ASUS PGA 478... here's my story :
My first PGA 478 board (P4P800-E), was dead on arrival.
It simply would not switch on (or would hang before even any "beeping" errors sounded).
After I removed everything from it (CPU/RAM, etc.), I forced it to swith on by shorting green-black wires on 24pin... after 2 min. of doing nothing, MOSFET blew up (with a bang) 🙁

Since I needed a MB for PGA 478 platform tests, I got myself a Gigabyte GA-8PENXP w/DPS 2.0 module. That's the board I used for all tests from earlier charts.
Here's screenshot with OC'ed Pentium 4 EE 3,2GHz (using big BOX cooler) : LINK
It may not be as fast as ASUS boards, but it gets the job done (BIOS may be little confusing at first coming from ASUS, with Ctrl + F1 "cheat" and all 😁).

kaputnik wrote:

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 😁

My P4P800 was exactly like that. I shot it down one evening, and it never powered up when I powered it again the day after. If I remember correctly, it had a voice error code system and it was saying something like "CPU not detected". Tried other CPUs, nothing changed. Tried the original CPU in other boards, and it was working. So board went into the waste bin.

Don't get me wrong, this is the only bad experience that I have with any Asus board, I still like and use them, both in my modern and retro machines.

tayyare wrote:

kaputnik wrote:

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 😁

My P4P800 was exactly like that. I shot it down one evening, and it never powered up when I powered it again the day after. If I remember correctly, it had a voice error code system and it was saying something like "CPU not detected". Tried other CPUs, nothing changed. Tried the original CPU in other boards, and it was working. So board went into the waste bin.

I'm starting to think there might be something wrong with the CPU socket on these things. I'll give a P4P800-X a look-over and see If I can confirm this and if there's a way to fix it.

There are two possible error voice codes I know of with these boards:

"No CPU found" - only happened to me when the CPU was actually not present / not inserted correctly into the socket.
"System failed CPU test" - seems to be the common message for a whole range of possible POST failures. Accurate diagnostic may be possible with a POST code PCI addon card.

There is another one which I hit once - "System failed VGA test". But this was too a board issue, the video card was fine. In fact, it's still working in the replaced board.

kanecvr wrote:

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.

I always install them without ccc, however I discover nice lighting effects on Half LIfe 2 with X1950PRO 512 (sapphire) I'm not sure if this was Catalyst 10 or 9, 9 I think, older drivers.

dr_st wrote:

There are two possible error voice codes I know of with these boards:

"No CPU found" - only happened to me when the CPU was actually not present / not inserted correctly into the socket.
"System failed CPU test" - seems to be the common message for a whole range of possible POST failures. Accurate diagnostic may be possible with a POST code PCI addon card.

This usually means:
- no CPU present (obviously)
- CPU is not correctly seated
- CPU is damaged
- CPU is not getting power (blown / damaged mosfets, damaged PCB, damaged CPU socket, damaged trace)
- CPU is getting "dirty" power and will not initialize (blown capacitors, missing diode)

dr_st wrote:

There is another one which I hit once - "System failed VGA test". But this was too a board issue, the video card was fine. In fact, it's still working in the replaced board.

- this usually indicates a problem with the northbridge or the port (be it PCI, PCI-E or AGP) the video card is sitting in. It can be a damaged trace, a missing SMD part on the back of the board or near the NB, even missing or damaged part near the PCI/AGP/PCI-E slot

Another thing worth looking into is the BIOS chip. It's possible that the EEPROM got damaged or the BIOS image is corrupted. On some machines this will cause CPU related post codes, while on others it will cause the cards to display no POST codes whatsoever. I know later Abit boards actually have a post code for "corrupted or missing BIOS" witch helps a lot.

dr_st wrote:

I've heard many good things about Abit boards of late Socket 478 generation (865/875 chipsets). Unfortunately, they were not ver […]
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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...

Useful informations, thanks for your post. I don't have P4C800-E at the moment and give a chance to D865PERL and see how it perform

kanecvr wrote:

I'm starting to think there might be something wrong with the CPU socket on these things. I'll give a P4P800-X a look-over and see If I can confirm this and if there's a way to fix it.

Interested in knowing whether you found something interesting 😀

edit: Fixed the quote

Well, I know about the DIMM slots corrosion on these boards (a metal ruler to the rescue!). But the CPU socket one?

i have the pentium 4 2.6 ghz northwood and the 3.4 pentium prescott.
the prescott is a power guzzler! beware! if its prescott compatable without a fan cooled chipset from factory its mosfets won't last very long! be safe use a massive PSU too!
Northwood hasn't asked much of my pre prescott era motherboard (Asus P4S533-X SiS6465DX Chipset Intel Socket 478 ATX) unless its retrozilla trying to parse modern java applets everything else is ok and I think is good for 9x windows due to drivers floating around still. Had XP is good but I built it for 9x era windows games.
I always known SiS P4's were the cheaper side if its for 9x gaming 😀
on windows 9x like 95 98-se, Me the cpu driver can be updated to support speedstep tech which is also good for pentium 3.
Sadly my Prescott purpose motherboard died and now I am hunting Prescott factory built purpose than just compatable for xp!
Thing is, buying second hand you don't know if its been overclocked or not and how many hours the mosfets have been used.
When asserting what motherboard per operating system I go agp for win9x (Exluding 95 I don't want to know) and PCIE for XP as windows 2000 I don't know which GPU it supports I never liked buisness class and XP is great with DOS BOX installed for dos games.
The Prescott may be a power guzzler but its got entry into PCIE tech and that screams XP GAMING especially mobo's with ddr2 SATA and PCIE!
I attach the P4 Asus P4S533 image I found though its a tiny picture if i decide to do a thread about it it'll be with the chipset fan cooler I attached and benchmarks.

From all motherboards I bought usually the little known brands/value quality ones were in best condition as they were never overclocked and used by older people as internet PCs, not for gaming. My strategy was to buy multiple cheap boards and great majority of them were in very good shape. While CPU and memory last forever, boards do not so get a spare.