It is interesting to find check out this new product from ASUS. What interests me most is the Gigabit Ethernet on board. On first sight, I feel that it is more of a server board. I spoke to my contact person at ASUS and he told me that this board will be targeting the end user. While I was surprised with the availability of Firewire, S-ATA RAID 0/1 (updated) and Gigabit Ethernet for a end user board, it might prove useful for those who are using it for multimedia and video editing.

In the performance category, the ASUS P4T533 is that uses RIMM4200 is the best P4 platform but it the difference between the RIMM4200 and Dual DDR is negligible. The scores in the SiSoft Sandra looks beautiful but whether applications are able to tap this extra bandwidth is another story.

This board has some of the best features e.g. AGP 8x, Gigabit Ethernet (optional), 1394 (optional), 4 USB (+2 using bracket). 6 channel audio, 1Mhz stepping, SerialATA raid 0/1 etc. Although there is no diagnostic LED on board, it comes with POST Reporter. There is also the EZ-plug to use it with old PSU. Installation is straightforward provided you use similar branded modules (since it needs to be in pairs). If you were to use different brands of DDR266, it might work but I do suggest you use 2 x same module for best results.

Overclocking wise, this board has 1Mhz stepping and also an independent PCI/AGP setting if you wish to keep your FSB at 133(533) and just overclock your PCI and AGP bus. Voltage adjustments are also available for Vcore.  We are able to o/c to 145Mhz fsb at default voltage using P4 2.4B

One fact I have to point out is that the P4T533 was running at 133.00Mhz FSB while the P4G8X was slightly clocked up at 134.6 in the BIOS provided. This might have skewed some results by a bit. Overall, this board is a stable board with a good feature set. Perhaps future models should incorporate a 3 phase power regulator instead of 2 phase. This will definitely help those who loves to overclock and future power hungry CPUs.

Here is a list of ram modules that are tested by ASUS R&D.

Dual channel:
OK:
SAMSUNG DDR266 CL2.5 128MB (single-side)
SAMSUNG DDR266 CL2.5 256MB (single-side)
SAMSUNG DDR266 CL2.5 256MB (double-side)
SAMSUNG DDR266 CL2.5 512MB (double-side)
Micron DDR266 CL2.5 128MB (single-side)
Micron DDR266 CL2.5 256MB (double-side)
KINGMAX DDR266 128MB (single-side)
HYNIX DDR266 CL2 256MB (double-side)
HYNIX DDR333 CL2.5 256MB (double-side)
NANYA DDR333 CL2.5 256MB (double-side) with the date code after 0151 (2001, 51st week).
NANYA DDR333 CL2.5 256MB (single-side)
Infineon DDR333 CL2.5 256MB (single-side)
Micron DDR333 CL2.5 128MB (single-side)
Micron DDR333 CL2.5 256MB (double-side)
SAMSUNG DDR333 CL2.5 256MB (single-side)
 
FAIL:
HYNIX DDR266 CL2.5 256MB (double-side), must set tRCD to 3T
HYUNDAI DDR266 CL2.5 128MB (single-side), must set tRCD to 3T
NANYA DDR266 CL2 256MB (double-side), must set tRAS to 6T
NANYA DDR266 CL2 128MB (single-side), must set tRAS to 6T 
 

* We did not conduct the test of this board using HT 3.06G as we would want to compare it with previous boards that were previously benchmarked using P4 2.4B. Errata : P4G8x does provide RAID 0 and 1 support on the SATA ports only.

Discuss

Pros 好处:

• Overclocking features
• 6 Channel audio
• USB 2.0 
• 1394
• Dual Channel DDR266
• SATA RAID (updated)

Cons 坏处:

• Only SATA-RAID on board (updated)
• No Async DDR333 support (by design of chipset)

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.

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