[Radar]

Any particular recommendation for an ASUS motherboard (P4). I'm starting from scratch. Any particular chipsets to avoid?


Ray

 

[brickie]

i'd personally avoid via.they were very problematic for me...although others i belive use this chipset with success.i use a cusl2 by the way and is rock solid.it is p3 though.


brickie

 

[vfrjim]

I have the P4B266 and it supports a wake command from Hibernation via the OS, not all MB's do, in fact very few support the S4. Real nice board overall.


Jim

 

[TPeterson]

Yes, wake from S4 is an important and, AFAIK, never documented feature for HTPC. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that all recent ASUS mb do support ACPI S4 wake-up, however.


Another useful--and usually documented!--feature is power-on from keyboard event, which may allow you to bury your HTPC's noise inside a cabinet or behind a wall.

 

[zfmax]

I just bought a P4S8X, I like the fact that it has serial ATA, LAN, & audio on board, plus it has 6 PCI slots and an 8X AGP slot. Still putting it all together though, we'll see. Got a P4 2.4G processor, 512MB of PC2700 SDRAM, and a 15K rpm 3.4mS Ultra 160 SCSI drive too, it oughta scream.

 

[TPeterson]

IMHO, "scream" is the last thing one needs from an HTPC.

 

[TheLongshot]

The P4PE seems to be the P4 motherboard to get right now. Rock solid Intel chipset that can now officially run memory at 333mhz and also has support for Hyperthreading, which will first appear on the 3.06G processor.


I did have a P4S8X, but I was reading a lot of problems people were having trying to run memore at 333mhz, and the latest BIOS updates really slowed down the board. It doesn't seem to be a problem universal to the SiS 648 chipsets, so ASUS is having some problem with this board. I decided to cut my loses and return the board.


Jason

 

[KWhite]

P4B533-VM (Intel/Intel) or A7N266-VM (AMD/Nvidia), both are rock solid.

 

[Jacob B]

I concur with longshot.

Installed the P4PE this weekend, full version with all the options.

No problems what so ever and the Intel chipset should guarantee continued rock solid operation.


Jacob

 

[Ham1Am]

I just recently purchased an A7N8X (amd w/nForce2 north/south bridge, 8x agp, 5 pci slots, sata, 6 usb 2.0 ports, firewire ports, dual onboard lan ports, onboard audio), XP2600 (333 FSB w/Thermalright SLK800 heat-sink), 2 DDR PC3200 (to utilize the dual-channel TwinBank mem architecture), and a radeon 9700. I've got some more work to do though.. audio card (planning Waveterminal 192M ), Gyration keyboard/mouse , irman, and silent psu. For the case, I went with Serge Breton's special. Not sure about a hard drive yet, and haven't looked much at tv tuner cards/HD tuner cards.. but they're planned.

 

[Ham1Am]

After re-reading and noticing I didn't really answer your question... I choose this board because it's been widely reviewed, and most of the reviews that put it up against other boards showed it to be the best in stability, new features/technology, and speed. The twin bank memory, 333 FSB, and agp 8x will rock the house. I choose AMD for a few reasons.. one, because if it wern't for them, we'd probably be just rounding the 1gHz range. AMD forced intel to quit their tactics of "release, saturate, then update," not to mention dropping prices for all us consumers. For that alone, my allegiance goes to AMD!

 

[Rich4av]

I chose the P4PE for the reasons mentioned, but my goal was to pick a board that I will not replace for several years. My concern was that I already use 3-4 card slots and I want to keep several open for Holo3D daughter or DVD playback cards as well as other cards in the future. The P4PE motherboard comes in a version with built-in USB 2, Firewire 1394 (thereby not requiring additional cards), serial ATA and high-speed networking connection built-in. When I need the feature, I can just activate in the BIOS. I don't want the hassles of reinstalling/reactivating copy-protected software for a long while! In a way, I wanted as future-proof a motherboard as I could buy today.

 

[jkaiser]

"Firewire 1394 (thereby not requiring additional cards)" - unfortunately you still loose a slot since the connectors are on backplane brackets. If you want firewire, SPDIF and USB2/Gamepad, you are out 3 slots.

 

[IUnknown]

My PC is in a cabinet and wake from S4 is a must. If the feature is undocumented how do you know (unless you have the board) that it is supported? Word of mouth on forums? Does wake from S4 imply wake on keyboard events (from XP)?


I have been very happy with AMD and am considering upgrading to a A7S333. Anyone know if it for sure supports wake from S4?

 

[rudolpht]

P4PE in a heartbeat. Eliminitated two add in boards (sound w/SDIF & 1394), USBs are all 2.0 (may be a HiPix conflict?) Hyperthreading works.


Tim

 

[chrisexv6]

I really really wanted to pick up an Maudio Revo card for outputting audio, but the price of this board is jsut so good if I wanna stick with using its SPDIF output.


Any thoughts? Is it really worth the extra $$$ to get the Maudio card?


-Chris

 

[vfrjim]

Quote:

My PC is in a cabinet and wake from S4 is a must. If the feature is undocumented how do you know (unless you have the board) that it is supported? Word of mouth on forums? Does wake from S4 imply wake on keyboard events (from XP)?

Iunknown, sometimes a manufacturer documents it in the specification or the owner's manual (PDF file), most manufacturers do not have S4 support and Wake on keyboard, it is really nice when manufacturers have these features, I have 2 boards that support it, one AMD (Epox 8K7A / 8K7A+) and my Asus P4B266 and both will do what you want them to do, personally, the only true way of making sure of a board having these features is to ask, sometimes the info is on manufacturer's websites but sometimes it isn't. Like on the Epox 8K7A, it doesn't actually say S4 support but does describe it in one of the features that the board has, it only mentions S3, so till someone tests it, you cannot be sure.


Jim

 

[Rich4av]

Quote:

Originally posted by jkaiser "Firewire 1394 (thereby not requiring additional cards)" - unfortunately you still loose a slot since the connectors are on backplane brackets. If you want firewire, SPDIF and USB2/Gamepad, you are out 3 slots.

Not necessarily. My HTPC case had 2 floppy drive slots which I no longer need. So I can mount the 1394/USB connectors there along with my IR receivers. Also, cases that offer front 1394/USB connectors can be directly plugged into the motherboard. So I can still save some slots yet still have the feature active.

 

[safaa]

i have p4s533-e

good board,with 7500 radeon.

for firewire and and usb 2.0 i run the cable from the front of the case to save the pci slots in case i need them,

 

[RobScreene]

P4B533-V has been good for me for a month now; running mostly DScaler and TheaterTek, plus VirtualDub for capturing my Laserdiscs.


Crammed in a DIGN case with Enermax whisper psu (seems like others may now be better choices as per the toms hardware review), running

WinME

P4 2GHz Northwood, 128MB Generic 2700DDR,

ATI Radeon 64 DDR, M-audio 2496 Audiophile,

IDS Falcon dscaler card,

10/100 network card (occasinally networked to laptop to get files on)

MSI [email protected] cx23310 card (only used for testing in WinXP Home build)

Pinnacle miroVIDEO DC30 capture card

40GB 5200 drive

25GB 5200 drive

Pioneer 106s slot DVD-ROM


regards,

Rob.