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- Date:
- Tuesday , August 13, 2002
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Asus P4T533
The P4T533, Asus’ new flagship i850E motherboard poised to raise the performance bar for enthusiasts alike. But does it deliver? Read on for what will most assuredly be some surprising results.
Specifications
CPU | Pentium4 Socket 478 400/533MHz |
Chipset | Intel i850E MCH + Intel ICH2 |
FSB | 400/533 & 800Mhz/1066Mhz RDRAM Memory |
BIOS | Award BIOS |
Memory | Two 238-pin 32bit RIMM slots RIMM 3200/RIMM 4200 |
Expansion Slots | 1 AGP, 6 PCI Slots |
Onboard IDE | 2 ATA 100 / 2 ATA 133 RAID via Promise |
USB | 2 USB 1.1 / 4 USB 2.0 |
AGP | AGP 1x/2x/4x |
Audio | C-Media 8738 6ch |
Board Layout
The first thing you will notice is the size of this motherboard; it is very compact cramming a lot into a little space. Definitely a concern for those with smaller cases.
The black passive heatsink rises upwards from the i850E MCH. When removed you will find the sticky kind of thermal material that is hard to remove but does provide full coverage in this situation. The Intel ICH2 is presented in the last picture. Asus decided to go with the ICH2 for some reason. You would think on their flagship board they would want to use the ICH4. With the ICH4 on board USB 2.0 and Ethernet would have been provided and Asus would not have had to go towards a third party option.
Here you see the on board CMI8738 6CH audio chip. As well as the NEC USB 2.0 and Promise RAID controller. In the last picture notice the RAID Jumper, this is to enable and disabled the Promise RAID controller. Yes, you have to use a jumper; there are no BIOS options for this.
In the first picture you see the Jen Jumper, this selects whether you are in Dip Switch mode or Jumperfree mode which allows you to change settings via the BIOS. If you choose dip switch mode however you control the clock speed with the Frequency dip switch and the multiplier dip switch. There is also a chart right on the motherboard showing you the dip switch selections.
There is a power connector on the motherboard called EZ Plug. In case you do not have the special Pentium 4 power supply with 12v connector you can optionally plug in a regular Molex connector to supply sufficient power. This is a great feature so you don’t have to go out there and buy a new power supply if you don’t have one that supports the ATX12V spec. There are some jumpers above the RIMM slots. The one at the bottom of the three jumpers selects over-voltage. When enabled you have more voltage settings via the BIOS in jumperfree mode which allows up to 1.8v.
There are a few concerns however with this motherboard. The 12v power connector is situationed between the AGP slot and the CPU area. When a HSF and video card are installed it makes it impossible to get to this cable. There are also a row of capacitors right next to the CPU mounting zone. As long as your HSF fits within that standard mounting zone everything will be ok, but if you get a HSF that extends farther it will not fit.
You will find standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections with 2 USB 1.1 ports as well as 2 comm. and 1 parallel. There is also an additional 2 USB 2.0 ports built right onto the back of the motherboard. An included ATX back plate is present so that you can mount this in your current case. Also the on board audio ports are present.
BIOS
Lets go into each setting of the most important "Advanced" BIOS screen. If you have the Jen jumper set to Jumperfree mode you can manually select settings in this menu. If you set CPU speed to Manual you can change the CPU External Frequency option. As pictured, you can select a Front Side Bus using integers between 100 and 200. You can change the CPU/Memory Frequency Ration to 3X or 4X which will come in handy overclocking as you will later see.
This motherboard is able to lock the AGP/PCI bus at 67/33 which is a very welcome feature for overclockers. CPU voltage can be set all the way up to 1.8v when the Overvolt jumper on the motherboard is enabled. The only RDRAM timming option that is present is RDRAM Turbo Mode enabled or disabled. It does not provide much of a performance increase in Sandra Memory score. There is also a simple Hardware Monitor to let you set Power temperature warnings and fan control.