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The first
Granite Bay (Intel E7205 chipset) motherboard to grace the
HotHardware Laboratories not long ago, was
MSI's GNB Max. This board, supports Dual Channel
DDR and AGP8X, as well as a host of other features, for
the Pentium 4 platform. However, this board, as well
as a few others we have seen specifications for, seems to
be more targeted at the High End Workstation crowd, rather
than the enthusiast or "Overclockers" out there. In
fact, Intel's strategy with this new chipset for the
Pentium 4, is also to target this space as well.
Intel's follow-on chipset, code named "Springdale", so
we've been told by a few sources, is going to be much more
suited toward the enthusiast crowd. We'll get back
to more detail on this later but the point is, Granite Bay
boards are coming into focus now and they are not
completely focused on the types of end users, that make up
the Elite HotHardware - Custom PC building clientele.
Now, having
said this, Asus Computer is well known for bucking the
trend and also for not following the standard "reference
design" model for their Motherboard product lines.
It seems as though, good bad or indifferent, Asus always
puts their own personal spin on their products and for the
most part, they cater to you and me, the Custom Built PC
Enthusiast. As one might imagine, their first
incarnation of a Granite Bay offering is cut from the same
cloth. The real question is, "is it ready for
prime-time in the enthusiast market segment"? We'll
try to cover all the salient points and performance
characteristics of the Asus P4G8X and let you be the
judge.
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Specifications / Features of the Asus P4G8X |
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Granite Bay,
Dialed In and Ready |
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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
FULL VIEW
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CPU
- Supports Socket
478 for Intel® Pentium 4 (Northwood only) processor
- Supports up 3.06G/533MHz and higher speed
Chipset
Intel®
E7205 Chipset
- Supports single processor up to 533MHz
- Supports 144bit wide DDR 2100 memory interface, with
the
memory bandwidth of 4.3GB/s or 3.2 GB/s
- Supports AGP 8x or 4x at 0.8V (AGP 3.0) or 4x at
1.5V
Intel® ICH4 Chipset
- AC'97 Controller Integrated
- 2 full IDE channels, up to ATA100
- Low pin count interface for SIO
- Integrated USB 2.0 controller
Bus Frequency
-
Supports 100/133MHz FSB
- Supports 400/533MHz Intel NetBurst
micro-architecture bus
Memory
- Supports
Dual channel (144-bit wide) DDR 266 memory
interface. Each channel supports 2 DIMM Sockets
- Supports four 184-pin DDR DIMM sockets up to 4GB.
- Supports non-ECC(x64) or ECC(x72) DIMMs DDR PC2001
DIMM using 128Mb, 256Mb, 512Mb and 1GB SDRAM.
IDE
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An IDE controller on the ICH4 chipset provides IDE HDD/
CD-ROM with PIO,
Bus Master and Ultra DMA66/100 operation modes.
- Can connect up to four IDE devices.
- Silicon Image SATALink controller - 2
Serial ATA ports at 150 MB/s
operation mode and 1 Ultra DMA port. (optional)
Audio
- Realtek ALC650
6-channel CODEC
System BIOS
- 4Mb Flash
ROM, Award® BIOS, TCAV, PnP, DMI2.0,
WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.3, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ
Flash, ASUS MyLogo2, CrashFree BIOS, C.P.R
Expansion Slots
- One
8X/4X AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) universal slot
- Five PCI v2.2 32-bit master PCI bus slots
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On Board
Ethernet LAN
BROADCOM Gigabit -
10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
Controller
- Supports 10Mb/s , 100Mb/s, 1Gb/s auto-negotiation
operation
Internal I/O Connectors
On-Board Peripherals
include:
- 1 floppy port supports 2 FDDs with 360K, 720K, 1.2M,
1.44M
and 2.88Mbytes
- 2 serial ports (COM A + COM B)
- 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 1 Line-In/Line-Out/Mic-In port
- 2 PS/2 connectors
- 1 LAN RJ45 connector
(Optional)
Back Panel I/O
2 PS/2 connectors (keyboard and mouse)
2 9-pin Serial port
1 25-pin SPP/ECP/EPP Parallel port
4 USB 2.0 ports
3 Audio connectors (Line-out, Line-in, Mic-in)
1 10/100/1000 LAN connector
Package Contents
Asus P4G8X
User's manual
UltraDMA cable
IDE cable
FDD cable
2-port USB 2.0 / Game port module
S/PDIF in/out module (optional)
I/O shield
InterVideo WinCinema (Gold version only)
Form Factor
ATX Form Factor 12" x 9.6" (30.5cm x 24.5cm)
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The board
configuration itself is quite similar to the MSI
Granite Bay board we reviewed here not long ago, with
a few subtle differences. Asus uses a Broadcom
Gigabit Ethernet controller, versus the Intel
controller MSI used. In addition, MSI's board
uses a C-Media 6 Channel Audio solution, which we
prefer rather than the Realtek CODEC that Asus used on
the P4G8X here. Finally, the Asus folks chose to
go with a
Silicon Image SATA chipset, versus the Promise
Controller MSI went with. Once again, we like
the route MSI went, with Promise for the SATA
solution, since that seems to be a bit more mature and
has a better RAID BIOS, in our opinion. We will
cover this later in the BIOS setup however.
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
Intel's
E7205 chipset, as you can see, provides 4.3GB/sec of
memory bandwidth to the Pentium 4's 533MHz system bus.
The chipset supports up to 4GB of RAM, so server
implementations can easily be supported with the cost
effectiveness that DDR DRAM offers. In addition,
AGP8X support is provided and we are happy to report
that our Radeon 9700 Pro, that we used for testing,
worked flawlessly throughout our benchmark runs.
The P4G8X
provides 4 USB ports on the back plate, as well as two
serial, Ethernet, Sound, Mouse and Keyboard jacks.
Included with every board is a custom back finish
plate for installation into your chassis of choice.
In the middle shot, you'll see the power connectors on
the P4G8X, neatly arranged at the edge of the board.
This is a great location for obstruction free ATX
Power Cable stringing.
Additionally, Asus provides their standard Auxilary
Power connector, for alternative use versus the 4 pin
ATX12V power connector. This is a really nice
feature, since you can then use any standard ATX power
supply (we recommend at least 300W) and not have to
worry about having the P4 compliant ATX12V connectors,
since you can simply plug in a 4 pin drive power
connector in this socket. Finally, Asus has
installed a stout heat sink on the E7205 Northbridge.
This provides adequate cooling but we would have
preferred an active solution here with an integrated
fan.
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More Layout, Quality, BIOS and Setup
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