Asus P4P800-E, especially the deluxe version, is a very nice board, according to my experience in the past. It was my first S478/P4 setup and I was quite happy with it, though mine has a lower spec CPU (1.4 or something?).

I choosen that board actually for RAID options and on board firewire. One thing I did then was capturing video over firewire so I had two RAID setups on it, one RAID 0 for capturing video without frame loss, and other was RAID 1 for safe storage.

In that setup, my sound card was also an Audigy 2 (ZS though), which still kicks in my XP box (Athlon 64 X2). 🤣

Not sure yet if it's the deluxe model. Hope it works as good as you remember. Finishing the install of the items sometime this weekend or maybe tomorrow. Will get a few pics on here for it.

Hey, that's very similar to my old P4 setup! 😁

The P4P800-E is always the "Deluxe" model. There was no other P4P800-E. It is a very nice board and nice upgrade from the original P4P800 series. It is one of the first boards to feature 8-channel audio, and a full set of 6 minijacks. Plus it has ICH5R and an extra SATA+PATA RAID controller by Promise. Just like the regular P4P800, If you have good DDR400 RAM with low timings, you can enable Performance Mode + Memory Acceleration Mode, and almost reach the performance of the i875P.

I've had two of these in my P4 system (one died after ~7 years, the replacement after ~1.5). Now it has the P4C800-E instead. That's the i875P one, with almost the same peripherals. The onboard audio is slightly less functional (5.1 instead of 7.1 an only 3 jacks instead of 6), but I don't use it anyways, since I have the Audigy 2 ZS. It also has the Intel CSA Gigabit LAN, which in theory provides slightly more performance than the PCI-based Marvell controller.

You are correct, it is a Deluxe! 😀

It's mostly together now with XP installed on a single drive. Need to finish SP installs and driver loading. BUT ....

Problem is it won't register 4GB of ram, yes I know XP only uses 3GB. Tried 2 2x1GB sets of RAM rated the same and I get no video or boot. The 2x1GB sets all register 400 and dual channel by themselves. I drop in 1 set of 2x1GB and 2 2x512mb, rated 400mhz and it shows as 3GB at 320mhz. 😢 Guess I will need to find another set of 512 to get it to hit 400mhz. I can add in a single 1GB and it registers 3GB in Single channel mode. I have read a bit on Single vs Dual and I'm not sure if it's worth worrying over.

More updates as they come and pics too, just need to upload to imageshack 🤣

Can't you just use 2x1GB + 2x512mb and set the speed manually?

Odd that two 1 GB sticks don't work. I always prefer as few sticks as possible.

For all P4 motherboards the cause may be the RAM slots corrosion. Clear contacts with the metal ruler/flat screwdriver before DIMM inserting.
About the P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard - it have some design flaws. Like some IDE/SATA/USB headers are too close to PCI slot lines... Except this - this is the best I865PE motherboard.

I don't know if you have it but here is the manual for your board:

http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock478/P … 00-e_deluxe.pdf

Please see the section for RAM installation. The board is picky about its ram configurations.

alexanrs wrote:

Can't you just use 2x1GB + 2x512mb and set the speed manually?

Thats what I didn't try. All the RAM sets I tried all registered 400MHZ until I did that combo. Will look into trying to set them.

To tayyare::
Yes I have that Manual already downloaded. Thanks for the offer 😀

For Phil ::
If I run 2x1GB sticks they show just fine at 400mhz Dual channel running. Wish I could get two 1.5GB sticks for it 🤣

And Gamecollector:::
I used all RAM in all slots. I will look at them since you mentioned it, just to cover my bases.

Quick shot of the build mostly finished....

Adding to the joy of the P4 build is another board I got running 😲
Enter the MSI 865PE Neo2-p (MS-6728 Ver 2)
P4 3.0Ghz CPU

Need to invest in more DDR 400Mhz and another decent AGP card. More to follow later 😎

Then just stick with two 1 GB sticks. Should be plenty for most games. Remember that late Windows XP games, often already had DX10 features and are best played on Vista+.

2006 / 2007 seems to be that point.

Will most likely stick with the 2x1GB setup since I am positive it works. Will get it finished and maybe get some kind of benchmarks or CPU-z info posted soon.

Side note, anyone have opinions on the MSI board?

Has a P4 3.0 on it with 2x256mb RAM for the moment.

I've a similar board, the 865PE Neo2-PFISR. I did try to populate all 4 RAM slots with 2x1GB and 2x512MB DDR400 sticks and I remembered either it didn't boot or had the ram speeds wrong. In the end I settled for the 2x1GB RAM config. Maybe it also was picky about the RAM configs as mentioned earlier. It could be due to my using of all double-sided RAM sticks and the chipset's ability to address the banks/ranks (?). Not very sure in that area..

I'm using a similar board to play Splinter Cell with. Works great 😀

Bullmecha wrote:

Side note, anyone have opinions on the MSI board?

I don't have that exact MSI model, but I do have the MS-6758 which is the "Neo 875P" board. I don't know how closely related they are. I do see at least some minor differences in the layout so it's more than just a chipset swap.

Their 875P board frustrated me. At first it seemed to be working fine, but I noticed it was performing poorly compared to a Dell 865 based board from an Optiplex GX270.
The only way I found to fix the performance gap on the MSI was to use some BIOS option that loads performance optimized presets. I don't remember the exact terminology. It was apparently changing something that did not otherwise have a user visible setting. MSI felt the need to warn the user about potential instability in this mode, and indeed, when it was in this configuration, it became unreliable at POSTing. The Dell had the same performance but working reliably without the guise of an "optimized" preset.

The MSI VRM was running disturbingly hot when a Prescott chip was installed. Some old internet posts showed that many people had killed their MSI 875P motherboards with Prescotts. MSI disabled overclocking options for Prescotts in a later BIOS to mitigate it.
With my best Northwood, it ran a lot cooler but I was still getting annoyed with it for other problems and performance. I don't remember the details, it's been several months since I was messing with those P4 boards. I just remember ending up too annoyed with the MSI to use it in the build I had intended.
Again, that experience was with the 875P model, and it was just one board, for all I know it could be faulty.

I have killed a MSI 875P Neo board when trying to overclock a Prescott! I increased the voltage from 1.38V to 1.45V or something like that and a MOSFET shorted when loading Windows 😁. The board is now hanging on the "dead boards I will repair some day if I need to but otherwise wont bother with" wall.

Hey,
Been away for awhile. Just getting back to this P4 build. Thinking of changing the case to the CyberPower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro Case I have, more space to work with I think. I will add pics of case later.

Havent done any OC on it, not sure if I will yet.