High end P4 for XP? Meh...
For 98SE? Hell yeah!

Godlike wrote:

From my knowlegde I know about two socket 478 boards are actually have great quality, these are ASUS P4P800-E and Abit IS7 865PE. Both boards have excellent performance and stability.

The P4P800 series are great performers, but they are far from reliable. I've based past 478 rigs on these boards, and they don't handle high-end CPUs well. I'm sitting on a pile on dead P4P800 (X and Deluxe) boards right now. Some are fixable (dead CPU mosfet), while others are not. Another common issue with these is dead NB chips. They seem to fail silently - the machine works now, you shut it down and it won't come back on again.

The Abit IS7 on the other had is very reliable. Some suffer form mosfet issues as well (when overcloking or using CPUs with extremely high TDP and heat generation), but not to the degree asus boards do.

Godlike wrote:

I'm considering this motherboard for high-end Pentium 4 era Windosw XP SP3 system, is it worth you think?

I don't think a socket 478 P4 machine would make a good XP rig. This is because of my personal preference of playing games maxed out visually, at 1600x1200 or 1920x1080 and at 60+ FPS. Windows XP covers a big timeframe (especially if you ignore vista and the first year of windows 7) and some later games require pretty beefy specs.

It seems a WinXP rig is actually useful nowadays since newer DX12 (and some older DX11) drivers appear to break compatibility or cause perfomance issues in some older games, but I'd spec it higher then a 478 rig for added performance and flexibility.

My current XP rig dual-boots windows 7 and is used to play older games (some from steam, some not). It's a Q6600/Asus P5K64-WS/GTX 280/4GB DDR3. It's fast enough to run relatively new games as well, like the latest WoW , World of Tanks SD client and SWTOR with limited graphical details but very good FPS (60-100 fps in WOT at 1600x1200 / medium settings), as well as games like Call of Duty (1 and 2) and Quake 4 at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and max details.

My other XP machines were... slightly disappointing. All my 478 rigs died (killed several mainboards) even tough i was using a beefy Enermax NANX PSU and a Tuniq 120 cooler. It seems most boards don't handle the heat coming off a 3.4GHz Prescott very well - and I don't currently have an Abit IS7 or AI7 board to try again. In any case, performance on these machines was mediocre at best in games like Far Cry, CoD and Quake 4 when cranking up the resolution and graphics, despite using a Radeon X1950 PRO AGP video card.

These games seem to run a little better on my LGA775 rig (pentium D 945 running at 3.7Ghz + Abit AV8 + Radeon x1950 PRO) but still not fast enough for my liking. My favorite video card for an XP / DX9/10 machine would be a GTX 480 or Radeon 5870/6950 - they are fast enough to satisfy my criteria, and old enough to have good XP compatibility.

Unfortunately I don't have a 5870, and my Gainward GTX 480 cards have stock cooling and I don't want to kill them, so until I can get a proper cooler like some form of AC Accelero X3 or a Zalman I'll be sticking to the GTX280. There are plenty of these to be had really cheap so I don't mind if it craps out.

sprcorreia wrote:

High end P4 for XP? Meh...
For 98SE? Hell yeah!

Agreed. 478 rigs make good win98 machines for running old win9x games at silly resolutions / detail levels.

In my opinion socket 478 and late model socket A machines are stuck in an awkward valley of sorts. Too fast for some games, too slow for others. I mean if you're gonna build a retro rig, might as well go all out and enjoy games with as much aye candy as possible right?

kanecvr wrote:

heat coming off a 3.4GHz Prescott

I did some testings on that CPU and true that is hot about 50 Celcius degree on idle.
What I consider here is to summarize that Intel Desktop Board D865PERL is worth to look at. Target of this build is not to build really Ultimate rig to handle newer games of XP era. Just to build quality system.
The parts I consider are from 2003-2004, where it have 98 to talk about? The motherboard I consider supports up to 4GB RAM memory, how would you use it under windows 98, the most I could ever get to run stable was 1 GB under 98SE. XP 64bit can take it...
apart from that AGP 8x... I consider NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra for this build, Audigy 2 ZS etc.
I agree 100% that X1950PRO is great card, great performing card. I bought pci-e version in release time and afrer years AGP version for comparison. Great DX9 choice. I played STALKER, Bioshock and test it under various benchmarking software.
Thank you for all your opinion 😀
And remember this will not going to be monster Win XP PC, just quality XP build 😀
CPU I consider: Pentium 4 HT 3.4 800FSB (released 2004)
Kind regards.
Godlike!

I use an Intel D875PBZ for benchmarking the higher end Pentium 4 processors. I do have a D865PERL and remember it not working with the top end processors. But note that there are revisions of these boards.

The Northwood 3.4 has a TDP of 89W compared to 103W of the 3.4 Prescott and EE. In my gaming benchmarks the Prescott is a bit faster than Northwood, but not worth the extra heat and power draw. The EE IS worth it, it's quite a bit faster, but not that easy or cheap to find.

So my recommendations are to either go all out, and build one around the 3.4 EE because it's a really cool, end of an era build. Or just go with a 3.0, 3.2 or 3.4 standard Northwood.

Regarding high end AGP cards, I didn't have much luck with the AMD cards. I had to use a special AGP hotfix driver for example and the X1950 Pro was faster in some games such as Far Cry or F.E.A.R., but in anything OpenGL, you're better off with a 6800 GT or 7800 GS.

But these games don't run optimally on such a machine. Just player older games like Serious Sam Second Encounter, X2 The Threat, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and you will get great performance.

Far Cry can run ok at 1024 x 768 with medium details, especially in-doors it will perform great, outdoors it might chug a bit. But yea, I would play that game on something newer.

You will need to source a decent cooler for sure, careful with tower coolers, the boards expect airflow around the CPU socket areas. VRM out caps are often shot, so if you are not into replacing caps that might be an issue.

Do consider 775 as you can use a very modern P35 board for example and play around with all the NetBurst processors. And also Athlon 64. Socket 939 with PCIe is also lots of fun. They are all a lot of fun to be honest 😊

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Regarding high end AGP cards, I didn't have much luck with the AMD* cards. I had to use a special AGP hotfix driver for example and the X1950 Pro was faster in some games such as Far Cry or F.E.A.R., but in anything OpenGL, you're better off with a 6800 GT or 7800 GS.

- *ATi cards. An the X1950 PRO murders the 6800 Ultra, be it openGL or direct3D. It's also quite a bit faster (20%?) the the 7800GS.

I've had no issues with this card on any platform, including i865 socket 478 or LGA775 boards, - it's the first time I've ever heard of a "special AGP hotfix driver".

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Do consider 775 as you can use a very modern P35 board for example and play around with all the NetBurst processors. And also Athlon 64. Socket 939 with PCIe is also lots of fun. They are all a lot of fun to be honest 😊

I'm with Phil on this one, but reading your comment it seems you're building a socket 478 system for the sake of having one (same reason I built a socket A system) witch is perfectly OK. I'd use the Abit IS7 for it myself.

kanecvr wrote:

*ATi cards. An the X1950 PRO murders the 6800 Ultra, be it openGL or direct3D. It's also quite a bit faster (20%?) the the 7800GS.

murders...haha 😀 I agree that X1950PRO 512MB (do not confuse with younger 256MB brother) is one damn good dx9 choice for its time.

kanecvr wrote:

I'm with Phil on this one, but reading your comment it seems you're building a socket 478 system for the sake of having one (same reason I built a socket A system) witch is perfectly OK. I'd use the Abit IS7 for it myself.

Yes, I'm doomed with parts I have at the moment. I do have Prescott Pentium 4 HT 3.4 and plan is to attach zalman cnps9700 on it with modded bracket and clasp.
I have good experience with Asus Rampage Extreme 1 and Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 775 mobos. However we still posting about retro machines so I will go with something classy, as Phil says "don't go with something fast or fancy" -voodoo1 build video I presume.
My post are to get some useable infos about the pearl board itself.
Thank you for all replies 😎
Godlike!

kanecvr wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Regarding high end AGP cards, I didn't have much luck with the AMD* cards. I had to use a special AGP hotfix driver for example and the X1950 Pro was faster in some games such as Far Cry or F.E.A.R., but in anything OpenGL, you're better off with a 6800 GT or 7800 GS.

- *ATi cards. An the X1950 PRO murders the 6800 Ultra, be it openGL or direct3D. It's also quite a bit faster (20%?) the the 7800GS.

It uses this AGP bridge chip and standard drivers wouldn't install. No supported card message. The AGP hotfix driver fixed this. Though it could have been a 3000 series card, I don't remember 100%.

In OpenGL games like Doom 3 or Serious Sam Second Encounter, the 6800 GT, might have been overclocked to Ultra, beat the X1950 Pro in my tests. I was going to use it for my AGP benchmarks, but I found the Nvidia card to perform more consistent. OpenGL has always been a bit of an issue for ATI.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Regarding high end AGP cards, I didn't have much luck with the AMD* cards. I had to use a special AGP hotfix driver for example and the X1950 Pro was faster in some games such as Far Cry or F.E.A.R., but in anything OpenGL, you're better off with a 6800 GT or 7800 GS.

- *ATi cards. An the X1950 PRO murders the 6800 Ultra, be it openGL or direct3D. It's also quite a bit faster (20%?) the the 7800GS.

It uses this AGP bridge chip and standard drivers wouldn't install. No supported card message. The AGP hotfix driver fixed this. Though it could have been a 3000 series card, I don't remember 100%.

In OpenGL games like Doom 3 or Serious Sam Second Encounter, the 6800 GT, might have been overclocked to Ultra, beat the X1950 Pro in my tests. I was going to use it for my AGP benchmarks, but I found the Nvidia card to perform more consistent. OpenGL has always been a bit of an issue for ATI.

The hotfix is only required for HD2000-4000 cards.

If you were testing those AGP cards on a P4 system, the x1950 Pro would've been held back by CPU performance. ATI's drivers were a little more CPU hungry than nVidia's back then.

With the CPU bottleneck removed, the x1950Pro will outperform any 6800 card, even in GL games like Doom3. I tested both cards with one of those weird AGP S775 boards and a 2.4GHz C2D. At 1024x768 "Ultra", the x1950Pro cranked out 157 fps, while the 6800GT was only able to do 110. The X1950 did even better in D3D games.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

If you were testing those AGP cards on a P4 system, the x1950 Pro would've been held back by CPU performance. ATI's drivers were a little more CPU hungry than nVidia's back then.

With the CPU bottleneck removed, the x1950Pro will outperform any 6800 card, even in GL games like Doom3. I tested both cards with one of those weird AGP S775 boards and a 2.4GHz C2D. At 1024x768 "Ultra", the x1950Pro cranked out 157 fps, while the 6800GT was only able to do 110. The X1950 did even better in D3D games.

Yes! I tested this on a P4 system. What you say makes a lot of sense, good to know 😀

kanecvr wrote:

Godlike wrote:

From my knowlegde I know about two socket 478 boards are actually have great quality, these are ASUS P4P800-E and Abit IS7 865PE. Both boards have excellent performance and stability.

The P4P800 series are great performers, but they are far from reliable. I've based past 478 rigs on these boards, and they don't handle high-end CPUs well. I'm sitting on a pile on dead P4P800 (X and Deluxe) boards right now. Some are fixable (dead CPU mosfet), while others are not. Another common issue with these is dead NB chips. They seem to fail silently - the machine works now, you shut it down and it won't come back on again.

That's more or less exactly what happened with my old P4P800 Deluxe. It just never came back on from standby. No bulging caps, no cracked or burned chips, nothing visible to the eye at all. When troubleshooting the board, the CPU fan came on for a fraction of a second, but that was all. No other signs of life.

Never found out what was wrong with it.

kanecvr wrote:

Another common issue with these is dead NB chips. They seem to fail silently - the machine works now, you shut it down and it won't come back on again.

This is exactly what has happened to my ASUS P4P800-E. I don't like ASUS since then. I would advice to stay away from Pentium 4 motherboards built by ASUS and not to plug front USB headers.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

So my recommendations are to either go all out, and build one around the 3.4 EE because it's a really cool, end of an era build. Or just go with a 3.0, 3.2 or 3.4 standard Northwood.

I also agree with that. Those are the only ones worth going for.

kaputnik wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

Godlike wrote:

From my knowlegde I know about two socket 478 boards are actually have great quality, these are ASUS P4P800-E and Abit IS7 865PE. Both boards have excellent performance and stability.

The P4P800 series are great performers, but they are far from reliable. I've based past 478 rigs on these boards, and they don't handle high-end CPUs well. I'm sitting on a pile on dead P4P800 (X and Deluxe) boards right now. Some are fixable (dead CPU mosfet), while others are not. Another common issue with these is dead NB chips. They seem to fail silently - the machine works now, you shut it down and it won't come back on again.

That's more or less exactly what happened with my old P4P800 Deluxe. It just never came back on from standby. No bulging caps, no cracked or burned chips, nothing visible to the eye at all. When troubleshooting the board, the CPU fan came on for a fraction of a second, but that was all. No other signs of life.

Never found out what was wrong with it.

That is what mine did, until I reseated the cpu about 5 times, and has worked perfectly ever since. Maybe some isoprop in the socket pins might help.

Imperious wrote:

That is what mine did, until I reseated the cpu about 5 times, and has worked perfectly ever since. Maybe some isoprop in the socket pins might help.

Too late now, gave up and recycled it a while ago. Good thing I tried with a few different CPU's before at least, can probably rule out oxidation or dirt. Would really suck to have thrown it away if it was something as simple as that 😁

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Regarding high end AGP cards, I didn't have much luck with the AMD* cards. I had to use a special AGP hotfix driver for example and the X1950 Pro was faster in some games such as Far Cry or F.E.A.R., but in anything OpenGL, you're better off with a 6800 GT or 7800 GS.

- *ATi cards. An the X1950 PRO murders the 6800 Ultra, be it openGL or direct3D. It's also quite a bit faster (20%?) the the 7800GS.

It uses this AGP bridge chip and standard drivers wouldn't install. No supported card message. The AGP hotfix driver fixed this. Though it could have been a 3000 series card, I don't remember 100%.
.

I know it does but I honestly never came across this issue. I've always installed catalyst 10.2 or older and it worked w/o having to install additional drivers. I did however need to install .net framework 2.0.

Imperious wrote:

That is what mine did, until I reseated the cpu about 5 times, and has worked perfectly ever since. Maybe some isoprop in the socket pins might help.

Ill have to look into that. I have a new in box P4P800 Deluxe witch only worked once during testing, then died. Mosfets are fine, caps are fine. Maybe the CPU socket is crap.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

The hotfix is only required for HD2000-4000 cards. […]
Show full quote

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

- *ATi cards. An the X1950 PRO murders the 6800 Ultra, be it openGL or direct3D. It's also quite a bit faster (20%?) the the 7800GS.

It uses this AGP bridge chip and standard drivers wouldn't install. No supported card message. The AGP hotfix driver fixed this. Though it could have been a 3000 series card, I don't remember 100%.

In OpenGL games like Doom 3 or Serious Sam Second Encounter, the 6800 GT, might have been overclocked to Ultra, beat the X1950 Pro in my tests. I was going to use it for my AGP benchmarks, but I found the Nvidia card to perform more consistent. OpenGL has always been a bit of an issue for ATI.

The hotfix is only required for HD2000-4000 cards.

If you were testing those AGP cards on a P4 system, the x1950 Pro would've been held back by CPU performance. ATI's drivers were a little more CPU hungry than nVidia's back then.

With the CPU bottleneck removed, the x1950Pro will outperform any 6800 card, even in GL games like Doom3. I tested both cards with one of those weird AGP S775 boards and a 2.4GHz C2D. At 1024x768 "Ultra", the x1950Pro cranked out 157 fps, while the 6800GT was only able to do 110. The X1950 did even better in D3D games.

This will be usefull :

Driver for ATI cards was Cat 9.1 for DX9 ones and 10.2 for DX10 (neither had "hotfix"), and for NV I used 93.71.
Hotfix is not needed if you force driver installation of GPU model from driver list.
As a bonus, you will see correct name of the card in GPU-z 😀

Very nice. I wasn't even using such a beefy CPU. I think just a stock 3.2 GHz Northwood.

Core 2 type CPU really isn't needed, until you go highend DX10 cards (like 3850 or 4670 DDR3).
BUT it's good to have one tho 😉

Still, x1950 Pro 512MB is Awesome for DX9 games :

PS. I got screenshot of result from every single GPU from these graphs 😀
If someone has doubts, I can put them in attachments.
Here are actual Doom 3 v1.0 results :
HD 4670 1GB :

X1950 Pro 512MB :

GeForce 7900 GS :

I've heard many good things about Abit boards of late Socket 478 generation (865/875 chipsets). Unfortunately, they were not very popular where I live, and hard to come by. The default was ASUS boards and to some extent, Intel.

As kanecvr explained, The ASUS boards are not bad. They tend to perform very well, have very good features. Reliability seems to be a hit-n-miss with them. Perhaps on average their lifespan is shorter than that of their equivalent Abit boards, but this does not necessarily mean anything specific about any particular unit.

The Intel boards (D865PERL aka Rock Lake and D875PBZ aka Bonanza) are generally considered stable and reliable, but are not feature-rich (the Bonanza lacks even onboard audio), do not offer many tweaks in the BIOS (Intel was not aiming for enthusiasts back then), in particular, they have very low overclockability. The D865PERL was a rather poor performer, since Intel obviously did not care to "unlock" any of the extra potential of the 865PE chipset, which was reserved to the 875P chipset. However their prices back in the days were comparable to those of the high-end boards from other vendors, so you can see why they were never really popular, except for corporate builds.

My 478 rig was initially supposed to be built on top of D865PERL, actually, but the only variant of it that was in stock was the low-end variant, missing onboard LAN, and a few other things which I don't remember. So I did a little more research, and settled on a P4P800-E Deluxe. This was a late addition to the 865PE lineup, it addressed a few shortcomings in the original P4P800 design/layout, added 7.1 audio with a full set of audio jacks (one of the first, if not the first board to have onboard 7.1), and upgraded a couple of integrated components. All in all, you could get a very nice, feature-rich board at the price of a 865PE, but with the option to unlock 875P performance if you had RAM with good timings.

The P4P800-E lived for over half a decade in that machine, and I was generally very happy with it, except with the onboard audio, which was prone to interference. So I gave up and put an Audigy 2 ZS there, which is great-sounding, and has great drivers with tons of configurability. Eventually, the P4P800-E kicked the bucket, and I replaced it with a P4C800-E, which is almost the same board except with 875P and the bonuses that come with it (slightly higher performance, slightly faster Intel CSA Gigabit LAN). It's onboard audio lacks a full set of jacks, but I don't use it anyways.

One nice thing about 865PE/875P boards is that they use the same southbridge (ICH5), which means the same SATA controller, which means that even with Windows XP, you can just swap one board for another, without having to deal with bluescreens and manual storage driver preparation. In case this P4C800-E dies, I have another P4P800-E waiting as a backup...