December 21, 2002
Motherboard and CPU
Roger recommended the nVidia nForce2 chipset for AMD XPs because it only has one driver and should be quite stable. For P4 motherboards, he recommended ASUS as a good name. The Monoraj bought a Gigabyte motherboard for his P4 and was also quite happy with it.
Superpet had a slightly smaller selection of ASUS motherboards, the ASUS P4PE-L and the ASUS P4PE LS1394. The LS1394 has a bunch of onboard features I don't need. (Gigabit LAN, Serial ATA, Soundcard). Since I want to get a P4 (no need to scrimp and get an AMD), that leaves me to choose from Gigabyte.
The Granite Bay motherboard is unavailable currently. It's the latest-greatest, but I can live without it. Plus, it's 160 marginal dollars more than the Ultra.
The GA-8SR533 is old technology. Forget it.
The GA-8GE667 Pro is ok, but the onboard Audio and Video are wasted -- I already have a Creative Labs Extigy sound system, and the Audio doesn't support a dual-head monitor scheme. Mismatch of features.
That leaves me to decide between the Gigabyte GA-8PE667 and GA-8PE667 Ultra. The Ultra's extra features are onboard LAN and a Raid system. I don't need the LAN especially, so consider it no marginal value. But the Raid is interesting. Spending marginal 70$ for Raid functionality sounds good to me. I am worried about data integrity, and since harddrives are so cheap, this might be a cheap, robust way to get it.
Tom's Hardware Review says the ultra has a firewire port, although I cannot find any specifications to confirm that. I think it's mistaken.
Toms Review of the ASUS P4PE says the the P4PE does have raid...
Tom votes the ASUS P4PE as the best board of the 2002.
I still think to go with the Ultra because it has more IDE plugs and it sounded like the RAID functionality of the Ultra was better. Futhermore the P4PEs sold at Superpet said nothing about having raid functionality. Maybe that's a different variation of that board.
Some other reviews of the board were all complimentary.
- Stable motherboard
- Legion Hardware had a very thorough review of this board, and liked it.