Help me choose S775 board please

I'm looking for an upgrade to my ageing P4 system I know S775 is old as well
but for me it's an upgrade, mind you pen and paper would be an upgrade as
well..

All I need from board is half decent on board sound ( I have a 5.1 sound
system and want to use that) 6 x SATA sockets, 2 PCI slots, PATA socket,
floppy socket (some of us still like this option), as many usb ports on the
back as poss, I am not a gamer so just a simple single x16 pcie slot is
needed and will not need the crossfire option (over kill for space invaders
and angry birds), I would like 2 x PCI slots but other then that i don't
know what is best to look for.

I know this is laughable given I'm buying old tech but I'd like it to be as
future proof as poss and buy that i mean have a spare PCIe slots so i can
add stuff like USB3 card later in life, things like that.
I understand the vast majority of asus (and other motherboards and there
tech) but the PCIe slot have always been double Dutch to me, for example
some will say "2x16 when in crossfire (which I think means 2 vid cards) goes
down to x8 for each socket (which seems stupid to me is that not the same as
x16 on one lane?) anyway if i buy one with crossfire support can i just
ignore that and use one x16 slot for vid cards and the other slot for say my
USB 3 card, and given you know a bit about my situation what board would
you suggest?

As a rule I use machine for video conversion and heavy CPU work, if you
need any more info from me please feel free to ask looking at Asus
comparison site I have shortlisted the following:
Maximus II Formula
P5Q Deluxe
P5Q Premium - 14 USB 2.0 ports (4 ports at mid-board, 10 ports at back
panel)
P5Q PRO
P5Q3
P5Q3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP @n
P5Q-E
P5Q-E/WiFi-AP

I think the P5Q3 line is just DDR3 memory

I welcome any feedback the group has and as i say if you need more info from
just ask.

Jim

 

I think your main problem, is going to be, finding one for sale.

If I look at Newegg, there are lots of "basic" LGA775 boards, suited
to building office machines. It's pretty hard to find a board with
two good PCI Express slots (i.e. something P45 based).

You may have to pick the first board you can find, that even comes
remotely close to what you want, as opposed to having "choices".

When I bought my last LGA775, I bought it from a supplier I don't
normally use, and paid more for it than I'd planned on. And that
was because, even then, pickings were thin. I got more or less what
I wanted (two video card slots), for the same purpose as you, some
future upgrade options.

At least this one has two video card slots, so there is some
expansion capability. There is no particular reason not to
buy DDR3 memory, as it is reasonably priced now. This has
USB3 (via one of those NEC chips). What I can never tell with
ZZF, is whether it's actually in stock or not. I find it hard to
believe, that any P45's are left.

GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-USB3P Intel P45 Core 2 ... Socket 775 PC3-17600 (DDR3-2200) ATX $143

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10012154

If you use the Newegg page for that same board model, you can get
some specs for it. And the Gigabyte site will have a user manual.
You can also get customer reviews here.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128433

*******

I really think you should be looking at something a little more
modern. If price is an issue, AMD is an option for that. They
have quad and hex cores, as worthy low to mid range competitors.
If you go with LGA775, either you're going to pay too much
(for a good board), or pay a moderate price for something
not worth having (bad BIOS or production quality issues etc).

"AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz $230"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849

The 1090T does the benchmark here in 71 seconds, while a 980X is 53 seconds.
If your video software is multithreaded, then you'll get your
money's worth out of this processor.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...-Reference-v2.0-MPEG-2-to-H.264-AVC,2424.html

The 1090T has Turbo, and runs six cores at 3.2Ghz, or three cores
at 3.6GHz. On a single threaded benchmark, that helps get it a
bit closer to an E8400.

Paul

 

Hi Paul and thanks for the quick reply, I'm in the UK and we have a few that
still stock some of the line but to be honest I reckon eBay will be my
choice right now, I'm happy to buy from them just so long as I can get the
right board but this seems to be a situation of spoilt for choice there are
just so many variations around and this is where I get confused with all the
slots, given I will only ever need one x16 slot, should I just look for a
board with a single x 16 or is 2 or 3 x16 slots as these will just default
to lower speed and take my USB3 card (for example) without and issues, sorry
if I've not made myself 100%.

Jim

 

Look for a P45 based board, with at least two PCI Express (x16 sized)
video card slots. You can use one slot for a video card, the other
slot for some kind of high performance add-in card at a later date.

If the motherboard already has a USB3 chip (two USB3 ports stated
as being on the board), that will save you having to buy a card.
A two port USB3 PCI Express card can be purchased for around $25,
or effectively for less money, if it is included on the motherboard.

Let's work through one from your list, and see what it's got.

P5Q3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131298

Expansion Slots

PCI Express 2.0 x16 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots,
(black at max. x8 link)

PCI Express x4 1 x PCI Express x16 slot at max. x4 link (black)

PCI Express x1 (2)

PCI Slots (2)

PCI Express slots come in various sizes. The part in front of the key slot,
is for power, and that part is a constant size. The part after the
key, has room for more contacts, that allow wiring up more "lanes".
The lane count can be 1,4,8,16. So there are at least four
sizes of PCI Express connectors they can use when designing
motherboards.

The connector can be "sub-wired". To make it possible to plug in
just about anything, they may provide a x16 sized connector. But
the engineer designing the motherboard, may only connect up 8 of
the lanes. That means the slot can only function at an x8 rate,
even though it is x16 in size. With the original PCI Express
standard, each lane was 250MB/sec, so 8 lanes of wiring can
provide 2GB/sec of bandwidth (in the form of packets).

Now, the add-in card, and it's wiring, also matter.
Again, using our x16 slot, with x8 wiring, I'll plug in
an x1 card (such as the USB3 add-in card). The motherboard
will notice, that there is only a signal on one lane, and
both ends will work a negotiation so they both agree they're
running at x1.

Such a flexible scheme is good, but in the case of the
motherboard designer, there is some room for dishonesty.
When you see a x16 slot on the motherboard, you assume
it's all wired up, but it may not be. In the case of
P45 chipset, the Northbridge has a total of 16 lanes.
If you see a P45 motherboard then, with two x16 sized
slots, you know they both can't be fully wired. And when
both video card slots are used, they run at x8. So they've
split the lanes into two.

x8 is enough bandwidth to run just about anything. With a video
card, you only notice a slowdown in benchmarks, with x4 wiring.
The x8 wiring may be good enough, not to be too concerned.

The P5Q3 Deluxe has a third x16 sized slot, but it is wired x4.
That slot might be good for a PCI Express audio card, perhaps
a mid-range RAID card, or the like.

In terms of the P45 chipset diagram, it looks like this.
(This is just from memory, I didn't look it up to verify.)

LGA775
Processor
|
| Front Side Bus
|
Video_Card_Slot_x8 --- P45 ----- Dual channel memory
Video_Card_Slot_x8 |
| DMI bus
|
ICH10R ----- PCI bus
|
|
PCI Express x1 * 6

The slot with the x4 wiring, gets the lanes from the bottom
group of 6. The two remaining lanes, might be connected
to an onboard LAN chip or a storage controller (like a
Jmicron for the IDE connector).

So that's how a board could be wired up, and that's an example
of the kinds of checks I go through when checking an architecture.

Gigabyte brand boards, include a block diagram of the architecture
in the user manual, which makes it a bit easier to check what
they're doing. But even so, they still have a tendency to
dishonesty, and sometimes the diagram leaves a bit to be
desired. There is no honest intent when drawing it, and
the marketing people likely ask the artist to make the odd
change, to make the board "look better".

Asus doesn't bother with those shenanigans, as they know
they don't want to tell the truth, and they'll withhold
any detail they don't want you to know. (We rely on
pictures, with part numbers, or web site reviews, to
get the real details.) More guesswork is required, to decode
exactly how the slots might be wired (and then you can decide
what the consequences might be).

There may be a text section of the manual, that attempts
to explain the slot wiring, but there are always cases
where the tech writer didn't do a good job of
transcribing the details. And just a hint of dishonesty
at the root of it.

One detail about PCI Express and USB3, is the NEC USB3 chip
uses a revision 2 lane running at 500MB/sec. This is
double the speed of a revision 1 lane running at 250MB/sec.
Why is this important ? If your motherboard comes with
a USB3 chip, it may only be running "half speed". It
depends, on whether the NEC brand chip, is connected to
a Revision 1 or a Revision 2 lane. Even at 250MB/sec,
this is plenty for the average application. But later, if
you're having "benchmarks" with friends, you may discover
you "bought a loser", and that's about the only time you
might care. Back in the LGA775 generation, it was hard to
make x1 slots with Revision 2 performance. Your video card
slot will have it, so if you plug the USB3 PCI Express x1 card
into a video card slot, it'll run full speed. And that's why
I'm suggesting you want a board with two video card slots,
because those slots should be Revision 2, and use 500MB/sec
lanes. Many other slots, such as the dodgy x4 wired one near
the bottom edge of the motherboard, would end up running the
card at half speed (250MB/sec).

The recently released Sandy Bridge LGA1155 boards, are the
first motherboards to be "consistently Revision 2", so that
relieves me of one of my checks On older boards, I
still have to do my checks.

One other neat thing about the PCI Express bus, is it is
Full Duplex. Say you buy a 2 port USB3 add-in card for
$25. You connect an external disk to each port. You
copy a file from one external disk, to the other
external disk. Those operations use separate sets of
wires on the PCI Express slot, so the reads and
writes don't "bottleneck" on the bus. On the old
PCI bus, traffic was half-duplex, there'd be a burst
of read data, then a burst of write data. And the disks
would run slower, due to the bottleneck at the bus.

The full duplex of the PCI Express lanes, is the reason
they can support two USB3 ports, using a single
Revision 2 PCI Express lane, without anyone complaining.
(You're less likely to attempt to read from two
external disks, at the same time. Read from one, and
write to the other, is a more likely scenario. If the
chip was used on a "server" setup, then there could be
some bottlenecking if both disks "pump" in the same
direction at the same time. Since USB3 is so high
performance, the only way you'll get close to
breaking it, is using the most expensive SSD type
disk you can find. No current generation rotating
hard drive, is close to breaking it. Even with
inferior Revision 1 wiring, you're still in
reasonably good shape. It should work as well as
ESATA would.)

I look at slot layout, rear connector types, and
architecture, to decide what I like. In terms of
slot layout, my current PCI Express board, only
allows me to use about half the slots. Unlike
the more homogeneous motherboards of previous
generations, where I tended to be able to use
more of the slots. On some of my older systems,
I had six PCI expansions slots, and I filled them all.
Those days are over, because of things like
"fat" video cards, that cover several slots, and
need room for cooling.

On some motherboards, you'll even find a conflict
between the Northbridge heatsink, and the first
one or two slots. If you were to put a long
card in there, it might bump into something.

Paul

 

Paul I have not forgotten about this thread just having a few problems will
post back asap.

 

Hi Paul, so sorry for taking what seems like and age getting back to you
been very busy, however that being said I have been able to do some reading
and where as before I spoke to you I was going for older board but what I
would call mainstream chipset I started looking at x38 and x48 boards, still
being S775 of course but given this system will be a stop gap I didn't want
to spend too much cash, in the end I went and got hold of an Asus P5E3
Premium/WiFi-AP @n it seems to offer everything (and more to be honest) that
I will need for a while, so thanks for your help.

While I have you can I pick your brain again regarding the board and new
cpu, I'm trying to find a E8600 somewhere but was wondering what will happen
if the previous owner had a lower spec cpu and the E8600 needed a bios
update so in effect my cpu would not be supported until I did a bios update,
do you have any idea what would happen, I do still use a floppy so can boot
from that and update bios ASAP but don't know if I'll be even be able to get
that far or do you reckon I'll be in the silly position that I will have to
buy lowest spec cpu just to be able to update the bios?

Once again Paul sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

Jim

 

http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5E3 Premium/[email protected]

Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz,1333FSB,L2:6MB,65W,rev.E0) ALL 0505
Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz,1333FSB,L2:6MB,rev.C0) ALL 0204
Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz,1333FSB,L2:6MB,65W,rev.E0) ALL 0505
Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz,1333FSB,L2:6MB,rev.C0) ALL 0204
Core 2 Duo E8600 (3.33GHz,1333FSB,L2:6MB,65W,rev.E0) ALL 0505

It looks like the stepping of the processor (E0), caused a newer BIOS
to be required.

On the download page, 0505 is dated 2008/07/11.
The 0204 is from before 2008/04/21.
The 0803 current BIOS is 2009/06/22.

If the previous owner bought a board from the first batch, then it could
be running 0204.

1) You get a chance to check the paper sticker on the BIOS chip, when
the board comes in. If the value on there is 0505 or higher, your
problem is solved. My board uses a serial EEPROM and they stuck
a sticker on one of the I/O stacks, of all places. I have a different
board than yours, and my sticker says "0304". So I take it that is
the initial release programmed into it. The serial EEPROM can be too
small to take a sticker. The older boards with PLCC chip type, left
room for a sticker.

2) If the version remains unknown, plug in your E8600 and try it.
The initial VID should be set by the pins on the processor. Worst
case, you get a black screen and no beeps (some BIOS code designs
get confused during CPUID stage and freeze up).

3) Or, the thing runs, and you can get into the BIOS. Test with your
MSDOS boot disk, and see if it'll boot. Sometimes, the MSDOS boot disk
itself is the problem. On my previous board, I had to resolve a
resource conflict, before MSDOS would boot.

I don't see a PLCC (square) EEPROM chip on that board, so it's
probably an 8 pin serial EEPROM like mine.

http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/721/asus_p5e3_fullboard.jpg

Your options there are to have Asus flash it (talk to tech support - at
one time, they would accept boards for reflashing, but only in
certain countries with the ability to do the flashing). Or, like you
were planning, you buy a used Celeron and install that long enough to
do the flash.

If it was my board, I'd just deal with it, based on symptoms. If you're
in a great rush, or have a fixed delivery date, then buy a used LGA775
Celeron that is on the support.asus.com list and you'll be all set.

I'd just assemble it on the bench first, and not waste the time putting
it in the case. If the BIOS release issue appears to be solved, then
you can power down and start final assembly.

Paul