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  • Rza79 - Wednesday, March 22, 2006 - link

    I would say the Asus P5VD1-X is a 10x better option than this board.
    - PT880Ultra instead of PT880Pro
    - Asus doesn't use OST caps
    - gigabit lan controller
    - space in between the AGP and PCI-E slot so you can actually put two cards
    - can be found as low as 50 euro

    It would be nice if you reviewed this board too. I used it and it really did good.
  • Marlin1975 - Wednesday, March 22, 2006 - link

    Thats the PT880 board I am running now. It does not have voltage mods for the CPU but I was told the next Bios update will fix that. :)
  • Per Hansson - Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - link

    Gary, sigh, I whined about this in your Epox review and I'll do it in this one too

    The Caps used on the board for the VRM section are excellent brand by United Chemi-Con, for the smaller caps they used the crap-brand OST that will prolly fail within the boards useful life if they are installed in any high ripple areas, which they seem to be (chipset, memory and expansionslots....) Please atleast provide pictures where you can read the make and model of the caps

    Next; PCI-E 4x has low bandwidth; well, compared to AGP 3.0 it is 2.0GB/s, and guess what, AGP 3.0 has 2 GB/s too... So the issue is not with too little bandwidth but something in the implementation...

    Most serious is the fact that there is no mention about the fact that the VT8237R does not support SATA2 harddrives, i.e. they do not work at all with it! Only the VT8237R+ support SATA2 properly, this is a design issue in the following chipsets: VT8237, VT8237R, VT6420 and VT6421L

    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24910">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24910
  • Rza79 - Wednesday, March 22, 2006 - link

    While i know OST caps are cheap and come from Taiwan, still i have to see a blown up one. Asrock is using them from the start and those first boards are still working good for me. Still, better ones are good but OST isn't crap but just worse. Big difference.

    PCI-E 4x has 2GB/s bandwidth in total, what means 1GB/s per direction. So it can read 1GB/s and write at 1GB/s. Since these stuff are reading most of the time ...
    AGP can use it bandwidth in both directions meaning it can read at 2GB/s or write at 2GB/s. But the benchmarks do show that 1GB/s for reading is just not enough for these highend cards.

    About the Sata2 incompability. The southbridges you mention do have a detection issue. But any Sata2 hdd can be to Sata1 by jumper. When you do that, they will just work. Actually hdd's from Samsung, ... are set to Sata1 by default and have to be set manually to Sata2 by jumper.
    All the lastest Via boards i got from Asus (last month) had the Plus version of the southbridge, so you don't need to bother any longer about it either.
  • Gary Key - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link

    "Next; PCI-E 4x has low bandwidth; well, compared to AGP 3.0 it is 2.0GB/s, and guess what, AGP 3.0 has 2 GB/s too... So the issue is not with too little bandwidth but something in the implementation...

    Most serious is the fact that there is no mention about the fact that the VT8237R does not support SATA2 harddrives, i.e. they do not work at all with it! Only the VT8237R+ support SATA2 properly, this is a design issue in the following chipsets: VT8237, VT8237R, VT6420 and VT6421L "

    The PCI-E 4x comments have been clarified by RZA79 already. Our features chart and text clearly indicated the VIA VT8237R was a SATA 1.5Gb/s controller. However, I obviously did not clearly state this in the article. :) I updated the Final Words section based upon your comments. In our testing with this controller, our Maxtor, WD, Seagate, and Samsung 3Gb/s drives all worked fine with the jumpers set to 1.5Gb/s. Thanks!!!
  • Per Hansson - Wednesday, March 22, 2006 - link

    Yea right, OST is great...

    ASUS P5GDC-V DELUXE LGA775
    http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...ghlight=p5gd...">http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...ghlight=p5gd...
    Shuttle MS50N s478
    http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...highlight=ms...">http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...highlight=ms...
    MSI MS-6741 s754
    http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...7&highli...">http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...7&highli...
    Matsonic MS8318E s462
    http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...1&highli...">http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...1&highli...

    I had no idea about the PCIe bandwidth info... Interesting to say the least

    And last, I bought a friend a 500GB Seagate Barracuda, it did not get recognized by his mobo (8237 southbridge) I contacted Seagate by phone, the tech said I was supposed to put a jumper between two of the pins, it did not help, so I had to buy him an external controller
  • Per Hansson - Wednesday, March 22, 2006 - link

    Sorry, links trancuated...

    ASUS P5GDC-V DELUXE LGA775
    http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=843">http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=843

    Shuttle MS50N s478
    http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=481">http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=481

    MSI MS-6741 s754
    http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1127">http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1127

    Matsonic MS8318E s462
    http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=251">http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=251
  • Wonga - Monday, March 20, 2006 - link

    From this review, you can certainly see that AMD made a good choice going for an IMC - relying on VIA, they'd always be in second place.

    Not that VIA chipsets are bad to use, but they certainly aren't the quickest...
  • lemonadesoda - Monday, March 20, 2006 - link

    Something isn't quite right here. If you want to provide an upgrade path for basic users, start with what they have already:

    1./ CPU - 478 (this is an intel example)
    2./ GPU - AGP
    3./ Memory - DDR

    And cost/price of the original components (and their new replacements) IS IN THAT ORDER. What's the point of throwing away your most expensive components and recycling only the lowest value ones? Not much really.

    The design criteria should be to get maximum gain from minimum investment. And to me that would suggest upgrading, in this order:

    A./ Increase memory
    B./ GPU
    C./ Other software or hardware speed-me-ups
    D./ Maybe CPU if you have a pooooor humble one. Either you buy a second hand CPU on ebay, or you might as well start with a brand new up to date platform

    Not on the list, would be to change memory format DDR vs DDR2 (since this ain't going to give you any more practial or noticeable speed)

    Therefore, for the budget conscious upgrader, what is needed is a mainboard that will allow them to do upgrade A and B at minimum cost. ie a mainboard with PCIe16 and socket 478 and SIX DDR memory slots. (SIX Slots allows the upgrader to use existing too-small DDR sticks and add a couple more)

    I believe ASUS and ASROCK did a socket 478 and PCIexpress, but guess what, only 2 RAM slots. Brainless.
  • Missing Ghost - Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - link

    yeah bright, 6 dimms unbuffered memory!
  • Myrandex - Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - link

    I don't know of any desktop level chipset supporting 6 slots, you are being unrealistic here. 4 is about the most you could hope for.

    4x PCiE is disapointing.

    Jason
  • DigitalFreak - Monday, March 20, 2006 - link

    Another crap chipset from a crap vendor.
  • Marlin1975 - Monday, March 20, 2006 - link

    Set the memory to 166MHz before trying to overclock. I found this worked best and got me past 205MHz FSB setting. But at 200Mhz memory (ddr1) it would hold or freeze.

    I have had an Asrock and a Asus PT880 pro board and both worked well. I now have the Asus with an 805 chip. The Asus board has the best sound from all the PT880 pro boards I have seen so far and that is why I gave up the Asrock. Also since the 805 chip starts at 133MHz fsb overclocking seems to work better. That and the 805 would be a better choice to review this type of board based on price. So how about trying the Asus with a 805, or even this biostar with a 805.

    Marlin
  • Gary Key - Monday, March 20, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Set the memory to 166MHz before trying to overclock. I found this worked best and got me past 205MHz FSB setting. But at 200Mhz memory (ddr1) it would hold or freeze.


    We tried the 166MHz level and were able to overclock at the 14x multiplier up to a 215FSB but the board was not stable enough to complete our benchmark tests and would generate a ream of errors in MemTest86. We also tried the 15x muliplier with the same results. This issue occurred with two different bios revisions also. We believe either our board or the bios just has an issue with running the CPU at a multiplier other than stock.

    While a Pentium D 805 or a newer Celeron D CPU is the most likely CPU candidate along with an 6600GT or X800 video card for this board we did not have the schedule time to go back and test the other boards with these configurations. In fact, our Intel platforms will be moving away from the 840EE after the next review and to a more recent Pentium D processor along with a change in the GPU choice.

    Thank you for the comments and suggestions.
  • hans007 - Monday, March 20, 2006 - link

    i think you guys "the reviewers" made a pretty crappy choice of video cards to benchmark this with.

    this board is clearly meant for someone who is say ... just trying to do a budget upgrade, not someone who can afford a x1900xtx or 7800gtx.

    the benchmark scores make it look like an awful board because of the x4 slot limiting the video bandwidth. i think if you benched it with a more realistic bunch of cards such as say 6600gt, or 6800gs etc, it'd be much closer as those cards are probably not as affected by the x4 slot.
  • Visual - Monday, March 20, 2006 - link

    well, we know the regular excuses about this - the card is the same as all other reviews so that results can be comparable, and so the reviewers don't need to actually run tests with other boards (they already have the scores ready)

    also, i can imagine someone using a board like this if they want to stick with their AGP card for the time being, especially if its one of the fastest models. and later they would upgrade to something fast on the PCIe and expect a good performance, so its good that the review shows that isn't the case.

    for people simply going budget, this board doesn't make sense. none of the "combo" features are really needed if you go with a cheap pcie vidcard and a small ddr2 stick.

    i was actually surprised someone bothered to make a board like this - intel moved to ddr2 ages ago and i can hardly see anyone needing ddr mobos by now... and even if they did there are plenty of ddr mobos already. and pcie is the standard for quite some time now... it would've made sense right after the intro of pcie, when someone might've wanted to stick with their expencive 6800gt, but now those agp cards are just not worth keeping for the "slow upgrade" route.
  • jm20 - Monday, March 20, 2006 - link

    n the performance area, the Biostar TForce4 U 775 generated abysmal benchmark scores in the gaming and media encoding areas.

    Typo, "Biostar PT880 Pro-A7" is the correct model

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