients to buy it off me for 100 bucks. Cost me 130 when I got it new, so hey, its a good deal. This board is fine for my client, because they're not going to do any kind of overclocking. Building them an AlienWare computer equivilent, for about 800 bucks less, so they don't have anything to complain about. *lol*

Ludivous_Kain · Oct 29, 2003

Anywho, I don't suppose anyone has the answer for my question though, do ya? Whether I'm able to use the ICH5R and Promise raid chipsets in a single array, so I can have a single RAID0 volume, consisting of 4 drives?

gruvin2 · Oct 29, 2003

Well it does support 4 SATA drives and 2 ATA133...unclear if you can daisy-chain 4 SATA or not.

Chelsea · Nov 1, 2003

Vcore undervolting on ASUS P4C800-E

Was going to use this board til I saw review at theCrucible.ca.
Vcore was seen to undervolt over .2v with CPU loaded. They said VR was terrible and advised OCers to look elsewhere for a board.??? Any comments on this?

9mmCensor · Nov 1, 2003

Right now I am running an Abit board and it has been nothing but goodness for me, sorry to hear you had some problems. My last ASUS board (A7V-KT133) was rock solid stable and still is, and I got some good overclocks out of it as well. The board has actually outlasted the CPU fan which has died.

Had it with ABIT, thinking about P4C800-E

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