Asus P4S800D-E (SiS 655TX) Motherboard Review
Performance
I took Abit IC7-MAX3 built on the dual-channel Intel 875P chipset as a contender to our board in question. As regards the P4S800D-E board, we tested it in the two modes: first - in all the default settings, second - the "DRAM Timing" set to "Fast+", and the "Performance Mode" set to "Aggressive". So on the graphs the second mode will be referred to as the "P4S800D-E (tweak)".
In our test configuration, we used the following hardware:
| Test configuration |
| Processor |
Intel Pentium4 3.2E (Prescott - C) |
| Video card |
Asus Radeon 9800XT(445378) (Ati 9800XT chip) |
| Sound card |
Creative Live 5.1 |
| HDD |
IBM DTLA 307030 30Gb |
| Memory |
2x256 MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM TwinX, made by Corsair (latency timings: 2-3-6-3) |
| Case |
Inwin506 with PowerMan 300W power supply unit |
| OS |
Windows XP SP1 |
Let's first take a look at the results of synthetic benchmarks.
Now on to the gaming benchmarks.
Asus P4S800D-E has proven a very high performance level of the SiS 655TX chipset. In the nominal mode, the lag behind systems based on Intel chipsets is insignificant. With fine tuning, the user can increase the performance to the level of the i875P chipset.
Anyway, i865PEi875P boards offer potentials for the fine tuning. For example, in Abit IC7-MAX3 the "Game Accelerator" can be engaged, and many i865PEP boards allow switching the PAT.
Final Words
Asus P4S800D-E produced a very good impression: the package bundle deserved a "4.5/5" mark, very wide expansion options and high performance level. All this you get with the comparatively small amount (as per price.ru, the price is approximately $118). On the other hand, some competitors offer motherboards built on the SiS 655TX chipset at 95-98$, with approximately the same package bundle and similar expansion feature-set. On the other hand, none of the presented boards offer a combined 4-channel ParallelATA/SerialATA RAID controller which is quite rare.
In any case, Asus P4S800D-E appears to be an excellent alternative to boards of the mid-end range (on the dual-channel i865P, and even more on the single-channel i848P).
Conclusion
Pros:
- High stability and performance;
- Good compatibility to various memory modules.
- Integrated support for SerialATA (2 channels);
- Additional 4-channel ParallelATASerialATA RAID controller (2/2 channels, respectively);
- Integrated 6.1 audio and LAN (Gigabit Ethernet);
- Support for USB2.0 (8 ports) and IEEE-1394 (2 ports)
- Rich package bundle (except the header for a COM port);
- A wide selection Asus' own technologies (Q-Fan; LiveUpdateMyLogo2; PCProbe, CrashFree BIOS 2 etc.).
Cons:
- Passive cooling of the chipset;
The board's specific features:
- Powerful overclocking tools, but poor results (a shortcoming of the SiS 655 /FX/TX chipset).
Read more on this topic
 Gigabyte 8S655TX Ultra
Stress tests of Pentium4 Northwood
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