Pentium 4 Intel 875P motherboards - comments?

[Almighty1]

Hi everyone:

I'm considering getting the P4C800-E Deluxe and have a few question. Has anyone successfully run this card with everything enabled except with sound disabled (does it need to be disabled or does it autodetect you have your own card?)? And then I guess I'll have a GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 256MB as well as a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX and Adaptec AHA2940UW SCSI controller. Will there be any issues of IRQ/DMA sharing with these extras as I experienced with the older ABIT PIII Motherboards with the built in HPT RAID controllers where the HPT will not allow their resources to be shared with anything at all on any PCI slot that shares with it. Also, how does this board compare to the Gigabyte GA-8KNXP since I noticed on the Gigabyte, the Firewire controller is TI while on this one, it's VIA, are there any major differences? Also, for P-ATA RAID, is the Promise capable of single devices and does it work with stuff like CD/DVD-ROMs? As for the BIOS, I noticed that ASUS which used to use Award is now using AMI. Award/Phoenix (they are the same company now) are supposedly better BIOSes than AMI, atleast AMI had a bad reputation with the WinBIOS, is the AMI Bios any good though? I got 4 sticks of Hynix PC3200 512MB CL3 matched modules along with a P4-3.2Ghz which I bought from my friend who got these as part of the Dell Dimension XPS machines while he went and bought Corsair memory and a slower CPU. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[weboneando]

This considerations should be taken:

- Disabling audio or any other part of the mobo shouldn´t be a problem except for the raid it is always present and I haven´t found a way to disable it.
- IRQ/DMA should not be a problem if you enable ACPI, in case that for any reason you don´t want to use ACPI and use APM then you must set your IRQ manually because most probably some components will have conflicts.

- Can´t tell how this mobo compares to Gigabyte because I haven´t had any Gigas in my hand for a long time.

- If you´re planning to use your scsi controller as the default boot device then you might get some trouble negotiating with the raid wich will come ahead in the bios booting sequence, installing the scsi in the first pci slot could solve this but I´m not sure about it.

- Best ram config to use is DDR dual-channel modules for best performance in pairs, you can use other types too and single modules but the performance will get a drop down, and also check your bus speeds 400mhz ram modules will only work with 800mhz fsb cpus in this mobo if your proc has a 533mhz or slower then you must use 333mhz memory.

- Promise use to have support for optical drives in their raid products but the recent products and even the old ones if you flash them with the new bios versions have been set to handle only hard disk drives, so you can´t use them to handle any cd/dvd or writer (even with the integrated products).

 

[Almighty1]

This considerations should be taken:

- Disabling audio or any other part of the mobo shouldn´t be a problem except for the raid it is always present and I haven´t found a way to disable it.
- IRQ/DMA should not be a problem if you enable ACPI, in case that for any reason you don´t want to use ACPI and use APM then you must set your IRQ manually because most probably some components will have conflicts.

- Can´t tell how this mobo compares to Gigabyte because I haven´t had any Gigas in my hand for a long time.

- If you´re planning to use your scsi controller as the default boot device then you might get some trouble negotiating with the raid wich will come ahead in the bios booting sequence, installing the scsi in the first pci slot could solve this but I´m not sure about it.

- Best ram config to use is DDR dual-channel modules for best performance in pairs, you can use other types too and single modules but the performance will get a drop down, and also check your bus speeds 400mhz ram modules will only work with 800mhz fsb cpus in this mobo if your proc has a 533mhz or slower then you must use 333mhz memory.

- Promise use to have support for optical drives in their raid products but the recent products and even the old ones if you flash them with the new bios versions have been set to handle only hard disk drives, so you can´t use them to handle any cd/dvd or writer (even with the integrated products).

I'm wondering if these new motherboards disable audio automatically when a audio card is plugged into the system. For IRQ/DMA, I know my 440BX motherboard had problems because the HighPoint RAID doesn't allow sharing on PCI 3 and 5 at all. As for ACPI, I thought it wasn't ACPI that allowed more IRQs but rather some post-2000 feature that allowed virtual IRQ's to go past 24 or so?

I haven't used Gigabyte either except for a Pentium motherboard back in 1994-95 before I went ASUS and then PII/PIII had all been ABIT. My friend has a Gigabyte PIII motherboard with the VIA chipset and it is the only computer that hangs at 91% trying to install WinME while Win98SE installs fine.

As for the boot device, I'm going to use IDE for the boot. My SCSI is just the drive I use for DVD/CD image buffering for burning and my DVD-ROM is on SCSI as well. There is no way to put the SCSI in PCI1 because the NVidia GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 256MB requires both the AGP slot and the PCI slot right under it.

As for ram, I'm going to be putting in 2 pairs of identical Hynix 512MB PC3200 DDR400 CAS 3 modules that came with the Dell Dimension XPS my friend had.

Interesting about Promise, I guess the HighPoint can't use DVD/CD devices either but on the Promise, do I have to do RAID or can I just plug in 2 hard drives and have them non-RAID?

Thanks!

 

[weboneando]

- AFAIK there´s no mobo that disables audio when you plug in a pci audio card in fact you can use both cards in the same system, windows will only work with one at the time but there are several apps (like discotheque sound system) that let you map to wich card you want to output this is helpful when you need main and monitor outputs.

- Highpoint controllers are in the same situation as the Promise but if you´re able to buy the HPT370 model from Highpoint you can flash backwards the controller and be able to use optical devices in it (this is not posible with the Promise).


- Almost all raid controllers support 0,1,0+1 and JBOD arrays, to set individual hds you must set them with a JBOD (just a bunch of disks) array in Promise´s cards it is called "spanning", if you just want to add ide ports to your system in order to have more individual hds you should consider an IDE controller instead of a RAID the IDE controllers from Promise support both optical devices and hard disks no matter the bios version.

 

[Almighty1]

- AFAIK there´s no mobo that disables audio when you plug in a pci audio card in fact you can use both cards in the same system, windows will only work with one at the time but there are several apps (like discotheque sound system) that let you map to wich card you want to output this is helpful when you need main and monitor outputs.

- Highpoint controllers are in the same situation as the Promise but if you´re able to buy the HPT370 model from Highpoint you can flash backwards the controller and be able to use optical devices in it (this is not posible with the Promise).


- Almost all raid controllers support 0,1,0+1 and JBOD arrays, to set individual hds you must set them with a JBOD (just a bunch of disks) array in Promise´s cards it is called "spanning", if you just want to add ide ports to your system in order to have more individual hds you should consider an IDE controller instead of a RAID the IDE controllers from Promise support both optical devices and hard disks no matter the bios version.

Interesting, I've never used 2 soundcards before even when I had a $600 Terratec EWS64XL Professional soundcard. Wouldn't having both audio options create a issue before Windows boots with the POST as I thought all the internal devices would take up pretty much all the IRQs anyways?

As for HighPoint controllers, it does seem to be more capable than Promise but Promise seems to have less problems. The HPT366 was like a real big problem with lots of people. Since the Promise on-board is a PDC20378 chip and handles both PATA-RAID and SATA-RAID, it seems the Promise can do IDE mode or RAID mode from a setting in the BIOS. I just wonder can you have non-RAID mode on SATA and RAID on PATA or RAID on SATA and non-RAID on PATA at the same time. Speaking about RAID, assuming I wanted to mirror. Is it possible to setup a HD with all the software I want on it and then do the RAID setup with a identical HD? Does the 2nd HD need to be the same exact model or can it be the same or larger capacity?

Also, I can't find this anywhere but does the 875P Canterwood chipset still support 2 floppy drives or just one?

 

[weboneando]

1) Wouldn't having both audio options create a issue before Windows boots with the POST as I thought all the internal devices would take up pretty much all the IRQs anyways?

2) I just wonder can you have non-RAID mode on SATA and RAID on PATA or RAID on SATA and non-RAID on PATA at the same time. Speaking about RAID, assuming I wanted to mirror. Is it possible to setup a HD with all the software I want on it and then do the RAID setup with a identical HD?

3) ...Does the 2nd HD need to be the same exact model or can it be the same or larger capacity?

4) Also, I can't find this anywhere but does the 875P Canterwood chipset still support 2 floppy drives or just one?

1) Internal devices don´t take all the IRQs they used to lead you to some troubles with some external (PCI) components, but that has come to an end since most of the add on cards of today can share IRQ addres and the implementation of ACPI in the BIOS has finished solving this.

2) I asume you´re talking about the P4C800 Deluxe, the RAID controller can be set in the BIOS to "RAID" or "IDE", the mobo has two connectors for this controller: one SATA and one PATA (the other SATA is handled by the southbridge), the function of both are handled by the same controller so if you set in the bios to RAID both SATA and PATA will behave as raid channels and if changed setting to IDE they will behave as an additional ide controlller, IDE for SATA and RAID for PATA at the same time or viceversa can´t be done.

3) For mirroring (RAID 1) you only need that your second drive is of the same or larger capacity than the first one, make and model is no issue in this kind of array.

4) Since the 850E chipset there is only support for one floppy drive, I can´t tell if this started with the 850 or before but surely the 875 only handles one floppy.

 

[Almighty1]

1) Internal devices don´t take all the IRQs they used to lead you to some troubles with some external (PCI) components, but that has come to an end since most of the add on cards of today can share IRQ addres and the implementation of ACPI in the BIOS has finished solving this.

2) I asume you´re talking about the P4C800 Deluxe, the RAID controller can be set in the BIOS to "RAID" or "IDE", the mobo has two connectors for this controller: one SATA and one PATA (the other SATA is handled by the southbridge), the function of both are handled by the same controller so if you set in the bios to RAID both SATA and PATA will behave as raid channels and if changed setting to IDE they will behave as an additional ide controlller, IDE for SATA and RAID for PATA at the same time or viceversa can´t be done.

3) For mirroring (RAID 1) you only need that your second drive is of the same or larger capacity than the first one, make and model is no issue in this kind of array.

4) Since the 850E chipset there is only support for one floppy drive, I can´t tell if this started with the 850 or before but surely the 875 only handles one floppy.

1) That wasn't the case with my ABIT BE6II v2.0 motherboard which is a Intel 440BX chipset based motherboard with the HighPoint Technologies HPT370 ATA100 Controller. PCI3 and PCI5 can't be shared because of the bus mastering signals from the HPT. If I plug in my Adaptec SCSI controller on either one of those two, the SCSI BIOS would fail finding any devices on the SCSI BUS. If I put my SB Audigy2 Platinum eX on either of those, the Firewire ports don't see any devices. If I put in my Intel Gigabit NIC PCI card, it can't see the boot rom for the card and then the OS can't see the NIC card.

2) I'm actually talking about the P4C800-E Deluxe which is the same as the P4C800 Deluxe except it has the ICH5R for the southbridge instead of the ICH5 non-RAID on the non-E model. I think there is actually four SATA connectors in total, two goes to the Promise and two goes to the Southbridge.

3) Interesting, I thought it had to be identical make/model drives. But anyways, can I have a HD running non-RAID and then add the second drive later to do a mirroring setup so the second drive will just mirror all the data on the first drive and I wouldn't have to start from scratch?

4) Hmm, the reason I need two floppies is because I still have a 5.25" floppy drive and a 3.5" floppy drive and I guess I can move all the data on the disks to CDR's or something since it's more of a archive rather than actual stuff I use.

 

[weboneando]

1)440 chipsets still haven´t ACPI and must drive controllers can´t share IRQ, that case you had was completely typical

2) You´re right 2 for the southbridge and 2 for the promise

3) If you´re using a hard disk and want to set it to a mirror array what you have to do is to connect it to the raid controller, then add the second drive get into the bios and build the array, be sure to know wich drive is going to be used to backup and when you build the array the bios will copy the entire contents of the drive with the data to the backup drive of course this will take some minutes.

4)Floppy is dead with the price of cdrs today you already should have backed up all you floppy´s info to cd.


I just received my P4C800 model in the box is P4C800 DELUXE-UAY so far this is what I´ve found:

Promise controller can be disabled or enabled in the bios, when controller is set to IDE mode you must choose between SATA or PATA.

Boot sequence is more than flexible I´m running everything enabled and have an Adaptec 2940u2w and an external Promise Fastrak 100, the bios lets you choose between scsi drives and promise controllers to boot, the promise controllers appear as FTX1, FTX2 this is a very robust BIOS.

I had no IRQ or resource problems so far and I´m sure that won´t have:

 

[Almighty1]

1)440 chipsets still haven´t ACPI and must drive controllers can´t share IRQ, that case you had was completely typical

2) You´re right 2 for the southbridge and 2 for the promise

3) If you´re using a hard disk and want to set it to a mirror array what you have to do is to connect it to the raid controller, then add the second drive get into the bios and build the array, be sure to know wich drive is going to be used to backup and when you build the array the bios will copy the entire contents of the drive with the data to the backup drive of course this will take some minutes.

4)Floppy is dead with the price of cdrs today you already should have backed up all you floppy´s info to cd.


I just received my P4C800 model in the box is P4C800 DELUXE-UAY so far this is what I´ve found:

Promise controller can be disabled or enabled in the bios, when controller is set to IDE mode you must choose between SATA or PATA.

Boot sequence is more than flexible I´m running everything enabled and have an Adaptec 2940u2w and an external Promise Fastrak 100, the bios lets you choose between scsi drives and promise controllers to boot, the promise controllers appear as FTX1, FTX2 this is a very robust BIOS.

I had no IRQ or resource problems so far and I´m sure that won´t have:

1) You're right. 440BX does have ACPI in it. Atleast my BIOS does. It just didn't have ACPI I/O APIC which provides 24 IRQ's instead of the normal 16. I have no idea when APIC was actually introduced though but does that solve the problem.

2) Cool, atleast I wasn't imagining things.

3) So assuming I setup the HD with all the stuff I want. I can then add
the second HD and get into the RAID array and it won't destroy the data
on my original drive right? Later on, is it possible to run the drive without RAID if I decide to since I'm only using the mirror function.

4) I know CDRs are cheap today but some of the stuff are like souveneirs from some friends in the software industry and I just wanted to keep the disk, not like I'll ever use them again. LOL. But you know, all motherboards I have seen in the last 15+ years have only one Floppy
Drive connector, it's the cable that usually supports two drives. ABIT's 875P Motherboards seem to say they support 2 Floppy drives but what's puzzling is ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe manual in the BIOS section, it seems to talk only about the setting for the first FDD so maybe the 2nd Floppy can only be used inside Windows? I was looking in the spec sheets for both the 875P and the ICH5/ICH5R and neither of them mention anything about floppy at all, is it supported elsewhere or do they just assume it's a given?

Yeah, the P4C800 and P4C800-E Deluxe are the same except for the -E has the ICH5R while the non-E has ICH5 so the RAID0 support is missing, the other thing is the 3Com Gigabit NIC on the non-E uses the PCI bus and the -E uses the Intel Gigabit NIC which is on the CSA. Intel NIC's has traditionally performed better than 3Com. I have a Intel PCI Gigabit NIC in my system for the past year. That's a pretty impressive pic of the Device Manager since I've never seen what APIC looks like before but now I see the 24 IRQ's. What does your IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers section look like?

I already have my P4C800-E Deluxe, P4C3.2Ghz CPU, and 4 sticks of Hynix PC3200 DDR400 CAS3 512MB RAM (this came from Dell's Dimension XPS) so it's matched as well as a Asylum Nvidia GeforceFX 5900 Ultra 256MB video card. I also got a new Adaptec 39320-R Dual Channel Ultra320 SCSI which I swapped with my AHA-2940UW on the old system today. I'm just waiting for my Zalman CNPS-7000Cu HSF to arrive as the P4C3.2Ghz CPU came from my friends new Dell Dimension XPS as well so there is no HSF. And then all I need to do is clone my original HDD and boot WinXP Pro SP1 with the new HDD and then go into Device Manager and change the IDE Controllers back to Standard IDE Bus-Mastering rather than with a specific chipset name and then swap the ABIT BE6II v2.0 440BX Chipset motherboard with 768MB RAM/P3 1Ghz 133FSB CPU with the new mobo, CPU and RAM and boot up into WinXP Pro SP1 and then update the drivers and that's it. I've done this enough times when building computers for family that as long as you change the IDE Controller, you won't need to do a repair install or get a BSOD with a new motherboard that uses a different chipset.

The only thing I don't like about ASUS is that their BIOS upgrades are weird. You have to first go with 1008 before 1009 and then 1010 because 1008 contains the Promise PATA and SATA Boot ROMs which 1009 and 1010 doesn't. I wished they integrate everything.

On your P4C800 motherboard, I have a question. You know the motherboard has a IEEE1394 port that is next to the normal PS/2 ports and stuff. Then there is one that is a bracket, did you get a bracket with only one port or two? The motherboard has only one connector for a cable going to the bracket like the manual states even with my -E. But for some odd reason, the bracket I have contains both a 4 pin and a 6 pin Firewire connectors and on the small circuit board part of the bracket, there are two headers for the cables, one going to the 4 pin and the other to the 6 pin port but they are not bridged so the mobo cable can only goto one of the ports which seems like a waste if you know what I mean.

Do you think the AMI BIOS ASUS is using is any good? I remember in the past, Award/Phoenix were the best BIOSes but both of those are now the same company. ASUS has always used Award because it's better. AMI on the other hand is usually cheaper for the companies to buy and AMI's WinBIOS introduced in 1995-96 was pretty poor compared to their regular BIOS.

 

[weboneando]

3) So assuming I setup the HD with all the stuff I want. I can then add
the second HD and get into the RAID array and it won't destroy the data
on my original drive right? Later on, is it possible to run the drive without RAID if I decide to since I'm only using the mirror function.

That´s correct the data drive can be used on any other controller even the normal ide channels of any mobo, as for the one used to backup I´m not so sure but my guess is that it will behave the same.

ABIT's 875P Motherboards seem to say they support 2 Floppy drives but what's puzzling is ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe manual in the BIOS section, it seems to talk only about the setting for the first FDD so maybe the 2nd Floppy can only be used inside Windows? I was looking in the spec sheets for both the 875P and the ICH5/ICH5R and neither of them mention anything about floppy at all, is it supported elsewhere or do they just assume it's a given?

AFAIK Intel has support for only one floppy drive in the new chipset families, maybe Abit has found the way to add a second drive by other way, what is sure is that you won´t be able to run two floppy drives in the P4C800 I already had to try this for a friend who wanted to have two drives to make faster copies of the disks that he uses in his Roland synths.

On your P4C800 motherboard, I have a question. You know the motherboard has a IEEE1394 port that is next to the normal PS/2 ports and stuff. Then there is one that is a bracket, did you get a bracket with only one port or two? The motherboard has only one connector for a cable going to the bracket like the manual states even with my -E. But for some odd reason, the bracket I have contains both a 4 pin and a 6 pin Firewire connectors and on the small circuit board part of the bracket, there are two headers for the cables, one going to the 4 pin and the other to the 6 pin port but they are not bridged so the mobo cable can only goto one of the ports which seems like a waste if you know what I mean.

The version I got doesn´t come with brackets, usb or firewire (big shame but is the only model I could get in here), the one you got seems to be made for those who have Sony cameras since they work with a 4 pin port anyway it would be great if they have added a selector in the bracket so you could choose between them without having to open the cpu.

Do you think the AMI BIOS ASUS is using is any good? I remember in the past, Award/Phoenix were the best BIOSes but both of those are now the same company. ASUS has always used Award because it's better. AMI on the other hand is usually cheaper for the companies to buy and AMI's WinBIOS introduced in 1995-96 was pretty poor compared to their regular BIOS.

AMI is what Intel has used for many years in their mobos and I never liked them because I hate not to have access to certain functions but the one that cames with this Asus seems pretty complete, and one thing that really liked of this is that it integrates the drives of the external controllers to the bios boot selection (the Intel D850EMV2 already have this feature) this faclitates things for people who changes constantly the boot device instead of accesing diferent bios you only need to get into the very first one.

What does your IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers section look like?

I´m not using the onboard Promise right now only enabled it to see what can be done, but I´ll add another RAID0 using SATA drives in a very near future.

 

[Almighty1]

That´s correct the data drive can be used on any other controller even the normal ide channels of any mobo, as for the one used to backup I´m not so sure but my guess is that it will behave the same.



AFAIK Intel has support for only one floppy drive in the new chipset families, maybe Abit has found the way to add a second drive by other way, what is sure is that you won´t be able to run two floppy drives in the P4C800 I already had to try this for a friend who wanted to have two drives to make faster copies of the disks that he uses in his Roland synths.






The version I got doesn´t come with brackets, usb or firewire (big shame but is the only model I could get in here), the one you got seems to be made for those who have Sony cameras since they work with a 4 pin port anyway it would be great if they have added a selector in the bracket so you could choose between them without having to open the cpu.



AMI is what Intel has used for many years in their mobos and I never liked them because I hate not to have access to certain functions but the one that cames with this Asus seems pretty complete, and one thing that really liked of this is that it integrates the drives of the external controllers to the bios boot selection (the Intel D850EMV2 already have this feature) this faclitates things for people who changes constantly the boot device instead of accesing diferent bios you only need to get into the very first one.



I´m not using the onboard Promise right now only enabled it to see what can be done, but I´ll add another RAID0 using SATA drives in a very near future.

I don't know. It seems like some people are saying that even updating the RAID controllers BIOS can make the data on the drives unuseable?

What happened when you added a second Floppy?

Hmm, so you got the non-Deluxe model of the P4C800?

Hmm, I remembered when the Pipeline Burst Caching came out, Intel's motherboards used Phoenix and people had to update their bios every 2 weeks. This was back in 1995 though. I've never used Intel mobos so don't really know for sure. Award integrates the external controllers drives to the BIOS boot selection as well except it's like ATA100 which means the HPT370 RAID or you can have it on SCSI.

Now I wonder, for a SCSI CD-ROM, do you specify SCSI or do you specify CD-ROM?

Thanks for the screenshots. I just wished it was in English since I have no idea what Canal means. lol

 

[weboneando]

I don't know. It seems like some people are saying that even updating the RAID controllers BIOS can make the data on the drives unuseable?

All you have to do is check how is your raid array build and take note of everything, then disconnect the drives (DON¨T DELETE THE ARRAY) update the RAID BIOS, then plug back the drives and set the array exactly as it was before, this same procedure can be used to move the array to another RAID controller

What happened when you added a second Floppy?

Never got to see the second drive, in bios or OS.

Hmm, so you got the non-Deluxe model of the P4C800?

It is Deluxe but the non -E version wich only includes cables for SATA, ATA133 and floppy I check this in Asus site and this is how they pack this version.

Now I wonder, for a SCSI CD-ROM, do you specify SCSI or do you specify CD-ROM?

The bios boot selection detects the bootable devices from the scsi controller, so if you have several hd in your scsi it will detect them and list them in the hard disk devices then you must choose wich one is the first hard disk, they appear in bios with a description like this:
2940U2w:00 in my case its the name of the controller followed by the hd´s id number, now for scsi cd-rom you have to select to boot from floppy since the scsi bios replaces the A: drive when you want to boot from cd.

Thanks for the screenshots. I just wished it was in English since I have no idea what Canal means. lol

Canal Ide principal: Primary Ide channel
Canal Ide secundario: Secondary Ide channel

 

[Almighty1]

All you have to do is check how is your raid array build and take note of everything, then disconnect the drives (DON¨T DELETE THE ARRAY) update the RAID BIOS, then plug back the drives and set the array exactly as it was before, this same procedure can be used to move the array to another RAID controller



Never got to see the second drive, in bios or OS.



It is Deluxe but the non -E version wich only includes cables for SATA, ATA133 and floppy I check this in Asus site and this is how they pack this version.




The bios boot selection detects the bootable devices from the scsi controller, so if you have several hd in your scsi it will detect them and list them in the hard disk devices then you must choose wich one is the first hard disk, they appear in bios with a description like this:
2940U2w:00 in my case its the name of the controller followed by the hd´s id number, now for scsi cd-rom you have to select to boot from floppy since the scsi bios replaces the A: drive when you want to boot from cd.




Canal Ide principal: Primary Ide channel
Canal Ide secundario: Secondary Ide channel

I just got my system up and running after swapping motherboards. Now my exhaust fan can't connect to the ASUS because the wire is too short but with the Zalman CNPS7000cu HS/Fan, the system is 30C even when under load. I'll get the wire later. As for the RAID, when you set up an ARRAY, don't you have to format the drives from scratch or something? Atleast that's what the manual leads me to believe.

Yeah, I think the second drive is just disabled in the BIOS since the support in the chipset is there. My 2nd drive is hooked up but the BIOS only supports the first one. It's similar to how SMART works. The Floppy, Serial Ports, Parallel Ports, PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard ports aren't provided by the 875P chipset at all but rather by the WinBond W83627THF-A Super I/O chipset, it's all the way on the bottom of the last PCI slot. The Winbond W83627THF-A does the 3 fans as well as support for 4 Floppy drive. I just looked at the spec sheet at Winbond so it's the bios that doesn't support more than one floppy drive.

Yeah, you're right about the -E and non-E Deluxe packaging. I wonder do they even sell non Deluxe packages.

The BIOS boot device section is pretty interesting. Speaking about the BIOS, I'm lost on the RAM timings. I noticed that RAM is specificed as 3-3-3 but what are the last two numbers exactly since I noticed it's now 5 numbers instead of 3 atleast as far as the BIOS is concerned.

Can you give me a screen snapshot of your Device Manager -> System Devices section? Did you fresh install with this board? Thanks.

 

[Almighty1]

One other thing I noticed is that the USB ports on the board may be USB 2.0 hardwarewise but in Windows, the Intel chipset drivers are installing it as 1.1 as you can view the driver details on the USB Host Controller, they all use usbuhci.dll which is the Universal USB Host Controller aka 1.1. 2.0 devices require usbehci.dll as in Enhanced USB Host Controller.

 

[weboneando]

The BIOS boot device section is pretty interesting. Speaking about the BIOS, I'm lost on the RAM timings. I noticed that RAM is specificed as 3-3-3 but what are the last two numbers exactly since I noticed it's now 5 numbers instead of 3 atleast as far as the BIOS is concerned.

I think this are the values:
DRAM CAS Latency# / DRAM RAS# Precharge / DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay / Dram Precharge Delay / DRAM Burst Lenght
But don´t take this for granted since I´m not much in overclocking and I always used AUTO to let the bios handle this settings.

One other thing I noticed is that the USB ports on the board may be USB 2.0 hardwarewise but in Windows, the Intel chipset drivers are installing it as 1.1 as you can view the driver details on the USB Host Controller, they all use usbuhci.dll which is the Universal USB Host Controller aka 1.1. 2.0 devices require usbehci.dll as in Enhanced USB Host Controller.

It all depends on the bios settings, where you can set the usb to be "full speed" wich makes all ports 1.1 or "high speed" making all ports 2.0

Did you fresh install with this board?

Normally I always do fresh installs when swaping mobos but right now fortunately I been having a lot of work and haven´t got the time to do this, maybe in 2 or 3 weeks I´ll have the time to do this.

 

[Almighty1]

I think this are the values:
DRAM CAS Latency# / DRAM RAS# Precharge / DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay / Dram Precharge Delay / DRAM Burst Lenght
But don´t take this for granted since I´m not much in overclocking and I always used AUTO to let the bios handle this settings.



It all depends on the bios settings, where you can set the usb to be "full speed" wich makes all ports 1.1 or "high speed" making all ports 2.0



Normally I always do fresh installs when swaping mobos but right now fortunately I been having a lot of work and haven´t got the time to do this, maybe in 2 or 3 weeks I´ll have the time to do this.

The part where I am lost is the DRAM Precharge Delay and DRAM Burst Length since the memory specs only shows DRAM CAS Latency, DRAM RAS Precharge and DRAM RAS to CAS delay but I have no idea what the other two is.

As for the USB, I figured it out. It's not the BIOS settings but rather,
there are 4 Intel(R) 82801EB USB Universal to Host Controllers listed under USB Host Controllers which are USB 1.1 as they use usbuhci and then there is a 5th one called Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Controller which uses the usbehci USB 2.0. I guess the 5th one is the actual controller controlling the other 4. What happened originally was there was a unknown device sitting in Other Devices and I thought it was the ICH5R RAID Controller so I used the IAA RAID driver from the floppy when it was actually the Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Controller which is where the USB 2.0 support is.

Fresh installs don't always make a difference as I tried that already and the results were the same.

Do you or anyone else know if the following device will only show up when you actually have two drives connected to the ICH5R SATA ports and setting the BIOS to run as RAID?

Intel(R) 82801ER I/O Controller Hub

What I couldn't figure out is that according to Intel, in System Devices, for items that have the Intel(R) 82875P in the name, there is supposed to be the following devices:

Intel(R) 82875P Memory Controller Hub - 2578
Intel(R) 82875P Processor to AGP Controller - 2579
Intel(R) 82875P Processor to PCI to CSA bridge - 257B
Intel(R) 82875P Processor to I/O Memory Interface - 257E

But when looking at your System Devices screenshot and even mines both as a upgrade of my old system and a fresh install, we have everything except the:

Intel(R) 82875P Processor to I/O Memory Interface - 257E

I wonder is this the same as the Intel(R) 82875P Memory Controller Hub - 2578 since the 275E is supposed to be the Processor to I/O Bridge when unnamed but when I checked one of those Sony machines at the SonyStyle store earlier today, the location is PCI bus, device 0, function 0 which is the exact same location as the Memory Controller Hub so I wonder is it the same thing.

 

[weboneando]

Intel(R) 82875P Processor to I/O Memory Interface - 257E

I think this is the PAT feature (Performance Acceleration Technology) and it is enabled only when double channel DDR memory is used.

I´m using a single memory stick right now (single channel DDR), in a few weeks will be swapping my proc for one with an 800 mhz fsb and also will swap the memory, with this config when I start the pc the bios reports "single channel memory" , do you have a report refering to memory? what does it says?

As for the RAID it is only possible to access the RAID bios when a drive is conected to it but I can´t tell if it´s the same thing inside the os, since the version I have has the RAID controller in the pci bus instead of the southbridge it appears even with no drives attached but I guess that it doesn´t behave equal to the one in the southbridge.

 

[Almighty1]

Intel(R) 82875P Processor to I/O Memory Interface - 257E

I think this is the PAT feature (Performance Acceleration Technology) and it is enabled only when double channel DDR memory is used.

I´m using a single memory stick right now (single channel DDR), in a few weeks will be swapping my proc for one with an 800 mhz fsb and also will swap the memory, with this config when I start the pc the bios reports "single channel memory" , do you have a report refering to memory? what does it says?

As for the RAID it is only possible to access the RAID bios when a drive is conected to it but I can´t tell if it´s the same thing inside the os, since the version I have has the RAID controller in the pci bus instead of the southbridge it appears even with no drives attached but I guess that it doesn´t behave equal to the one in the southbridge.

I am using DDR Memory though. 4 sticks of matched Hynix PC3200 DDR400 512MB sticks. From what I have seen, no one with a 875P motherboard or the ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe has been able to get that device to show up in the device manager. Yet, when you goto h**p://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/800series.htm - Intel insists that the device should show up in Device Manager for the 875P chipset. On asusboards.com forums, a guess was that the MCH device is the same as the 875P since some 875P motherboards have ICH5R and others have ICH5 and others don't have the CSA while others have the CSA. My BIOS reports Dual Channel memory.

As for the RAID, I think the OS needs the RAID BIOS active before it sees it. I have the same RAID controller you have except the only thing they did on the -E is added the GB NIC on the CSA and also the ICH5R and the Promise one does come up. Maybe the Intel SATA RAID BIOS only shows up when something is connected to it unlike the Adaptec, Promise, HighPoint stuff where it comes up and tries to detect devices. I guess when it's built into the chipset, Intel has it more smart or something. What kind of temperatures are you seeing? I don't have air conditioning at all but I'm getting 35C with 100 processes running right now on a P4C3.2Ghz CPU, I am using the Zalman CNPS-7000Cu Heatsink fan at full speed.

 

[weboneando]

What kind of temperatures are you seeing? I don't have air conditioning at all but I'm getting 35C with 100 processes running right now on a P4C3.2Ghz CPU, I am using the Zalman CNPS-7000Cu Heatsink fan at full speed.

I haven´t paid attention to temperatures, what are you using to monitor the temperature?

 

[Almighty1]

I haven´t paid attention to temperatures, what are you using to monitor the temperature?

Motherboard Monitor 5.